by wildbow
Abby tensed, head to toe. Her features were funny, as if drawn by an artist who didn’t quite have a strong grasp of human proportions, or who had drawn every part of her face in isolation from the rest. Normally he found himself looking past it, but when she was emotional and took on an expression he wasn’t used to, it snapped him back to reality.
The fact that she didn’t have much going on that was particularly unique or special made it all the easier to forget that she was an experiment.
“He’ll be safe,” Emmett said.
Duncan walked around to the south-facing window. He could see the lake. No sign of Sylvester lurking just to either side of the window, as he checked.
Sylvester would be listening in.
“Putting Quinton aside for the moment, I have poison,” Lillian said. “It wouldn’t be hard to distribute it as a gas.”
“No,” Lacey said.
“I know it’s a no,” Lillian said, testy. “Let me finish talking before you cut me off. I’m brainstorming.”
Lacey remained silent.
Duncan took note of Emmett and the twins as he walked over to the east side of the building. Emmett seemed to fit into things well, but while he was sharp and his memory had apparently given the Lambs something to use to manipulate Sylvester, Duncan worried about his long-term prospects with the group. More than he worried about Abby’s, odd as it was.
The twins… Duncan took note of how they were standing. Abby stood close to one. Ashton stood close to the other. A fair distance separated them.
Never once had he seen them together and not hand-in-hand or otherwise being close. Each time they’d hit a city, the twins would be split between the Lambs and his group. Every time they decided Sylvester wasn’t around and rendezvoused, the two girls would pull together as if they had magnets embedded in their chemistry.
He had been warned to avoid naming them, to avoid encouraging individualism. Part of their language understanding was instinctive, but part of it wasn’t. The pair of experiments were two test runs in one, which made project tracking difficult. They were supposed to see if warbeasts couldn’t be raised with a human core and metamorphose into their combat-ready state at a later stage, to pick up more understanding of norms and niceties, more loyalty to their handlers, and more base intelligence. That was the first test at hand.
The second was to ensure that they remained stable as a unit. If they became independent and weren’t able to regularly communicate for long enough, then the less instinctive part of how they buzzed between one another risked becoming incoherent, one not being able to communicate to the other.
There were a lot of ways that project could fail. Losing the ability to speak, deformations, a failed metamorphosis, breaking apart, becoming dangerous to their handlers, swinging too far one way or the other on the fear scale. The original plan had been to raise them in complete isolation from the world. Subsequent generations would have been eased into a wider exposure, refined in structure and development.
Closer to the stairs, Mary moved to throw a knife. Emmett, relieved of his piece of metal, held up a hand for her to stop. He picked up a stone from a pile of stones for construction, and hurled it down into the smokey oblivion. From the other side of the room, Duncan could hear the impact.
“Save your knives,” Emmett said.
Mary gave him a nod.
If Duncan’s suspicions were right, the twins’ project would refined up until another war or crisis stirred, and then would be deemed ‘done’. The experiments would be shown off to the higher-ups with a great deal of flourish and a whole unit ready to deploy to various points.
It was a good, ambitious, and very fragile project, and Hayle had made a good enough offer to convince the professors that were working on it to break from their plan.
Was this, the twins standing ten feet apart from one another, a sign of the first crack that would eventually see the crystal-fine structure shatter?
If this didn’t resolve by the mission’s end or have a simpler explanation, he would have to report it, the experiments would be sent in, and would either be secluded ad infinitum or recycled.
He didn’t like doing that, but not reporting it would be letting the project fail in another way, and that would be failing in his duties.
“If he isn’t—” Lacey said.
“I know,” Lillian retorted. “I know. He’s got all of Neller’s signs. He’s a junkie. One good hit of poison might be the push that makes his systems crumble and fail. But it’s a tool we can use in other ways.”
“Okay. Just don’t get those children killed because you want a swift resolution.”
“I wouldn’t,” Lillian said, firm. “Ever.”
