Infinity Bell: A House Immortal Novel (15 page)

“The rumors and history of that experiment are a hobby of his,” Abraham said. “He’s been fascinated by it for years.”

“So,” I asked, “what did he mean when he said you’re right?”

“I assume he means that I’m right about the time event closing in.” Quinten dug two fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out the pocketwatch Reeves Silver had given me as proof that my brother was alive. It was an old family heirloom handed down from elder Case men to younger Case men.

He thumbed the edge of it and held the watch carefully while twisting the cover. He turned it toward us. The face of the watch was not a watch at all. It was a disk of softly glowing liquid in which five arcs were slowly converging on a central point.

I’d seen something very similar to that down in the basement of our farmhouse.

“That’s like the timetable you set up, isn’t it?” I asked.

“It is.”

“Is it counting down the seconds we have left?” I asked.

“Roughly,” he said.

“Is this any more accurate?” I turned the screen. A long line of numbers counted down there, while a second, shorter set of numbers counted up. I was no math genius, but even I could see that both those numbers were aiming toward a zero point.

“Welton,” Quinten breathed. “He really is . . . thorough, isn’t he? May I?”

I handed him the screen.

“What, exactly, are you hacking into?” Gloria asked.

Everyone looked over at me. I shrugged and regretted it. My arm still hurt.

“Matilda.” Quinten pulled his gaze away from the screen. “Who were you hacking?”

“Robert Twelfth.”

Quinten straightened, and I could see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “Why?” he breathed.

I almost shrugged again but caught myself. “You implanted Slater Orange into Robert’s mind,” I said as evenly as I could. Even so, Abraham’s shoulders tightened and he clenched both hands into fists.

“He forced you to do it,” I said, “but he must have been planning it for a long time. At least as long as he held you prisoner. You told me he had Grandma’s journal.”

“I think he lied about that,” Quinten said.

“Or maybe not,” I said. “I think he’s thought this through. All the possibilities of his immortality and how to keep it. Now that he’s wearing the body of Robert Twelfth, he might not have access into Slater Orange’s most personal, valuable files.”

“You think he copied it.” Quinten perked up a little, his eyes shifting, as if he could read something in my gaze.

“I would have. Wouldn’t you?” I said simply.

“Yes,” Quinten agreed. “I would have.” He handed me the screen. “Welton said to be quick.”

“Right.” I opened the screen again, and was amazed to get a signal. “Let’s see what’s what.” I tapped back into my crawler and whistled. “Nice.” I didn’t know how Welton had opened up a channel straight into Robert’s files, but I wasn’t going to sit around enjoying the scenery. I set the crawler on a new route, sending it straight into the depth of Robert’s files.

“How long?” Gloria asked.

“Until what?” I said.

“Until you find the copy?”

I glanced at the estimation of data that would need to be crunched and felt my stomach drop. Robert Twelfth had massive archives of data. Massive. Which I suppose wasn’t all that surprising, as he was more than three hundred years old.

I scrubbed my way out, leaving the crawler inside the archives, doing its work.

“I’ll need a few hours,” I said. “Or more. But I’ll find it. I’ll find it in time.”

Abraham stood, his arm pressed over his stomach, and stepped over to lie down on his cot.

Quinten was watching me. I don’t think he believed me either.

“Want to make a bet on it, brother?” I asked with a smile I did not feel.

He just shook his head. “No. I believe you.”

“Good. Because I’m not wrong. So,” I said, “does anyone know what Welton meant about Kansas? Sallyo’s waiting for us there, right?” I asked Neds.

“Sallyo?” Gloria asked, startled. “You aren’t really taking us to her, are you?”

Left Ned shrugged. “We need fast and we need discreet. Sallyo does both.”

“Why does everyone jump when that woman’s name is mentioned?” I asked.

“She’s practically a legend,” Gloria said.

“What kind of legend?” I asked.

“You haven’t heard of her?” she asked.

“No.”

“She’s been supplying House Brown with drugs while undercutting House Silver—and any other House, every chance she got—for years,” Gloria said.

