House Immortal (16 page)

The head of House Yellow, Technology, and his galvanized.

As they passed, some people went back to walking, jogging, getting to where they were going. But even more remained, although they held back as if there was a bubble, a space around the two men that no one seemed willing to encroach upon.

I kept my head down, not wanting to draw attention.

I heard the big guy's boots against concrete and wondered if they'd iron shod his shoes from the noise of it. Either that, or he was incredibly heavy.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

Then . . . nothing.

I glanced up. Into the limpid, heavy-lidded brown eyes of the man in the yellow frog shirt.

“And hello, Miss Case,” Welton Yellow said. “Popcorn?”

The history books called the dark years the Restructure. But those who lived through it knew death, famine, war, and disease. The Houses claimed ownership of the twelve stitched soldiers, and used them to destroy anyone who stood against their rule. That was the world's second mistake.—
2095

—from the journal of L.U.C.

I
had no idea what to do.

So I made sure my wrist stitches didn't show under my coat cuff and took a small handful of popcorn. Salty. Crisp. “Thank you.”

More pictures flashed while Welton plucked up a couple kernels, popped them in his mouth, and chewed, watching me the entire time.

The people around us were starting to squirm. I knew the feeling.

He turned his attention to Neds.

“How about you? Popcorn?” He held out the bag, shook it a little.

“No, thank you, sir,” Left Ned said.

“Nice night for a walk, isn't it?” the head of House Yellow said. “Or morning, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir, it is,” Right Ned said.

“The two of you are going to make it a short, quiet walk, don't you think?” The man crunched through another handful of popcorn, then smiled. He looked like a cat that had just tipped over a bird's nest.

“Yes, sir,” Left Ned said.

“Good. Enjoy yourself.” He took a few steps, the
hulking undertaker next to him moving right along with him as if caught in his gravitational pull. Then Welton Yellow paused and glanced back at us. “Coffee's not bad at the Jangle, I'm to understand.”

“Thank you, sir,” Right Ned said again.

The crowd moved in closer to Foster First, who—much to my surprise—posed for a few pictures with people before Welton indicated they should leave. A hole opened in the crowd for their passing like water flowing around a bubble of air.

“Son of a whore,” Left Ned exhaled.

“What? What did that mean?”

“Walk. I don't like the attention we're getting,” Right Ned said.

I took in the mood of the people around us. A lot of scowls, a few rude gestures.

“Get out of the way, shortlife,” a man said as he shoved past us.

In the past, people who were born nonstandard, like Neds, didn't live as long as a more standard configured human. That changed as more and more people were born nonstandard and medical science advanced to deal with the mutations. But the derogatory
shortlife
had stuck.

I hated it.

I expected Neds to take offense with both fists, but he just tugged me back into the stream of pedestrians, up a flight of stairs with metal railing on either side, then switched back onto the second-level sidewalk to another flight of stairs.

“Why was the head of a House on the street before sunrise, eating popcorn?” I asked. “Come on. Doesn't he have better things to do with his time?”

“Yes,” Right Ned said, “I'm sure he does. And I don't like that walking this street when you and I just happen to be out for coffee is what he decided to do.”

“He couldn't have known we were going to be here,”
I said. “We didn't know we were going to be here until a couple minutes ago.”

“He is technology,” Right Ned said. “He knows everything.”

If House Gray had cameras pointed at a hundred different locations—probably a hundred times more than what I'd seen, then the House that controlled technology must have a camera and every other kind of recording or sensing device connected to everything throughout the entire world.

“Okay. So he saw us leave the elevator, heard us talking about coffee, and came out to see us for himself. Why?”

“One guess,” Left Ned said.

“Me?” I said.

He nodded. “You're still uncontracted. That means you can be claimed. With and without your consent.”

“He could have claimed me?”

Both Neds nodded.

“Hell. Should we go back?” I asked.

“No. He told us where he expected us to be: at the Jangle. And that we should make it short,” Right Ned said. “I say we do just that, so as not to kick up any more attention.”

“Is he friends with House Gray?”