The discord, again. The gaps between individual members of the group. The original Lambs had worked so well together that it was now a detriment, something that pulled at them instead of pushed them together. Memories.
Would he have to report this too? Lillian wouldn’t want him to. She would call it a betrayal. But letting this continue… it wasn’t good as a project or enterprise.
He was in the middle of trying to think about what to do or say about it when he realized he had been staring out the west-facing window for nearly a minute without registering what he was seeing. The window was open, to allow for air to flow into the building, or to allow the smoke to flow out.
He turned his head to the left, looking to the side of the window, and saw Sylvester leaning against the wall there, Quinton in his arms.
Sylvester turned his head to look at Duncan.
Something in Sylvester’s expression, it really bothered Duncan. Condescension. As if Sylvester was the most critical of teachers and Duncan was failing his class. No lessons had been taught, no message conveyed, no syllabus outlined on a blackboard. Yet this teacher, shorter than him, wild-haired, sneering, and surprisingly vicious when he wanted to be, was looking down on him.
I never liked you and you never liked me.
“Why don’t you come inside?”
“Mary will throw things at me. Lillian will try to stab me.”
“You kind of deserve it,” Duncan said.
The conversation in the room had died at the sound of Duncan’s voice. Heads had turned. Only Mary and Emmett were fixated on the stairwell where the Devil was.
“And you have a hostage,” Duncan said.
“Mary can hit me with a knife without hitting the hostage,” Sylvester said. “Nice try. Also… take a look.”
Duncan followed Sylvester’s line of sight.
There was traffic. Horses, carriages, all painted with white, blue, and gold. Duncan didn’t need to read the words stenciled on the sides to grasp who and what they were. The warbeasts that ran alongside the carriages, uniform in aesthetic and proportion, were pretty clear indicators on their own.
Duncan turned away from the window. As he passed Abby, he put a hand on her shoulder, “Sylvester has Quinton.”
“Is that good?” Abby asked. “Is that bad?”
“Good,” Mary said, her voice overlapping with Duncan’s for a moment as he launched into his speech.
“The Devil’s reinforcements are here. It looks like a share of the Crown police.”
“He really does have everything under his thumb,” Lillian said. She paused. “This is what Sylvester was talking about. The present, to better convince the Academy the Lambs are constructive even if we aren’t catching him. The Devil, this city. Uncovered corruption.”
“You realize,” Duncan said. “That if we let him do this, he can hold it over our heads? That he could later tell the Academy that it was him who uncovered the situation and set this up?”
“We were the ones that cornered the Devil,” Mary said. “Cut away his lieutenants and key assets. Sylvester only ignited the situation and did the initial damage.”
“I’m offended!” Sylvester called out.
“Good!” Lillian retorted.
Sylvester laughed, a genuine, real sound. Duncan coul
d see the reactions on the faces of each of the others. Fear, for Nora and Lara. Suspicion, for Lacey. Both Helen and Ashton smiled, Helen as if the moment had made her day, Ashton as if privately, to himself. Mary and Lillian managed to look properly annoyed. Abby—she was receptive to the moods of others. She didn’t smile, but she looked less anxious in the moment.
In that stupid, simple exchange, two and a half words on Sylvester’s part, one word on Lillian’s, a laugh, and the changes in expressions, an idea crystallized for Duncan. He made sense of something that he hadn’t fully wrapped his head around before.
Duncan had always prided himself on being a politician. Around the time he’d started with the Academy, he realized the little lessons his parents had been instilling in him all along, about who to befriend, the families those people belonged to, or the connections they might open up, and he had started to talk to his parents about how to move, what to do. Many times he saw his father, nowadays, a third to a half of what they talked about was strategy. Sometimes his, sometimes his father recounted moves of recent days and weeks, and sometimes they talked about the family, how they could work in concert or do each other favors.
