Twig

by wildbow

  Too slow, too slow.

  “Grab him. Hold him,” Helen said.

  There was hesitation. She adjusted her grip, tightened.

  Reluctantly, the handler obeyed.

  “Forward, climb further up. That’s good,” Helen said, once the handler was lying across the man’s legs.

  They’d been looking at each other, making silent promises they would be together later.

  Now they were together. There was beauty and art in that. Both had lost the use of their legs, by bondage or by breakage. Whether it was sympathy, reflection, balance, or whatever it was, it made sense to her.

  She made sure to break one of his wrists, before seizing the other. She held it firmly as she twisted his arm, then used her legs and other arm to bind herself around the two of them at once. She adjusted the screaming woman’s position.

  “This can end quickly,” she said. “But you’ll want to stop screaming and start talking. Tell us about the Devil. Where he is, where you were supposed to go after you were done here.”

  His face a mere handspan from the handler’s, the criminal blustered out a blunt, “Fuck you!”

  Spittle flew from his mouth as he said it.

  “If you’re okay here, I’ll make sure the others know where we are.”

  “Okay,” Helen said.

  She turned her attention to the man, hand flat against his belly.

  She spoke, her voice soft enough it was almost drowned out by his constant cussing. “I’m very very excited, because I get to see a friend I haven’t seen in a long time, soon. And when I get excited I want to break people. Usually I start from the outside in. I break the fingers, then the hands, and then the arms. Today, as excited as I am, I want to try something different. I’ll reach inside of you, work past muscle and fat, and I’ll grab your organs, one by one. I’ll start with less important ones, and I’ll crush them in my hands. Then I’ll grab vital ones, to see what they feel like while they’re alive in my hand, and I’ll do that for a little while, until all the damage that I did in getting to them adds up and you expire.”

  He’d stopped cussing and started listening.

  Her fingernails made the initial dig into the flesh of his belly.

  “I’ll talk! I’ll talk! Lords of the fucking Crown Kingdom, I’ll talk, just—please don’t.”

  Her hand trembled there, against his stomach.

  “I’m not very well,” she confided to him, her voice a whisper. “And the people who would usually settle me down are preoccupied.”

  “What?” he asked, bewildered.

  “Nothing. Never mind me,” she said, smiling. “I’m going to try to be nice tonight. You can talk, and I do my best to hold off and not squeeze bits of you into pulp. But do try to be thorough.”

  She reached up with a bloody hand to brush at his cheek, leaving a streak there.

  She shifted position, still holding the woman tight against her back, and laid her head across the criminal’s chest. It was as if he was her bed and pillow, and the handler was her blanket. Flesh and blood and pain and warmth all together in an artificial womb she had pulled in around herself.

  He spoke, telling her about the Devil, and she listened.

  Previous Next

  Black Sheep—13.5 (Lamb)

  Ashton held his hand up near the window. Morning dew had accumulated over the past two hours, and as he held his hand up, the dew changed to a dusky rose color. The drops with the dew were heavier and left pink streaks on the painted window frame and sill.

  The sun filtered through bushes just beyond the window, striking some drops while leaving others in shadow. There were gray droplets, gray-pink droplets and there were pink-gray droplets and pink droplets and rosy droplets. Some were cold and some were warm.

  There was a world beyond the droplets of dew and the window and the bush. Buildings, a street where people were emerging and starting their day. There were regular patrols on the street, and when Ashton saw one he made sure to write the time on the windowsill. The movement of the pencil inevitably drew lines through some of the moisture that had collected there. He very much looked forward to when he next had an excuse to make the next marking, especially now that there was more moisture.

  The sun was just rising, it was humid out, and it was already very warm. It was going to be a very hot day, even with the clouds on the horizon.

  “You scared me,” Lara said.

  Ashton turned his head. Duncan had sat up in bed. Lara was in one corner, curled up in a chair with her arms around her legs, a blanket draped over her. Her hood was down and her hair was tousled. One of her eyes was very red and watery, the eyelid inflamed.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” Duncan said. He rubbed at his eye.

  “It’s okay,” Lara said.

  “Is Ashton keeping you company?”

  “My sister is. Ashton is quiet.”

  “I’ve said we can talk if you want to talk,” Ashton said.

  “It’s okay,” Lara said, again. “I didn’t want to make noise and bother anybody.”

  “Alright,” Ashton said. He smiled using smile three from the books. “I’m always happy to practice talking.”

  Social niceties were important, and Ashton knew his doctors would be happy if he got more practice, so he had been doing it as much as he could. It would be good if he got back and they oohed and ahhed over how much he had progressed. It would reflect well on Duncan and Lillian and the other Lambs that they had done a good job with him.

  All his life, his creators and the people around him had talked about who and what he should be. It was a big responsibility.

  “How is your head? Sylvester said you would have a hangover,” Ashton said.

  “I have a hangover,” Duncan said. “Not too bad, all considered.”

  He swung his feet out over the side of the bed, then stood. He swayed on the spot. “Amend that.”

  “Amended,” Ashton said, turning to look out the window.

  “I can’t help but notice I’m not wearing pants,” Duncan observed.

