by wildbow
“The legs moved,” Jamie said. “They were fast.”
“But the feet. How was the mobility in the feet?”
“Feet were straight out, almost one solid piece from knee to the end of the foot, maybe fifteen degrees of movement at the knee and at the ankle, with toes giving them traction.”
“Did the toes wiggle? Or did they look like metal, or bone, or—”
“I didn’t see. Puddles, and I wasn’t focused on the feet when there weren’t puddles.”
“I’m getting this mental picture, but I’m not sure if my imagination is running away with me,” Lillian said. Her voice was breathy, like she hadn’t taken in a full proper lungful of air before leaping into the thought. She took in a partial breath, then cut it off to say, “It’s really hard to tell if I’m imagining it or understanding it.”
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I’m imagining a problem with oxygen. The integration would take time to get right, they’ve got very contained physiologies with very dense bone, blood flow is low, redirected, or they went with another means of oxygen absorption altogether. It would take time to get right, and it could go wrong easily, with catastrophic consequences. The extremities nearly withered away, and in the case of the arms, weren’t salvageable or weren’t salvageable enough. Chop them off, give them weapons. Legs with the thicker bones were salvaged, and or they rely on strength and flexibility in the hip over the legs.”
“Okay,” I said. “How can we use that?”
“That they made it work at all is incredible. They can probably take any bullet that isn’t from an exorcist, with minimal damage. No vital areas, fast, strong, with big bursts of energy. When they plug into their sisters, they borrow blood flow.”
“Lillian,” I said, voice sharper. “How can we use that?”
“Um,” she said. Then she was lost in her little world again.
I glanced at Jamie.
“You were just as bad at the start,” Jamie said. “The books said so.”
“Hm? What?” Lillian asked, focusing on us again.
“Nevermind,” Jamie said. “Focus on your thing. You’re doing a good job.”
She lowered her head, pulling her bag around so it was in front of her, and began digging through it. She spent a minute doing it. It felt disorganized, the way she moved stuff aside, then had to move it the other way to search a different corner.
“Do you have a silver bullet for us?” I asked, gently, so as not to disturb her too much.
“No,” she said. “Just a bullet, and I have to put it together. And I have one idea, but I don’t have the things for it.”
“Okay,” I said. “A bullet is good. And you think this thing will work?”
“No,” she said. She looked up, and met my eyes with her own. Elemental Lillian had a look on her face like I’d just said something crazy. “Your aim sucks.”
Ouch.
Seeing this Lillian at work, I was struck by a thought. Evette. She’d never had a first incarnation, nor a second. The idea had been floated, but it had been Ashton we got in the end.
The idea had been to have Evette as the group’s problem solver. A floating element, not for combat, but for the background. To equip us against threats, and to devise very specific solutions. Of all of the Lambs, she would have had access to Academy knowledge. The rest of us would have been forbidden.
I didn’t know what Evette would have looked like in the end, or what her personality would have been, but I imagined she would have existed with the Academy maintaining a tighter, firmer hold on her. Having her with us would likely have meant an adult chaperone at all times, to rein her in and watch over her.
In darker moments, and today was a darker moment, I allowed myself to muse on the fact that her project had been allowed to fail. That they had decided it was too much trouble, that the Lambs couldn’t have access to that knowledge. Easier to give us a conventional medic and not worry about losing control. Two now, if I counted Duncan.
We’d lost Gordon, and yet I felt like he was still with us, in Hubris, and in spirit. As for Jamie, I’d always seen in the corner of my eye, in the movement of curtains and tricks of the light, and he was with us in a very concrete way.
Evette, well, we’d lost her before we’d even started. I had the sense that she was with us, lending a hand, all of the key traits and points now manifesting through a possessed Lillian. I could very well picturing her acting like Lillian was now. Eccentric, no holds barred, plainspoken, and needing careful watching-over.
It made for a shifting of mental gears, but I suddenly felt a lot more comfortable with Lillian acting as different as she was. I could almost see it as a game, to test how I might work with her.
Lillian was so focused on digging through her bag that she was losing track of where she was walking. Jamie had to slow down to avoid being cut off by her.
I reached out and grabbed her upper arm, aiming to steer her. Like lightning, sudden and startling, she whipped her head around to look at me.
Confusion, then recognition, and then a smile and a flush of the cheeks.
Now I was the one that was confused.
“Thank you,” she said, with a hair more emphasis than was needed.
I nodded once.
No response was as good as a non-response in a situation like this.
I could feel the muscles of her arm move as she emptied a bottle into a jar that already had fluid inside, then screwed on the cap. She shook the bottle, a thumb over the lid.
She handed it to me. I had to let go of her arm to take it.
“What is it?”
“Stink. It’s going to wipe out our ability to smell anything when the time comes, and Hubris will hate it, but if they use their noses like you think, it’ll hurt them more.”
I tested the weight of the jar of urine-colored fluid, then extended the rifle past Lillian’s front, to Jamie.
“I’m shooting?” he asked.
“They might be quick and durable,” I said. “But if we can throw them for a loop with this, you might get a chance to land a shot.”