Befriending Lillian had been a move. Being invited to this project had been a consequence of that move. That he wasn’t sure it would work out wasn’t a good thing, but that wasn’t a fault of the move or the consequence of the move. He’d had small and large successes buying his way into the good graces of innumerable departments and players on campus. He’d made enemies too, but he was very, very happy with the balance of friends to enemies that he’d wrought.
Hearing Sylvester trade jibes with Lillian, seeing the way she had tried to stab him, knowing that she’d gone on dates with other boys in the time between Sylvester running and the start of their hunting him, Duncan still had little doubt she cared for him.
He didn’t want to call Sylvester his inverse. Yes, Sylvester focused more on the short-term over Duncan’s long-term. Yes, Sylvester was a bastard to everyone around him and somehow they liked him, while Duncan tried to help people wherever he could and seemed to fight an uphill battle. That wasn’t it.
It wasn’t even that Duncan was investing in things that would see returns in five, ten, or twenty years, from his education to earning the goodwill of people who could well be his colleagues in the future, while Sylvester was reckless and vindictively poisoned or burned everything he touched because he didn’t have five, ten, or twenty years.
No. He didn’t want to focus on that flipped-around perception because they were really very similar in what they did. Duncan and Sylvester both manipulated. They played a game.
But where Duncan played his game by reaching out, taking hold of the key piece, and moving it, tracking where everything was and what he had in stock, Sylvester was immersed in the game, standing in the midst of the board.
He was in the midst of this.
The process of grasping that idea was encapsulated in just a moment, but something clicked, and Duncan wasn’t sure how to use it, or if he even should.
“Come out of hiding, Sylvester,” Mary said. “I don’t want to talk to you through a wall.”
“I notice that instruction didn’t come with promises you wouldn’t throw things at me.”
“I promise,” Mary said.
Sylvester stepped around the corner. He carried Quinton, swaddled in a dark green sackcloth, the lamb’s chin resting on Sylvester’s shoulder. He took in the room full of people.
Mary whipped her hand at him. Sylvester didn’t flinch. She held the knife, but she hadn’t actually thrown it.
“Ha,” he said. “So cruel. You almost woke Quinton, here.”
“I’m tempted,” she said. “You shot me.”
“I do feel bad about that.”
“But for now, we need to figure out what to do about the reinforcements,” Mary said.
“Let them come,” Sylvester said.
“Play into our enemy’s hand?” Lillian asked.
Duncan didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t a strategist on this level. He didn’t have experience. He’d never felt more out of his depth than in moments like this. With his own team, it wasn’t so bad, but with the Lambs gathered, talking as if they could finish each other’s sentences, he felt paralyzed.
“We still need to get the Devil,” Mary said. “He’s apparently happy to wait down there. The police will arrive, they’ll come up the scaffolding that’s still intact, they’ll corner us, and that’s not a force we can overcome.”
“We could burn them out,” Helen said.
“We risk killing the Devil, at which point the hostages are doomed. The headmaster’s children, at the very least,” Lillian said.
“He’s really very patient, for a rage-driven, drug-fueled lunatic,” Sylvester said. “He’ll pick his moment soon.”
Emmet hurled some stones down the stairs at others who had rustled the bodies. He ducked as men with guns opened fire. Some wilder shots hit the underside of the floor but didn’t penetrate it.
The Devil could be heard speaking, his voice muffled.
Duncan felt detached, unable to do much. Doing his best to wrangle that feeling, he made himself move, and approached Sylvester.
“What I’m saying is simple. Let them come. Destroy the reinforcements,” Sylvester said. He stopped as Duncan drew nearer. “Hello, Duncan. Yes, I know you’re very happy to have me back, but the hugs will have to wait for later.”
“I’ll look forward to that,” Helen said. Sylvester shot her a smile.
Duncan reached out, not for Sylvester but for Quinton.
“Oh. That. Nothing up your sleeve, Dunc? No needles in your arms or other tricks?”
