The problem was, apologizing is difficult. Especially when the room was as silent as this one. Not even the bubbly-headed cartographer was around to chat everyone’s ear off about the aisles dedicated solely to U.C. box stores located in the minute town of Nois, population 567.
Finally I got up the energy to apologize. I even had my mouth open to do it.
“What are you doing?” Ariadne asked, looking up at me from another table.
“What?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“You keep letting maps fall off the table. I know the head cartographer seems harmless, but seeing her wield that letter opener makes me think it’s all a sham,” the princess said, tone and expression serious. I blinked, looking at my new map which had managed to fall off the table like its predecessor. I stooped down to pick up the errant piece of paper and, in exaggerated motions, set it gently back onto the table. Ariadne nodded in approval.
I turned back to Skirm and opened my mouth again.
“Also I found Mill Hew,” Ariadne said. I gave the princess a flat, tired expression before walking over to see what she was pointing at. There, in a fifty-year-old map, sat the words clear as day: Mill Hew Manor. It had been built up when the United-Consortium moved their tattoo needle factory for organic ships to the area and, after that factory closed down in favor of better-made Centauri imports, Mill Hew Manor was abandoned, left to rot and disappear from maps completely.
“Perfect,” I declared, and grinned broadly. Ariadne grinned back, rolling up the map gently.
“Hey,” the princess called to the head cartographer. She waved the rolled-up map in the air. “Can we borrow this?”
“No,” the head cartographer said in a cheery voice, slicing through the helpless letter in her hand with an expert flick of her wrist.
I nodded understandably and grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil.
Twenty-One
Our cab finally pulled into the once-gated suburban community known as Mill Hew Manor. We’d had to take the train from the Center of Cartography to the southernmost end of Mu District. From there we hopped into a cab, the only one big enough to carry everyone, and instructed the cabbie to take us to Mill Hew. Of course, she didn’t know where Mill Hew was, so we provided as good of a map as we could. We didn’t even get lost once.
The cab crept up slowly on the suburb’s broken entryway until the cabbie refused to go any farther. Stepping out onto the street made me appreciate her position all the more: the rundown, inorganic buildings were downright creepy. The houses were not precisely ugly, even if they were inorganic. Each was probably modern and cozy for their era and many even had actual, real yards made of dirt and grass. All you could hope for in an organic city was a patch of moss growing on top of each building’s lumpy head.
The whole lot, however, was sorry to look at. Many of the houses were crumbling beyond repair and a few had even lost their entire roof, leaving a topless, water-stained skeleton of a building behind. Even the air in the suburb was eerie. It was surprisingly fresh due to the massive amounts of foliage that was growing everywhere, but there was almost no sound to it. No frogs, no crickets, no breeze or rain, it was just still, like some kind of graveyard.
The community civic center positioned in the middle of everything was a decrepit wreck with a collapsed pool and the burned ruins of the pool house. Someone from the Mu District’s government had placed ‘No Trespassing’ signs on the fence that surrounded the community center, but even those sings had to be forty years old.
“Here,” Skirm finally said a word to me. He placed a good, heavy knife in my hands.
“Thanks,” I whispered. He simply nodded.
I paused for half a heartbeat.
“I’m sorry for all of the trouble I caused earlier and the Lee’s house,” I said.
For a moment, I wasn’t certain he’d actually accept my apology. His expression was almost apathetic, but then sly grin crawled across his face.
“It’s alright. Aside from being a complete idiot, you’re a really good boss to work for,” he said. I grinned broadly.
“Hey, where do we start, boss?” Cabochon asked as the group gathered around the entrance to Mill Hew. The only problem with this lead was that it was entirely nonspecific. Yes, we knew a location that was, in some form or fashion, tied to the Lees since they themselves kept mentioning it, but we had no idea what that connection might be. I didn’t know where to start looking for the twins/clones or even if they would be here.
“To the left, I guess,” I said after a minute, gesturing to the dilapidated house to the left.
The house was in somewhat better condition than its neighbors, but not by much. I motioned for Alyx, Cabochon, and Skirm to circle around back while Griffin, Ariadne, and I took the front, careful not to step on any of the front porch’s squeaky boards. I looked into the darkened window once I had gotten close enough. The darkness wasn’t natural to the inside of the house, I quickly realized, with extremely thin lines of warm light filtering through. Someone had put a few slats of material behind the glass to make it look dark from far away. Plus, being this close to the window, I could feel a faint amount of heat radiating from inside.
Of course, I still couldn’t see anything inside, so I leaned up and put my ear to the dirty panes.
There were no voices and nothing seemed to be stirring, I made a gesture to Ariadne and we moved to the door.
The princess turned the handle slowly and carefully before nudging it. The wooden construct eased open with a rusted creak coming from its hinges. I tried not to breathe too loudly.
Again, nothing stirred. I gave the thugs around back a few seconds to enter the house and scope around before I gently pushed the door open. Griffin went through the door almost immediately, eventually motioning for Ariadne and me to follow.
