by wildbow
This much, it felt natural, if still weird, in the here and now.
It was Gordon and Hubris.
“Took a while,” I said. “She took care of Jamie, fixed the bruises and cut and everything else.”
“I found the guy,” Gordon said. “Before I get into that… the Fishmonger? How was that handled? Do we need to tie up loose ends? Anything I need to be concerned about?”
“I’ve poisoned him,” Lillian said. The character had gone out of her voice. “Sy did, but I showed him how. Over days, weeks, and months, he’ll recover, the wounds will close, and the poison will degrade and spread through his body.”
“And?” Gordon asked.
“Incontinence, urinary and fecal. I saw how concerned he was at being hurt and not wearing pants around his soldiers. I thought… force him to wear a diaper for the rest of his life. it’s not an easy thing to fix, if he can even find a doctor good enough. Indigestion, stomach grumbles, acute stomach pain…”
She trailed off.
“It works,” I said. “It works really beautifully, actually.”
“It’s not my proudest moment,” she said, her voice soft. She actually seemed shamed, in the wake of it.
I wasn’t sure I got that.
He would never bounce back from this loss. He would never be able to fit himself among the upper class, even of a shithole like Lugh, or demonstrate power. Even with a more discrete diaper, if what she was saying about stomach problems were true, he would lose the respect of his men. Especially if the symptoms cropped up with any suddenness.
Rather than push the issue or try to understand it, I changed the subject. “What did you find out, Gordon?”
“The Fishmonger, being who he is, offered help in getting the books to the right people. I talked to one of those sub-distributors, and I’ve got the basic details down. The top distributor is connected to Mauer. Or is Mauer, if you want to take it a step further and assume he’s got more than one operation like this.”
I nodded. “And the girl, Candy?”
“Candida,” Gordon said. “We have a sense of where she is. She’s working with a small group that has the books. Mauer is funding them. In exchange for that funding, they’re doing some work on a specific project for him. It’s the same with other groups and cells. So long as they work on that project, they can do side stuff all they want.”
“What sort of work?” Lillian asked.
“The sort of work you were worried about,” Gordon said. “New stuff the Academy doesn’t touch outside of very controlled circumstances. A dozen, fifty, a hundred cells, we don’t know yet, all working on variants of the same sort of project.”
“Hoping that if enough people try it, one of them is going to stumble on a solution?” Lillian asked.
“Yeah,” Gordon said.
I felt her posture change. Tension. Concern.
“But there’s an equal chance of this spinning out of control?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Gordon said.
“No,” Lillian said. “More than equal. It’s very likely. How it goes out of control and what it looks like when it does depends on the project.”
“Any idea what it is?” I asked Gordon.
He shook his head. “But finding Candida and investigating what she’s working on should turn up solutions. There might be brownie points in this for us, if we can get ahead of the problem before it becomes a problem.”
I gave Lillian’s waist a squeeze. “Not so bad, that.”
Her smile was faltering, not quite convinced.
“Best thing to do would be to get this done,” Gordon said. “Jamie’s down and out, but we can leave instructions and have the people you hired escort him to a rendezvous point if he’s better. We go out right away, before the Fishmonger’s people spread rumors of us and people start getting paranoid or proactive.”
“Before your heart leaves you even weaker than you are now, you mean,” I said.
“Would be nice,” Gordon said.
I nodded.
It made sense. I’d made up with Jamie to a degree, I suspected he would agree with the logic of this decision, to put the mission first.
Lillian would give her consent, too. She would play along.
Which wasn’t the same thing as agreeing.
“In the morning?” I suggested. “We can get a few hours’ rest, let Jamie bounce back, and tackle things before it gets too light out.”
Gordon nodded. “Okay.”
I nodded.
“Then we’ll rest. I’ll be in the next room, let you guys get settled” he said.
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“No. I—We’ll take the next room, if that’s okay?”