  “Abby thought you would be uncomfortable sleeping with all of your clothes on, so we took your shoes and pants.”

  “Uh huh,” Duncan said. He rubbed at his face. “And my skin is dry.”

  “Sylvester painted your face to make fun of you,” Ashton said. “I thought that was rude, so I insisted we clean your face before we put you to bed.”

  “Thank you, Ashton,” Duncan said.

  “You’re welcome, Duncan.”

  “Lara? Cover your eyes. Just until I find my pants.”

  Lara obeyed, raising her hands to her eyes. She spoke at the same time Ashton did. “End of the bed.” “We hung them—yeah, the bed.”

  “You’ll want to know what Sylvester said,” Ashton added.

  “No,” Duncan said. “Let me wake up first, see if I can’t clear my head. I’ve got one headache already, I don’t need a second on top of it. Any word from the others?”

  “Some,” Ashton said. “But they’ve stopped for now. They know where the man who is hunting them is. He’s called the Devil. They spent the night hunting down the Devil’s people. They know where he is now, but they want to rest, organize, and make sure we’re all awake and well just in case they need us, before they act.”

  “Good. Has everyone eaten?”

  “No,” Ashton said. He looked at his watch, then checked one of his notes on the windowsill. “The sun rose half an hour ago. We don’t usually eat until seven or eight.”

  “I’m going to arrange breakfast now so we can get an early start,” Duncan said. “Stay put, be good. Let the others sleep in. When I get back, you can fill me in and we’ll decide where we go next.”

  “Okay,” Ashton said. He looked back and saw Duncan looking at the beds where Emmett and Abby were sleeping. Abby was curled up with the lamb, Quinton.

  Duncan pointed at Abby.

  Ashton stared, not sure what to do. He’d figured out pointing, but he couldn’t connect
the point to any thought. It would have been easier if Duncan said something.

  “How’d she sleep?”

  “No fits tonight,” Ashton said. “I don’t think she had nightmares.”

  Duncan nodded. Ashton thought that he was nodding more to himself than to him. It made more sense: Duncan was a problem solver. He did best with organizational problems, like where things should be and how people should act. He was good at telling Ashton how to act, and Ashton thought he would do a good job telling the others how to act.

  Abby was one of the problems that Duncan was trying to solve.

  “Progress,” Duncan said, before leaving the room. He shut the door with extra care as he left.

  Ashton’s mind was very busy, keeping track of the multicolored raindrops, trying to figure out ways to organize them and keep track of them as the colors changed. He liked color. Another part of his brain was busy exploring the bush just beyond the window.

  He worked the part of his mind that focused on spatial things. He had an intuitive sense of where the bush was and where the street was and where the buildings were, but he could distort that sense like he could unfocus his eyes and imagine different geometries that would make that same environment possible. A landscape of cobblestone wall and askew buildings with misshapen blobs of liquid. He could piece together a mental image of the landscape as if it was actually a mix of grays and gray-pinks and pink-grays and pink.

  His creators called it meditation, but it wasn’t like that. His brain was organized into what his creators called shelves, described as being like fungal growths or a coral, and in his early development each shelf had been given over to a different task, like the lobes in a human brain. Sometimes it could be hard to get one of the less-used shelves working. As he started his day, he pushed every part of his ‘brain’.

  Even as he sat very still, standing with his arms folded on the windowsill, staring out at the world beyond, his mind was very, very active.

  “Ashton?” Lara spoke.

  “Yes?” Ashton said.

  “Nora fell asleep. I don’t like the quiet. Can we talk?”

  “Okay.”

  There was a long pause. Ashton estimated about a minute’s time passing. In the meantime, he began to pull the surroundings apart in his mind, imagining it all as if everything was made of meat and vegetation. As he mentally dismantled buildings, blood leaked from the gaps, touched the stretched beads of gray and pink dew and expanded into clouds as it diffused into the liquid.

  He liked how the blood looked when it diffused. He began painting his view of the city with clouds, while concentrating the way he sent his spores out into the air so it would concentrate in some beads more than others.

  “Can you think of something to talk about?” Lara asked.

  “Okay,” Ashton said. He pulled back from his imagined paintings so he could think about what to talk about. “After we’re done here, whether we get Sylvester or not, we’ll be going back to Radham.”

  “The idea is scary,” Lara said.

  “I like Radham. It’s home.”

  “It’s not my home. It’s a strange place to me.”

  “It will become home eventually. There will be more labs for you and your sister and all of the ones who come after. You’ll have your own room, though you might have to share it with Nora.”

  “I share this room with Nora,” Lara said. “I described every part of it to her. She described every part of where she is to me. It feels safer to imagine myself over there than it feels to be here. Nora said it was the other way around for her.”

  “That makes sense,” Ashton said.

  “I was talking to her about how I like that you’re the same height as me, and Abby is too. And we’re three. I’m part of a group. But Nora isn’t. She’s with the others and she looks up to them. They’re more like teachers and they’re something she’s working hard to try to be like?”

  “That’s good.”

  “That’s bad,” Lara said. “We’re becoming different. We were the same and now we’re different.”