“You saw how fast they are. By the time we see them, it might be too late.”
“Yeah,” I said. “This is good, Lil. Good line of thinking.”
“Hm?” She looked up from her bag.
“Nevermind.”
“Do you know what I should do?” she asked, eyes going back to the bag. “Take the stuff I use most, and just stick it on the outside of a coat. Jars, needles, tools.”
“That wouldn’t be very discreet,” I pointed out.
She looked up, processed that, then nodded, eyes going back to the bag.
“Students take wyvern on the regular, don’t they?” I asked.
“Some,” Lillian said. “The Academy lies. They say the stuff will kill you if you overdo it, so most only take a small amount.”
“Anything kills you if you take too much,” Jamie said. “Even water.”
Lillian smiled at that. “Yeah. You know what I mean.”
“How much more than the usual dose did you take?” I asked.
“I took a safe amount,” she said.
“How much more?”
“Ten times more than them. The same amount you took when you first started,” she said. “Before tolerances.”
“Right,” I said.
The little things were adding up. Looking for clues, piecing together a mental image of how the city was doing, anticipating the Twins, the Crown army, and Mauer, keeping an eye on Hubris in case a twitch of the ear indicated something noteworthy, and now that I had the jar tucked under one arm, my other arm was once again steering a preoccupied Lillian. I could focus on more things at once, and my thoughts were clearer and more effective, but I still had a limit and I was approaching it. Actually trying to figure out what I was really wanting to ask her about with the formula and carrying on a conversation would detract from more important matters.
I told myself I’d think on it
at a future date, and I knew I’d forget before I did.
Her posture was weird—I had a grip on her upper arm, but she was pinning my hand in place between her arm and her side, her elbow pressed against the side of her stomach. That was distracting too, both in the sense that I wanted to piece together what she was doing and the thought process at work, and the fact that the knuckles of my hand were grazing certain aspects of her anatomy.
She liked me. I’d known that was the case, in an analytical way, but Lillian had always been reactive, passive, shy, and indirect about her feelings. I could put all of the pieces together, and still, I could invent reasons it was just an act. She was the type who needed someone close to them. She was at that age, and propinquity made her think she liked me. Hormones and the fact that she saw my face as often as she did.
To actually have her show interest in this bizarre, minor way was both rewarding and very very distracting.
“Sy,” Jamie said.
Case in point. There was a situation.
A body, a recent death. The corpse had been demolished, pieces of skull scattered across road, with massive puncture wounds I could have thrust a hand into.
“The twins,” Jamie said.
“Oh no,” Lillian said. Strange to hear her speak when I expected Lillian to be horrified into silence.
“Came from the east,” I said. “Sudden attack, only one dead?”
“Could be tired,” Jamie said. He looked to Lillian.
“They probably are. If they plug into their sisters for the sake of borrowing blood flow and re-oxygenating, then they—”
“Or it’s bait,” I said, cutting her off only because I suspected she would ramble. I wheeled around, eyes scanning nearby buildings and surfaces. I held the jar higher. “They smelled us on the people we sent running, now they’re hunting us, and a body lying in our path slows us down, buys a chance to get in position and pounce.”
I spun around again, now facing what had been our rear.
“I have another idea,” Lillian said.
“Is it one we can put into effect right now?” I asked her.
“No. I’d need a lab, I think.”
“Then keep it in mind, but let’s focus on what we need to focus on. I think we’re surrounded.”
“Can you even be surrounded by two people?” Jamie asked.
“When they’re the Twins? Yeah.” I asked. My eyes scanned the surroundings. Wood piles, a shed, the eaves of a rooftop. The shadows played tricks with my eyes. Lillian’s comment about imagination playing tricks with the mind was an accurate one. I was seeing the shadows pull themselves into configurations resembling skulls, bones, and praying-mantis like spikes at the end of their forelimbs.
I’d done the tests for Hayle that involved drawing the perfect, clean white rectangle in my mind’s eye. The trick for focusing my senses was similar. I had to sort the visual information, look for the flow of things. The way buildings were constructed had a sense to them. The things that littered the ground were the same. There was a reasoning at play.
Once I had that mental image, I could see more distinctly. My brain was rapidly catching up with what I was trying to see, the bits of visual noise and dancing shadow fewer and farther between. I could recognize the spots in my vision for what they were.
Within an attic window that overlooked the streets, I saw the younger Twins. They were interlocked in their own way, both at a small window, one practically hanging off of the other so it could occupy the narrow space, dark skull faces surrounded by darkness, peering through.
Could they see after all, or were they simply there because it positioned them well to attack? They were thirty metres out, across the street and two houses down, and if they wanted to attack, they could charge through the glass, run, and hit us within a few seconds. If they wanted to be subtle about it, I was sure even their limited limbs could open the window, allowing them to slip out and close the distance while we meandered on, unaware, or focused on the body.
My heart was pounding.
I gestured for silence, and indicated the direction of the Twins.
The Twins in the window didn’t move.
Slowly, surely, Jamie raised the rifle to his shoulder, aiming.