“That’s okay,” Gordon said. “I thought you’d want to keep an eye on Jamie.”
“We need to keep an eye on you, too,” I said. “And I know exactly what you’re going to say. The mutt will keep an eye out. He can keep an eye on Jamie too, can’t he?”
Gordon looked down at Hubris. “Yeah.”
“If that’s okay?” I asked.
He nodded. He looked so very tired.
“Keep an eye on them, okay, mut—Hubris?” I asked.
The dog only stared at me. But then it paced in a circle and curled up at the foot of the bedside table, eyes fixed on me.
“Good boy,” I said.
I led Lillian into the darkened hallway, then into the next room.
Before she could say or do anything, I wrapped her in a crushing hug, as tight as I could manage.
Too many stubborn idiots among the Lambs. People who wouldn’t admit their weakness or who would play along even if it cost them.
I wasn’t sure if this thing between Lillian and I was a good thing, but this, this gesture, I was sure about. I could read people and I could read Lillian. Nevermind concerns about manipulation or whatever else. Nevermind that a nice day might forever be out of reach. Forget that until tomorrow.
She needed a hug, she needed to rest, after all of that. I was supposed to take care of her and she was supposed to take care of me. That much I could understand.
“Thank you,” she whispered in my ear. “Thank you.”
Previous Next
Bleeding Edge—8.10
“Coast clear?” Gordon asked.
“Coast clear,” Jamie reported. His breath fogged up in the cool morning air.
Gordon nodded. He withdrew a set of picks from his pocket, and began working on the lock in the front door, while the rest of us gathered around.
“If I’d seen this lock up close, I’d know there was something going on,” Gordon said. “It’s better than the usual.”
“Huh,” I said. “You can’t do it?”
“There’s a locking bar and a rotating disc. It’s the kind of lock you’d find on the front door of the Gage’s mansion, not a warehouse like this. This will take a minute,” he said.
“We don’t have all that much time,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“I don’t think they’ll be up at the crack of dawn, but at a certain point you have to assume they’ll stop in.”
“I know, Sy,” Gordon said. He fiddled with the lock. “You’d actually find this interesting if you kept your skills fresh with the lockpicking, studied it.”
“Not a priority. I’ve got you and Mary to help cover that one. If I need to learn it for something, I’ve got the stuff in my luggage to remind myself how to do it. Other things take priority when it comes to real estate in my head.”
“That exceedingly small amount of real estate,” he said.
“Ha ha,” I said, deadpan. “You know, we wouldn’t have been so short on time if you and Jamie had actually woken up pre-dawn like Lillian and I did.”
“Sorry I’m dying, Sy,” Gordon said.
I stopped in my tracks. Then I saw the half-smile on his face as he wiggled the push-rod.
“That’s dirty,” I said.
“You’re being a pest.�
�
“Nah. Just reminding you that you’re slow.”
He sighed, squinting as something clicked in the lock.
“Oh, is that pin one of four? Five? Six pins? Yeah, you’re slow.”
“Bite him, Hubris.”
Hubris opened his mouth, moving toward my hand.
“You don’t want to do that,” I told the mutt. “I’m poisonous.”
The dog stopped.
“I’m disappointed in you, boy,” Gordon said. The dog wagged his tail.
A movement behind us made us collectively turn our heads.
Only a cat, patchwork, running down the length of the street. Someone’s practice making stitched, maybe.
“I know you like to say so, Sy, but you’re not that poisonous,” Lillian said. “It’s not like you spit nightshade and pee cyanide.”
“That would be nifty,” I said.
Lillian rolled her eyes. I caught a smile from Jamie though.
“You’re in a good mood,” Jamie observed.
“He’s intolerable,” Gordon said, but he didn’t look nearly as grumpy as he seemed. “Why don’t you go for a walk, Sy? Jamie and Lillian can keep an eye out here.”