  “Different is good. Look at how the Lambs work. They are stronger because they’re all different. Everyone has things they’re good at and things they’re bad at and we make up for each other’s weaknesses.”

  “My project is strongest when we’re the same. We have to be able to understand each other.”

  “You will,” Ashton said. He gave her smile number three again. It was small and it was meant to be reassuring.

  “You don’t understand,” Lara said, and she said it in a way that made Ashton quickly remove the smile. She was frustrated.

  “Okay,” Ashton said. He drew in a breath, then devoted more of his thoughts to the conversation. “Then I’ll try to understand.”

  “There were six of us. All in a row. Each in a vat. We could talk, sometimes, but it was hard because we were all in fluid. I was the second. Nora was the sixth.”

  “I was all alone,” Ashton said. “I grew in a node, which grew in a plant-like structure.”

  “I’m talking about me and Nora,” Lara said. She wasn’t upset or frustrated, but she wasn’t pleased either. It was a reminder, the kind of reminder that made Ashton think of when he was little and understood conversations less. After a few more of those patient reminders she would get upset and bothered, or she might stop talking.

  He knew that if she did any of those things, she would probably be unhappy or bothered for the rest of the day. That wasn’t a good thing.

  “Okay,” Ashton said.

  “And don’t… don’t use your spores on me? Not while I’m talking about this.”

  Ashton wasn’t one to get frustrated, usually. It wasn’t really something in his emotional makeup. He could keep trying at a task until he was told to stop, he didn’t get tired, and he didn’t hit limits in the same way other people did, after repeated tries.

  If he did get frustrated, he reasoned to himself, then he would be very frustrated that people kept asking him not to use his spores to calm them down when they seemed to need it most.

  He took the thought and put it away for thinking about later. His ability to reason, feel, experience, and learn tended to come in spurts, coinciding with his bouts of physical growth. His appointments helped, giving him massive injections of nutrients that would allow such. Maybe he could gain something if he figured out frustration and made it a focus the next time he was growing in a new shelf.

  He could talk about it with his creators. They had said each new shelf that he grew would be smaller and have less impact than the last. He would have to carefully choose what he would make each shelf do.

  Lara had stopped talking. Ashton had stopped talking.

  He looked out the window and began painting the landscape with his imagination again. The heat was starting to take away the moisture in the air, even with the humidity and light drizzle of rain. The droplets were shrinking and evaporating.

  “You were number two and she was number six?” he asked.

  “Yes. There were four more, but they died before the rest of us could think and communicate. The girl in the fifth vat didn’t grow good claws, so she got recycled. Her body was taken out of the vat. They took her to pieces, mashed her up and fed her to the rest of us as nutrients.”

  Ashton nodded. This made sense.

  “The one in the first vat was next to go. She—he—not a boy and not a girl. Just a mishmash. I don’t know why it mattered, but the one in the first vat died because of that and was fed to the four of us that were still there. We were small and young enough we didn’t understand or mind, even if we remember.”

  “Yes,” Ashton said. “This is what the Academy will do, sometimes. It’s how Mauer’s people made the primordials, Lillian said. I’m not the first Ashton. They fail a project and they recycle it and try again.”

  “How old are you?” Lara asked.

  “I’m not very old. I’ve only really been out of the vat for two and a half years.”

 
“I’ve been out for seven,” Lara said. “But I haven’t been out of the lab much.”

  Ashton started to speak, then stopped, before admitting, “I’m having a hard time following this conversation. I’m not sure what this has to do with what we were talking about.”

  “Okay,” Lara said. “I’m older. Even if you’re senior, here. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Ashton said. “That is a very good way of explaining it.”

  “I started off from a human base, like Abby did, except she had a lot more human to start with, and she isn’t going to change as she grows. But you’re very different. You were made from new. And you’re finding your way to acting like a person.”

  “Yes,” Ashton agreed, with confidence. He paused, connecting thoughts. “Am I doing a bad job of acting like a person?”

  “Yes,” Lara said. “I don’t care if it makes sense or if it’s how the Academy does things. I had sisters and now I don’t. The people who made me took away four of my sisters because they were too different. Now Nora and I are becoming different.”

  “And you’re scared.”

  “I’m scared of everything,” Lara said, shrinking down into her bundle of blanket, until only her eyes and the top of her head were visible over her knees. “But I’m very scared of this in particular.”

  “Because you’re worried it’s the same as when they were making you?”

  “Yes,” Lara said.

  “I’m not very good at being human, so I’m not going to be good at helping with that. I’m not very good at giving advice about being scared, either, because I don’t get very scared very much,” Ashton said.

  “I don’t want help or advice. I just want you to listen, like Nora listens.”

  “I’m not very good at listening either, I don’t think,” Ashton said.

  “No you aren’t,” Lara said. “I think I’m more upset than I was before we started talking about this.”

  “But,” Ashton said. He had to put his brain to work for a few seconds. “I think being different might be good, now that you’re this grown up. And I think the Lambs have gotten away with things they shouldn’t have, because they do very good work. If you do good work then there are people who are going to want you to keep doing good work. If you and Nora do good work then they won’t treat you like they treated your sisters. I think.”