“There’s another thing I would like to have known,” I said, giving Neds a look.

“Can’t believe there’s a person who hasn’t heard of her,” Left Ned muttered. “It’s not my problem you’re uninformed.”

“She does everything necessary to keep her deals quiet,” Gloria said.

Right Ned was holding my gaze. I could guess just exactly what
everything necessary
meant.

“She kills the people who talk?” I asked.

“No,” Right Ned said. “Killing’s too kind for her. One strike and your nearest dearest get their throats slit and eyes scooped out. And the rest of them are sent to your doorstep in little brown boxes tied up with string.”

“Lovely.” I took the water and swallowed some down. “So, why does she owe you favors, Neds Harris?”

Gloria was quiet, eating the last bit of the bread from her sandwich and watching Neds.

“We have . . . history,” Left Ned said, an echo of sorrow in his voice that I’d never heard before.

I raised my eyebrows, waiting for the rest of that story, but neither of them spoke. From the look in Right Ned’s soft blue eyes, I knew there was something more wrapped up in that favor. Regret. Maybe loneliness.

I wanted to ask him more, ask him what his relationship to Sallyo really was, but this train car was neither the place nor the time for me to be digging in my friend’s painful past.

Neds stood and made a noisy spectacle of stretching. “I’m gonna get some shut-eye,” Left Ned said, dropping back down into the chair by the wall. “Oh, and just to
bring everyone up to speed, Slip will likely try to kill us when we set foot off his train.”

Terrific. As if we didn’t have enough problems.

“What other supplies did you get?” I asked Quinten, who was rummaging through the duffel.

“Some painkillers for you.” He handed me a bottle. “Take three. Also bandages and blankets.” He held up several silver rectangles about the size of a deck of cards. “That’s all we had time for. I’m sorry we couldn’t find any clothes for you or Abraham.”

“No, that’s fine. That’s a lot,” I said, “especially the painkillers. Are you sure they’re okay?”

“Yes.”

I popped three in my mouth, swallowed them down. “How did you pay for everything?”

He stopped rummaging, glanced up at me and then away. “The charm bracelet.”

I suddenly knew why he had paused when looking through the duffel earlier. That had been Mom’s bracelet. I’d packed it for my trip to House Gray, maybe as a memento, maybe as a valuable item I could barter with.

Quinten hadn’t seen it in years. I’d found it in Grandma’s things only a couple years ago.

“Pure silver, some nice little diamonds, and the heart charm was a nice-sized ruby,” he said, as if listing quality real estate. “Unmarked. Easy to break up or melt down. Valuable.”

“Quinten, I’m sorry.”

“No. It was smart of you to pack it.” He finally looked over at me. There was old, familiar pain in his expression. “Besides, she would have been proud of how practical
you were,” he said. “You know how she wasn’t one for frippery.”

“True,” I said. Although I suppose that made the charm bracelet all the more rare and sentimental. It was one of the only pieces of jewelry she ever wore, and she was always delighted when Dad found or made an new charm for it.

“Maybe you should get some rest,” I said, squeezing his arm gently.

“I’m not the one who was shot,” he said. “Give me the screen. I’ll let you know if anything pings.”

I hesitated.

“You might be a better hacker, but it doesn’t take any special skill to stare at a screen,” he said with a wry smile.

“You’ll wake me?” I asked, holding out the screen but not letting it go yet.

“Yes.”

“Promise.”

“I swear by all my swearables.” He said it with a straight face, but it was something we used to say to each other as children.

“You’d better.” I let go of the screen.

He settled back in his chair, his foot propped on the duffel.

“Matilda?” Abraham said softly from where he’d been lying on the cot.

He shifted onto his side, his back against the wall. That opened up a sliver of room on the cot next to him. He lay there, his hand in that empty space, offering it to me.

End of the world, right?
A girl who was running out of time shouldn’t waste a single moment.

I walked over and lay on my good side, my back
pressed against him, his arms wrapped around me. It felt safe. Warm.

“Do you think we’ll make it home in time?” I asked him quietly.