I glanced at the others. Lillian was rubbing her hands together, hunched over a little, as if ducking her head down a half-inch would make the difference in us being spotted breaking in or not.
“Getting rid of me?”
“Very much getting rid of you. You’re being a pest. Go scout the surroundings, make sure nobody’s approaching.”
“Say please.”
“Lillian,” Gordon said. “Hit him.”
Lillian punched my arm.
“Et tu?”
She put both arms out, pushing me away. I let her, and when she dropped her hands, I kept walking.
I circled around the warehouse. The sun had reached the clouds above, lightening the places where the clouds were thinner, while the thickest parts of the clouds overhead remained particularly dark, a heavy contrast. I could see where I was going without the help of the streetlights, but it remained gloomy. Rain came down, persistent if not quite pouring, and it froze into an icy crust in places where the shadows were deeper. Ice in the alleyways and the base of the buildings, water elsewhere.
My fingertips traced wet wooden slats as I walked along the side of the building. It was as nondescript as any warehouse, one of the buildings that was tilting, threatening to fall over, and a few stray shingles had come free, likely pulled down by the poorer weather of summer, dropping onto the street beneath the eaves.
It was as though Lugh was so short on natural life, plants, real trees and whatever else, that it had forgotten what fall was, and was skipping straight to winter. No leaves to turn colors, just a grim, dark, wet little knot of a town, plopped down on a rocky shore.
I ducked into an alley, where I was less visible, still walking around the long building.
I looked up, saw a high window, and then cast my eyes around. I spotted a plank, ten feet long, and propped it up against the wall beneath the window. It was slick with ice in spots, but I shimmied up, and adjusted my weight until I had one foot on the windowsill and one on the end of the plank.
I tested the window. Locked. It looked to be a simple turn-key latch on the window itself, and further down, the key embedded partially in the sill. Turn both keys, and the window opened. Annoying to open and close, given how high the window was, but not impossible. There was probably a tool on the end of a pole that people could use should they really want to open the windows.
Discreet, private.
Reaching into my pocket, being careful to keep my balance, I got some paper and a bit of razor wire. Making a loop with the razor wire, I used the paper to help work the razor wire through a gap in between the top of the window and the window itself.
I had to squint to make it out past the dusty glass, within a large, unlit room. I eased it over, and hooked the latch with the loop. A sharp tug lifted it.
The one embedded in the windowsill was harder. Twice, I got it in position, only for it to slip free. On the third try, I hooked it over, and twisted the wire until it tightened around the key. Further twisting made it turn at a glacial pace.
Come on, come on.
No way am I going to mess up here. This is too important.
I began exerting some pressure on the window, pressing on it, until a combination of the pressure and the twist of the key made the latch pop the rest of the way open. The window swung wide, and I very nearly toppled through, head and shoulders going through the window, with my ass and legs soon following. I caught myself before facing that indignity.
Straddling the windowsill, I found the pole used for the window, and grabbed it, positioning it below me. I started to get in position to slide down it when the front door opened.
No! Damn!
Gordon and the others strode through. Gordon stared up at me.
“Come on down, Sy.”
I kept my face dead still as I slid down.
One minute sooner…
“What was the plan?” Gordon asked. “We come in, and there you are, standing in the shadows, already inside and looking smug? Or were you going to try and scare us? Because I’d like to remind you I have a weak heart.”
“The smug thing,” I said. “I would have looked so smug.”
“Yeah, Sy,” Gordon said. He gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Let’s figure out what we can.”
I nodded, turning my attention to our surroundings.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. A slaughterhouse smell: blood and hormones. Not that one could smell hormones, not really, but I felt as though there was a note to the smell to be associated with pain and fear, and that note was here. Subtle, but present.
The interior of the place was improvised. We’d seen many a makeshift laboratory, and there was a tendency for them to try to hold to a kind of convention. The Snake Charmer, for example, had maintained a small library, equipment, tools, all bought or found elsewhere and brought to his lab. He’d had a chalkboard, texts, a proper desk, beakers, and what he couldn’t find he’d built. It had been ramshackle, but it had been a lab.