Left Ned shook his head slightly, and Right Ned answered, “Hard to keep up. And with the gathering in just a few days, loyalties are bound to shift. But I think he and Gray are on speaking terms.”

“Might be Gray noticed us missing, called in a favor, and asked him to put eyes on you,” Left Ned said.

A woman wasn't watching where she was going, and ran into me.

“Careful, now,” I said, reaching out for her arms while she clutched at my coat to keep from falling.

“Watch it,” Neds said.

“Sorry, sorry,” she mumbled. She pushed past me, but not before slipping a piece of paper in my palm.

I glanced down at the paper, then back at her. She was hurrying away from me, but extended two fingers and tapped them twice to her ear.

Two fingers, two taps: House Brown.

“Keep walking,” I said.

We blended back into the press of people, and I turned over the paper.

Fesslers safe and accounted for. Pocket of Rubies.

I grinned and stuffed the note into my coat.

“What was that about?” Neds asked, not looking at me.

“Brown.”

“News?”

“Fesslers made it.”

“Good,” Right Ned said. “That's one thing going our way. Café's up here.”

The red burn of neon twisted into the word J
ANGLE
cut through the darkness. It was about a block ahead.

“You have any idea why the head of a House would come to look for me and not just send an employee?” I asked.

“Welton's never played by the rules,” Left Ned said. “He's too young—real years—to be a head of a House, but he's an off-the-charts genius. Him talking to us was a statement of his intent. Don't think other Houses didn't see what he did. Tracked you down in seconds, and stood right in front of you. Could have taken you if he wanted with that mountainous clunk, Foster First, at his side. But he didn't.”

“And?” I asked.

“And,” Right Ned said, “that means he honors House Gray's claim to you and your choice in the matter. Yellow is backing Gray's right to protect you and your property.”

“Foster First,” I said.

“Number is the order in which they were brought back to life. Foster was the first.”

“Right,” I said, remembering that tidbit of history.
“And Abraham was the seventh. Robert with House Orange was the twelfth—the last.”

“Except for you,” Left Ned said.

“Unlucky thirteen.” I grimaced. “I think I'll stick to Case. Do you think the numbers act as a ranking, giving one galvanized seniority over the other, or power over the other?”

Neds shrugged. “I don't keep company with their kind,” Left Ned said.

“Except for me,” I said.

And here, Right Ned smiled while Left Ned rolled his eyes.

“Except for you.” Right Ned opened the door to the café.

It was crowded here too, booths along one wall filled with people, the row of small square tables down the middle of the place nearly hidden by the people standing around them, and the curved bar elbow to elbow with even more customers.

The architecture of the place was at least a century old, maybe two, lots of chrome and bright red and black and white in the place. Music played from the speakers visible in the corners of the curved ceiling, and metal-blade fans that looked like old airplane props rotated lazily down the length of the room.

It smelled of coffee and salt and chocolate. My stomach rumbled.

“Here.” Neds tugged me toward the only open spot: a table to the side and behind an ancient jukebox filled with disks and brightly lit buttons with words stamped into them.

We sat on either side of the tiny table, and Neds pressed three buttons in the tabletop, ordering our drinks.

“I don't think we have much privacy here,” Right Ned said, “but there's no place private in a city when the Houses have you targeted. I think you should go home, Tilly. Back to the farm. I think we should all go back.
Leave the city before the rest of the Houses get too curious about you and yours.”

“I think it's too late for that,” I said. “Someone has my brother, probably captive. I can't walk away from that, from him.”

“You can't walk
toward
him either. We don't even know where he is.”

“Someone knows,” I said. “And I plan to find out.”

A short woman with curly black hair and a terrific smile pushed through the crowd like a hot knife through butter, stopping at our table.

“Three coffees, black with everything on the side.” She slid a tray onto the table. Three small cups filled with rich, steaming coffee sat on the tray, with an assortment of powders, creams, and little cubes arranged around them. “Anything else?”

“That's all. Thanks.” Neds pulled a credit chit from his pocket.