“Yes,” he lied.

It was nice of him.

I closed my eyes, inhaled the smoke and spice scent of him, and wished this, right here, would last forever.

I don’t care what the others said. This is my fight too.

—from the diary of E. N. D.

A
braham and I stood shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the door to open. Abraham carried my revolver with our remaining bullets, and I had two little glass bottles full of something Quinten told me not to shake too hard.

The latch clacked and the seal popped. Then the door slid to one side.

Slip stepped back a pace and narrowed his eyes at Abraham and me. The bruise from Abraham throwing him against the wall was black and red and spread up over his jaw and cheek and down beneath his collar.

“Don’t get in our way,” I suggested.

He paused, his hand on the gun in his thigh holster. That was such a bad choice.

“Back down now, while you’re still breathing,” Abraham said.

Slip’s eyes were wide with anger.

“Get out,” he croaked. Sounded like his throat was nothing but raw meat on the inside. “Get the hell off my train.”

I stepped out first, scanning the platform. If there were assassins staring us down, I’d never spot them in the throng of people crowding the place.

Abraham stepped out next, and then Neds followed, with Quinten and Gloria behind him.

“If I ever see you again,” Slip said to Neds, “I will kill you.”

Ned reached out and patted Slip on the shoulder as he walked past him. “I can’t say it’s been good doing business with you, Slip.”

Slip pushed out from under his hand and stormed off, yelling at someone from his crew.

So far, it didn’t appear that he had turned us in for the reward on our heads. That was something, at least.

The station at San Diego had been a faded beauty, but the station here had long gone to seed. Patchwork and cobbled, the walls were covered in faded canvas posters, behind which we could see brick, metal, concrete, and rotted wood. The staircases that lead upward on either end of the platform were missing several steps and looked like they’d tumble down if a hard breeze hit them.

Not that there was any breeze down here. There was hardly any air. The place stank of sweat and sewage and fish, the air so hot and damp, I wanted to spit out each breath to get rid of the taste.

And while San Diego had been silent and Callaway Station had been busy, this place was packed with people—nothing but jostling crowd as far as the eye could see.

The small bubble of space that our little good-bye with Slip had afforded us collapsed in on us, and I felt like I’d just been swallowed whole by sheer mass of humanity around me.

“Do you have any idea where we’re supposed to be?” I asked Neds, trying to keep up with him and not get separated.

“Yes,” Right Ned said. He pushed through the crowd, one hand out to sort of warn oncoming people to move out of his way.

My bad shoulder was bumped, jostled, and wrenched back by people squeezing by in the other direction. I clenched my teeth against the pain. My leg started shaking after we’d traveled only a few yards.

This underground rail obviously wasn’t a secret like the one in San Diego. My guess was the line in California was mostly used for smuggling, since it was so close to a port. Whereas this landlocked station was just a cheap, if crowded and slow, way for people to get across the country.

I counted twelve different rail lines as we shoved our way through the river of people. That was a lot of trains taking people to a lot of places. I wondered which one we’d be getting on.

Neds turned a corner and then we were walking along a very thin platform with a railway ten feet or more below us. One shove to the side and someone would be in for a bone-cracking fall.

Of course, we weren’t the only people trying to navigate the narrow one-way walkway like it was a spacious two-way highway.

To complicate it all were the bags, boxes, and baskets everyone was carrying.

Neds took it all in stride, literally. But, then, he used to run with the circus. I suppose heavy crowds and deadly drops were just every other Thursday for him.

The walkway bent again to the right, moving away from the rail. A very thin metal-and-wood bridge was built out over this section of the rail. On the other end of that very thin wood-and-metal bridge was a separate wing of the station. The two-story structure on the other side was made of windows and doors. The top story had a matched set of guards standing on the balcony, sniper rifles casually resting in their hands.

No one was walking that way. As a matter of fact, people were going to extreme measures to not so much as brush an elbow on the railing of the bridge. Everyone knew that the bridge didn’t belong to them, and so they pretended it wasn’t there.