The room beyond was poorly lit by a tiny candle. It was furnished with furniture that could have been considered contemporary five or six decades ago. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust, but the rooms were overall the neatest I’d seen since Meropis-C. Nothing seemed disturbed and no one seemed to be around.
After securing the rest of the rooms and confirming that the house was not, in any way, lived in, we all finally met in the kitchen, which had somehow escaped the dusty mess of the rest of the house. I couldn’t decide whether to breathe easy or panic because the Lees weren’t here, the last place I’d had to look for them.
Of course, this whole situation would have been a lot easier had Ottoman been an only child debtor without surgically implanted organic venom sacs.
The rest of the team was tense, but not strangely so. I was about to open my mouth for suggestions when I heard something. It was extremely faint and even the breathing of everyone around me seemed to set it off. I wasn’t the only one who had heard it, however, as Alyx tilted an ear toward it. I gestured for all to be quiet as the sharp-eared ghoul and I pinpointed exactly where the sound had come from.
There it was again. Like a mouse’s footstep, it came from underneath the floor. Actually, directly underneath where Ariadne was standing. Alyx shooed her off the boards and knelt down. The ghoul-lady ran two sets of very long fingers across the floor, finally wedging one between two slats. The gap was surprisingly wide for concealing a hidden passageway, but if no one was looking for it or sweeping the floor, it might have been easy to miss.
Whomever it was that caused the sound decided to show themselves. Explosively.
The floorboard shot upward with an incredible amount of force, catching Alyx in the hands before continuing up toward her chin. The ghoul-like lady was solid enough and her eyes rolled back in her head as she flew across the floor, stunned.
I made a move to kick the pouncing figure that was emerging from the floor. She, unfortunately, caught my ankle and pulled upward, forcing me to land kiester-first, without delivering a useful blow. Ariadne and Skirm, on the other hand, had better luck. While the tawny-eyed thug caught the short figure’s hand, the princes
s slapped one of the shock pads to the intruder’s other wrist. Skirm let go in a hurry as Ariadne activated the device.
Even on one of the lowest settings, the little figure seized up and fell, landing in a stupor.
“Are you okay?” I walked over to Alyx as Ariadne and Skirm secured the little interloper.
The ghoul-lady gave me a bloodied smile, making her look just a little vampiric. And I think she knew it, too.
“I’ve been hit by worse, katzchen,” she told me. I nodded understandingly.
I turned back to the little intruder. Although I had originally presumed it was a child, and indeed this person had a very childlike body, this girl’s face was worn and almost old. She had to be at least sixty if not more.
And she had a pair of gnarly-looking organic gills along her neck. It was good work, too, being almost impossible to tell where the human body ended and the organic component began. In fact, it was almost a little too seamless. I moved to get a closer look, Skirm holding tight to the fish-girl. The gills were not just seamlessly attached, they were also aged, with just as many wrinkles and liver spots as their owner. Now, organic components don’t wrinkle or age with their human hosts. Most parasites naturally outlive their human hosts by decades due to their simplistic and usually plant-based genetic facsimile. Occasionally, there are tales of organic components being used after the death of their host, which could cause the component parasite to age faster or in pace with the host. Reusing organic parasites always came at a price, however, and that price was months and months of rejection on the part of the human host and the component itself. That left terrible lesions, swelling, and other nasty effects that ended in easily identifiable scars long after the parasite and host learned to cooperate with one another.
I didn’t see any of that scarring on the fish-girl’s gills or surrounding skin, which meant that she was not just merely a host to her organic gills, but they were innately a part of her. They were genetically a part of her.
There wasn’t enough proof yet, but I was beginning to suspect Mill Hew’s true purpose and connection to the Lees.
“Who are you?” I demanded. The little figure glared in fright. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“No,” she said. “He will hurt you.”
“He…?” I asked.
“In the dangerous place, down there,” the girl glanced at the gaping hole in the floor.
“What is this place?” I demanded.
“This is home,” the girl said. “This is my home and our home. You horrible—”
“Okay I get the idea,” I said. “Actually I don’t get the idea, but we’ll let this one slide.”
“Now what?” Ariadne said.
“Have someone stay with her and Alyx—” I stopped and looked over at Alyx. She seemed to be daring me to leave her behind. “Just fish-girl, definitely not Alyx. We’ll go find this dangerous place.”
“Griffin!” the ghoul-lady shouted. “Come stay with this little one.”
I moved toward the opening in the floor. Indeed, there was falsebone-lined tunnel that led down and to the right. The exact direction to the gated community’s civic center, if I was judging correctly. I wondered if the other houses had similar tunnels, and, if the tunnels met, where they eventually led.
Of course, going down into a poorly-lit tunnel and toward a so-called dangerous place is a lot easier when you team doesn’t rudely shove you out of the way.
Skirm grinned at me impishly as he descended the ladder.
“I’ll go first,” he said in a mocking tone, “You tend to have risk-assessment issues.”
“I do not!” I cried pettishly, hands on hips and everything. I quickly realized that was mightily unprofessional given the gravity of the situation, and grimaced internally.