In the blink of an eye, the Twins in the window were gone. They hadn’t exited through the window—they were moving through the home. That put them on the street level, and it gave us zero idea of which direction they would come from.
“Run!” I shouted, grabbing Lillian’s arm, hauling her with me. Have to get to a better position.
We ran, boots clunking on a road dusted with a mix of snow and ash. We made our way further down the road, to find the remainder of the group I’d sent down the road. Citizens of Lugh, not ill-intentioned, who didn’t deserve to die, torn to shreds by the nobles.
Thirty percent chance, I thought. But from the direction Jamie had said they’d attacked from, the sixty-percent route wouldn’t have been much safer—they would’ve been to the left of the four Twins, rather than the right.
Twins the younger behind us and to our right, Twins the elder ahead of us and to the left, with a contingent of armed men.
The stink bomb only served to incapacitate for a short while, at best, and maybe bought us a chance to shoot one.
It wasn’t enough.
I was already going to be violating my promise to Gordon. A fight was inevitable, it was going to be ugly, and it wasn’t going to favor the Lambs in that ugliness.
Previous Next
Counting Sheep—9.8
Two enemies. Faster than us, better coordinated, stealthier, stronger, and more aware of our environment. For every meter of terrain we crossed, I had to imagine they crossed five or six.
They weren’t the type to play with their food.
Only a couple of seconds to decide where we were going to hold our ground.
“Fire,” I said. “Will it work?”
“Yes,” Lillian said. Then, “No.”
Too late. I was already leading her and Jamie over to the corner of one street, where the rubble at the foot of one building burned like a bonfire, not yet spread to the building proper.
I had the jar. The contents could distract enough that Jamie could theoretically get a clean shot.
Then what?
The four of us stopped, standing near the burning rubble. The light the fire cast was uneven and sporadic, with the rubble in and around it casting very misleading shadows. My senses were already primed to pick the twins out of the background, but it was far from easy.
The road formed an intersection here. The far sides of the street had short walls and parked wagons, crates and fences. There was far too much cover, but at least the roads were clear and open. We stood on one corner, just beyond the sidewalk, with the bonfire roaring to one side, the damaged building looming high above us. One of the less sturdy, sloping buildings, a tenement.
“They won’t want to get burned, the pale flesh on the outside will be vulnerable,” Lillian said, finishing the thought she’d nearly dropped altogether.
“Alcohol,” I said, interrupting her, my hand out. My eye scanned the shadows around us. The younger Twins should have caught up with us already.
A bottle was pressed into my hand. I had to work to keep the jar in place under my arm while I unstoppered it.
“But if they really want to kill us,” Lillian continued. “The fire won’t really slow them down. They’ll get burned and they’ll get patched up later.”
The fire still worked, then. At least until we upped the stakes. The Twins were vain, and that had to extend to the younger Twins. The older ones wouldn’t use them like this if they were going to turn around and go back to their brother with scars and scratches still needing serious attention. They would avoid it where possible.
Hubris noticed the movement before I did. I didn’t wait to verify with my own eye, hurling the bottle into the edge of the flame. A roll of fire erupted, illuminating the Twin, who leaped back and
away. The spot in my vision that followed after the brighter light made it easier to lose track of the skeletal form as she disappeared into shadow.
In my peripheral vision, I saw Lillian’s head turn.
“No!” I said. “Keep eyes in all directions!”
Jamie had turned to look too. He turned his head to look the other way, leveling the rifle, aiming, and I could see the change in his posture as he spotted the other Twin making her approach.
Another second, and she would have impaled him. As it was, she threw herself back from where the Executioner’s barrel pointed, landed with arm-spikes and feet on the ground, a ‘belly’ that was a knot of organs and dessicated flesh wrapped around a spine now facing the sky, and a moment later had bounded off to one side, without even flipping herself the right way around.
And the fact that I was looking meant—
I turned.
No, the first one wouldn’t come from the same direction she had. The side? Too obvious. The fire?
I put my hand out, gesturing to Hubris to watch my back, as I turned my attention away from the most likely directions the first Twin might have used to approach.
Peering past the thick smoke that rose from the fire, I could see the Twin scaling the wall, twenty feet above our heads.
“Above our heads,” I said.
I didn’t want to take my eye off her, but if there was a remote possibility of her throwing herself off the side of the building, over the flames and onto us, I needed to be able to do something.
I turned my attention to the rubble, reaching, close enough to the flame that I thought my clothes might catch. I found a length of wood and hauled on it, lifting—
“She’s moving!” Lillian cried out, voice going higher.
My gaze went up, even while I still hauled on the wood. Too long to be a proper weapon, thin and supple, it was a baseboard from the house, or a long, grown piece of floorboard. The end of it traced a half circle on the road to my right as I pointed the thing in a different direction. Still, I was able to haul the end of it up, pointed toward the Twin.
Not even a pointed length of wood. There was a one in five chance, if she leaped, that I’d be able to put the end of the length of wood between her and her target. The wood wouldn’t survive, but she would be knocked to the ground or knocked back into the fire.