This was different. Every piece of equipment seemed to be the wrong sort of thing, bent to scholarly ends. Old crates had been stacked to either side of the desk with open faces out towards us, a makeshift bookcase. The ‘books’, however, were disorganized reams of paper, many bound into sections with twine. An old door had been laid out on its side, propped up on stacks of crates, with more papers strewn on top. The hole where the doorknob was meant to be inserted served to hold a cup, presumably serving as an inkwell, if I could draw conclusions from the dark spatter surrounding it. Candles and lanterns were set atop virtually every horizontal surface on that end of the room, the candles melted to stay firmly in place.
No organic lighting, but they’d whiled away the evening hours here, going by the state of the candles. That meant it was less likely for them to get up bright and early.
Where there were bottles or beakers, most seemed to be old alcohol bottles with the necks shorn off, each containing various fluids, corked with wax plugs, the wax dribbling down sides where a flame had been held to it to form better seals.
Shelves took up a good share of the one-room building, but they weren’t floor-to-ceiling shelving units like we’d seen in the Fishmonger’s warehouse. These were built shelving units. Boards, bricks and stone blocks, stacked so the bricks and blocks held the boards flat, at varying intervals. One shelf would be placed with an end against the wall, the length of the shelf extending toward the far end of the room, a fair gap, and then another haphazard shelf. One in three shelves held the accumulated detritus that had probably been spread throughout this warehouse prior to the new occupants moving in, another third had the notes and paper, tools and bottles of various chemicals, and one in three held the freakier stuff.
The ‘freakier stuff’ consisted of bottles of cloudy fluid. Within a given bottle of
fluid there were some limbs of odd shapes and styles, none of them recognizable from any animal species I knew. I saw organs, again, very hard to place or identify, and I saw tissue samples, skin, sections of organ, eyes, jaw with teeth and gums still attached, and fibrous strands that could have been fraying muscle or tendon, collected into bunches. The dim light from some windows reached the bottles at the far end of the building, making them seem to glow from within. Likely why they were so cloudy.
The only other thing of interest was what looked to be a metal panel inset into the floor, three feet across. Chains stretched through a series of pulleys, into and through that metal grate. To lift it open?
I could see the miner’s pick they’d used to break through the hard ground, the wooden splinters and stone debris piled in one corner with all the other garbage that the occupants had set to one side, and I knew they’d dug a hole. Then they’d covered it with a very heavy metal lid, and rigged it with more chains than necessary.
The lid wasn’t that heavy. Half the number of chains would have sufficed to heft it up.
Gordon closed the door behind us, locking it. As a group, we advanced further into the room.
Jamie went straight to the door-table of papers. Lillian started to, then changed her mind and went to the crate-shelves which held equipment, makeshift and otherwise.
Studying records and methodology, respectively.
Gordon’s attention was on the grate, while I turned my eyes to the far corner of the room, with all of the interesting things in bottles.
It was a lab, but it wasn’t a lab.
Most labs were centered around something, and all they had here was… what? A grate in the floor?
“Doesn’t feel like a proper lab,” I voiced the sentiment aloud.
“It isn’t,” Lillian said. She was closest to me. “This is eerie. Like children playing at something serious.”
“What are they playing at?” Gordon asked.
“I don’t know,” Lillian said.
“Everything here is handmade, though,” I said, looking around. My hand reached up to touch a bottle with an organ inside. They’d reserved the clearest bottles and jars for the specimens. It looked like some sort of combination of a heart, but wrapped up in the wrinkly skin of a ballsack, the upper corner knotted together and hardened like a whorl in wood. “They came in here, they spent days clearing away the trash, cleaned up, as much as you can clean this sort of place, and then they built the shelves, put together the table, collected paper… it’s a labor of love, almost?”