Given there was nothing I could do but follow, I followed, clinging to the rickety ladder with a tight grip. It wasn’t that far down, but I was not the kind of person who actually enjoyed ladders in any shape or form. Besides, this one was rotted and ancient, and it probably shouldn’t be transporting anyone heavier than the little gill-sporting sprite that had introduced us to it in the first place.
I finally set my feet at the bottom, only muttering under my breath a little. The tunnel was, at least, far more well-lit than the house had been.
The tunnel itself was lined with falsebone similar to the ribcage used by the Lilstar to create the living area. I walked up to one of the walls for a closer look. It appeared as though this had once been an organic structure, probably around the time Mill Hew Manor was abandoned. I could still see the barest imprint of the structure’s epidermis in the dirt between the ribs. The organic structure was probably used to dig the tunnel: behaving much like a worm through dirt, it snaked its way underneath the house and to who-knows-where on the other side. It was a clever system because it saved on having to dig out the tunnels by hand and provided an almost instant structure for human habitation.
A lot of mining operations used the same kind of organic system since all that needed to be done was plant the organic structure at one end and let it grow to maturity, stretching and digging its way in whatever direction it was led. Of course, there would always be a chance that the creature would dig in the wrong direction; in mines that didn’t matter quite as much as long as the creature was going down, but a tunnel-digging operation like this would have required a lot more precision. The easiest way to keep the structure from expanding beyond where it was needed was to box it in with some kind of stone or concrete, but I didn’t see any of that beyond the structure’s ribcage. In fact, it seemed as though the organic structure just stopped, which meant that the previous owners might have killed it once it had grown as far as they wanted, an entirely unnecessary move that would have halted any of the other benefits the organic structure could have given them. The other option was that that they programmed the genetic facsimile to create this tunnel to be exactly as long as it was.
That second option was the most impressive. Organic structures were only as precise as their genetic facsimiles, meaning that one misplaced nucleotide during sequencing and the whole organic structure would be completely different from what it was supposed to be. The Centauri often wondered how humans got to be so good at genetics without massive computers to remember every minute detail we put into the genetic facsimiles. No one really had an answer for that, humans aren’t going to let a simple thing like limited memory capacity stop us from completely manipulating the very foundations of life itself.
Skirm waited until the rest of the team made it down the ladder to head down the tunnel. Of course, he refused to let me take the lead.
Did I really have risk-assessment issues?
I sighed; that was probably musing for another time.
The tunnel went on for what felt like an entire aching mile, Skirm and me fighting subtly for the lead, with Araidne and Cabochon trying to keep close behind. Alyx seemed undaunted by the darkness, at least what I could see of her, and she darted around, sometimes cutting in front of the group, sometimes lagging behind.
Being a ghoul probably has its perks.
When the tunnel intersected with another, it was Alyx who took the lead, dashing across the opening quickly and quietly as the rest of us held back. She continued down this new spurt until we could no longer hear her footsteps. In a moment, however she returned.
“It leads back to another house, I believe,” the ghoul-lady said, the swollen knot on her chin causing a slight slur. “And I found this.”
Alyx handed me — not Skirm — a small bone fragment. I rolled the small piece in my hand, realizing quickly that it meant we were still continuing down the winding path of manure that was attempting to capture and retain the Lees. The fragment was, in fact, a piece of cartilage, not actual bone or falsebone. In humans, cartilage is the bendy-but-shape-holding material of the ears and noses, giving those features structure without being as inflexible as bone. More important to this situation, cartilage is also the stuf
f of shark skeletons, and having it around meant that someone had been playing with natural genetics.
Among other things, sharks have an innate sense of smell that rivals a dog’s, and after being thrown into the organic blender a few times, that sense of smell can be adapted into all kinds of genetic sensors. For the genetic facsimiles used in the construction of organic structures or parasites, a much more blunt sensor based off of an elephant’s sense of smell would do the trick. A shark-based sensor, however, was far more subtle, able to pick up even the tiniest of differences in amino acids and the overall genetic structure.
Given the highly organized and clandestine nature of this facility, it was safe to say that they were not performing any sort of legal experiments on natural genetics. This meant that more likely than not, the subjects for this lab were humans and human genetics.
“I think we found the Lees’ birthplace,” I said grimly, handing the princess the piece of cartilage.
“What is it?” Cabochon asked.
“This means they are manipulating genetics. Real genetics, not facsimiles like ships use,” the princess scowled. “I think we’ve found a hidden illicit lab.”
Cabochon grunted softly in surprise.
“I doubt they stopped at venom sacs and gills, so be prepared for some freaky stuff,” I commented, readying the knife Skirm had handed me. It wasn’t like I could turn around now. I was amazingly in debt in more ways than one and if I didn’t get those elusive twins, I would undoubtedly end up on the wrong side of some cheap investigation novel. The Debtor Who Tried.
No, thank you.
I pulled the team forward, deeper into the tunnel, taking the lead despite Skirm’s reluctance. I was practically stomping my feet the entire way there — quietly, of course.
The tunnel finally widened and gave us an end, directly underneath the civic center as I’d predicted, the ginormous gouge in the ceiling looking up into what used to be a fair-sized swimming pool.
Set'em Up Page 26