Really not in the mood for games, Duncan shook his head, unsmiling.
Sylvester helped transfer Quinton over to Duncan’s arms. The damned animal bleated as it stirred away. Duncan turned away, and carried the lamb over to Abby. He had to kneel to deposit it by her.
He was used to her smile, at least. She’d been smiling ever since the blighted creature had been left for them to collect.
“What was I saying? Leave him with nothing. You’ve already been working toward that, taking out his lieutenants.”
“My poison?” Lillian asked.
“That’s one way. I was thinking… something a little more traditional.”
“You have something in mind?” Lillian asked, curt. “Then stop bragging about how smart you are and make it happen.”
“Emmett,” Sylvester said. “Mary, you too. We could use Nora. And Duncan…”
Sylvester looked at Duncan, kneeling by a smiling Abby and the Lamb.
“…Good where you are. We’re good with just us three. Rest of you, hold down the fort. Almost literally, now that I think about it.”
Condescension? Still there. Duncan shrugged it off, and turned his focus to the stairway, which no longer had Emmett and Mary to guard it.
Lillian and Helen drew nearer.
Duncan drew the gun he had confiscated from Maurice and Noreen, and moved closer to the window, watching the approach. They were only a block away. Men were already getting out of the carriages, jogging alongside as the carriages slowed.
There were bystanders, and the police stopped to talk to them. Bystanders pointed, talking, no doubt sharing how some of the scaffolding had fallen, while commenting on gunshots and the various dead bodies that now were arrayed around the scaffold and on the ground below.
Ashton approached. He peered over the windowsill.
“What do you think?” Duncan asked.
“I’m spent,” Ashton said.
“What’s going on with Nora and Lara?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Duncan said. “You did a good job.”
“I wouldn’t be so spent if I wasn’t helping them all the time.”
“I know. But they need it, for now.”
“They’re getting close.”
“I know,” Duncan said. He rai
sed his hand to get Lillian’s attention, then signaled.
Threat. Here.
“Ready?” Lillian asked.
“They’re not,” Lara said.
Lillian made a face, glanced up, and then looked at Duncan. “Don’t look.”
Duncan raised an eyebrow, then turned his back to her.
“Lacey, would you give me a hand? There. That is not clearance to look, Duncan.”
He didn’t react. There had to be sixty men out there, with four warbeasts. They were just now approaching the door.
“They’re at the door. Whatever Sylvester did to bar it, they’re about to undo that.”
“Damn it. Okay. You can look,” Lillian said, before turning to Lacey again. “Near the elbow, solid, you can feel it. It’s a pocket. A little higher.”
Lacey had a paper packet in hand, sticking out between two fingers as she used two hands to free something from Lillian’s sleeve. Duncan recognized the packet, in a general sense. A measured dosage of one drug or another. The name of it would be printed on it.
Lacey didn’t even ask. She tore off the top of the packet, unscrewed the canister, and deposited the packet’s contents within. She replaced the top, shook it, and then handed it back to Lillian.
“Perfect.”
Lillian went to the window, pulled a pin, and tossed the grenade in the direction of the front door.
“That buys us a minute, and not much longer. At least it’ll make it burn to touch the door, and that will stop them.”
“No,” Ashton said, staring out the window.
Duncan peeked.
The scaffolding was shaking.
Duncan signaled. Enemy. Up.
He wished he knew the more nuanced signs. He’d studied them, but the only one he’d had available to practice with was Ashton, and Ashton wasn’t that much more experienced.
A pair of individuals tried to bolt for the top of the stairs, while the distraction was occurring outside. They didn’t make it. When Mary had set the knives into the floor, she had done it in a way that let some of the threads cross over top of the stairway. The men made it partway, then hit the heads, shoulders, and caught body parts on the wire. They swore, backed off a bit, and then pointed guns, opening fire. Helen and Lillian moved away from the opening in the floor.