Some people still used paper money and metal coin, since it was the safest from embezzlement, but most found it easier to just keep all the comings and goings of expenses linked up to the chit.

She took the chit, scanned it with a small device she wore on the inside of her wrist, gave us a smile, and was off.

“I need to tell you something,” Right Ned said. “About Robert Twelfth.”

“All right.” I dropped four sugar cubes in my coffee and stirred.

“When I shook his hand, I . . .” Right Ned looked away.

“The vision thing?”

“He was a boy, unstitched, maybe fourteen. Climbed down a well and was trying to climb back up. Cold from falling down too many times. His father's gun that he shouldn't have been playing with, shouldn't have let fall in the well, was tucked in his belt.

“He yelled at the sky, but there was a bell ringing out so loud no one could hear him.”

Left Ned picked up one of the cups and took a drink. He preferred it black.

Right Ned added in a dollop of cream and didn't look at me as he stirred it. “It isn't like the images we see from other people,” he said quietly enough, I might have thought he was talking to his other half. “There was a desperation in it. A drive to survive, to live. No matter the cost.”

“Abraham's was the same,” Left Ned said. “Survive. No matter the cost.”

“It's strange,” they said together.

And that, hearing them both come to the same conclusion at the same time, was so unusual it gave me chills.

“What kind of strange?” I asked.

“There's something too similar about their memories.”

“Well, not a lot of people are more than three hundred years old. Think it's that?”

“No.” They both drank coffee, then Right Ned sighed. “It's almost as if both memories happened on the same day. Maybe at the same time. That bell Robert Twelfth heard ringing out . . . I think I heard it in Abraham's memory too.”

“It's unnatural,” Left Ned said.

“Did you hear bells when you first touched me?”

“Yes,” they said.

“The same damn bell,” Left Ned finished.

I didn't know what to say about old memories and visions. The body my brother had implanted my thoughts, personality, and awareness into had a healthy, viable brain that had lingered so long in a vegetative state, the personality had been wiped clean. All my memories were my own, and I'd never heard voices or felt the presence of anyone else in the body with me. Still, it was pretty clear the body I was stitched into wasn't just some random forgotten experiment.

Abraham had said galvanized brains, if uninjured, were immortal and would continue living even if separated from the galvanized body. He had said their thoughts and personality remained. So what could have happened to this girl to send her into a coma she never woke up from?

That question was disturbing, but I wasn't as spooked about it as my farmhand seemed to be.

“If you settle on what it is that bothers you about the visions, I want to know,” I said. “But until then, do you have any contacts that might help us find my brother?”

“I know some people,” Right Ned started. “People who could make you disappear if you wanted.” He said it very quietly, cautiously. As if it were something he should not be sharing.

“I can't. Not yet, anyway. Maybe when I get my brother free, and my land clear, and Grandma safe . . .”

“It would need to be now, Tilly,” he said. “Right now. We leave from here and are never seen again. You should say yes.”

They were both wearing the same expression—a mix of dead seriousness and maybe just an edge of fear. They knew something they weren't saying. Probably knew a lot of things they weren't saying.

“Tell me everything you know. I can't make a decision that would leave Grandma and my brother stranded without something solid to go on.”

The door to the diner opened.

Three men in black jackets, black hats, and dark glasses walked in, scanned the shop, and moved to either side of the door, guarding it.

Left Ned glanced that way. “Too late, I think.”

Right Ned was still looking at me. “They work for House Black. And they're looking for you.”

House Black. The House that had killed my parents. Maybe even the House that still held my brother.

“I got this,” I said, just before swallowing down the
last of my coffee. “I've wanted to settle something with House Black for a long time.”

I made my way through the crowd toward them. Neds cussed, and then I heard them move away from the table and head after me.

None of the three appeared to be the head of House Black nor a galvanized, although that was just a guess. Two of the three men stood stock-still, staring forward, and one turned his head to watch my approach.

So I guessed he was the boss here.

I walked right up to him, stood out of arm's reach, which wasn't all that easy with the jostle and bump of people around us, trying to get in and out the door he stood next to.