Except for Neds. He strode right on across the bridge like he was coming home for supper.

“Son of a bitch,” I mumbled.

Yes, I trusted Neds. But I had a bad feeling about this whole Sallyo thing.

Even Quinten hesitated before he and Gloria followed. Abraham brought up the rear.

Neds stopped on the other side of the bridge and held up both his hands so the guard above could get a good look at him. I’m sure they had already scoped and scanned us all. If they had any inclination to want us dead, they were in the perfect position to either turn us in to the Houses or pick us all off nice and clean.

The door opened.

A woman dressed in black stepped out. “This way,” she said.

We went that way into the building.

Correction: into the office. A very clean and modern office space, the white walls covered by security screens that showed every corner of the station and a collection of old route maps. No extra chairs, just an expansive cast-iron desk with paper logbooks and other files spread out across it.

It was cool here. A light, pleasant breeze perfumed with a hint of gardenia wafted through the air, making the stench of the station behind us a faint memory.

In front of that desk were two pyramids of stacked little brown boxes tied up with string.

Behind that desk sat a woman. Her skin was the same light almond of my skin, but that’s where our similarity ended. Her jet-black hair was shaved up off her ears and spiky on top. A cascade of jewels fastened around the top of her ear and ended in what looked like a set of snake fangs at her earlobe.

Her tailored jacket was gray with wedges of white and brown slicing through it, sharpening her curves. Her face was triangular, a small mouth and chin widening to incredible kohl-lined eyes that were a golden green, the pupils slitted like a snake’s.

First impression? She was the boss, and she wasn’t afraid to kill people until they understood that.

Second impression? She had something for Neds.

A slight movement of her lips, a minute widening of her pupils, gave away a world of history between them. They’d been close. Maybe lovers. Maybe more.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” she said, her voice a soothing alto.

“If I had any other choice, I wouldn’t have brought
this to your doorstep,” Left Ned said. “I just want that said.”

Then Right Ned said, “It’s good to see you, Sal.”

She sat very still, but I could see the jewels on her ears trembling to the beat of her rushing heart. She might look cool on the outside, but there was a storm of emotions rolling through her.

I didn’t know if that storm was blowing from fury or sorrow.

She nodded once. “This wipes our debt,” she said softly.

“I understand,” Right Ned said.

“And you?” she asked Left Ned.

This woman must really have known them a while. In my experience, most people thought of the Neds as one man. That Neds thought the same thoughts and spoke the same opinions.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Those men were two very different people, so much so that sometimes I wondered how each could stand the other.

But Sallyo, for that’s who this must be, understood that, which meant she had an intimate knowledge of the Harris boys.

“I understand,” Left Ned said.

“There are rules to this deal.” She stood up from behind her desk. I’d put her at several inches shorter than me, even in those heavy-heeled boots.

“You will be blindfolded.”

Quinten made an annoyed sound, which she completely ignored.

“And if you make one more noise, you will also be gagged. You will be allowed to keep your weapons. Once on my transport, you will be locked in your quarters. It
will take two hours to arrive at your destination. We will have your quarters under guard, locked, and wired. You will not send or receive data of any kind. Complete technological blackout conditions.

“When you have reached your destination, you will be blindfolded and taken to a drop point. Do not speak. Do not argue. Count yourself lucky this man has claim to a favor from me. Do not think I am unaware of what and who each of you are. Do not think I am unaware of what each of you has done.” Here her eyes flicked to Abraham, who regarded her with a soldier’s boredom.

“If I ever see any of you again, I will kill you, no questions asked, no hesitation.”

We sure were hearing that a lot lately.

She didn’t do anything to signal anyone, but suddenly the room was filled with a dozen guards, her people, carrying guns and black hoods.

There were enough people that one person could throw a hood over each of our heads and there would still be plenty more people with guns in the room.

The woman who walked up to me was yellow-haired and brown-eyed. She paused in front of me, probably a little startled by my eyes, which I assumed were red, since I was still hurting.

Eyes of red, you’ll soon be dead.

I just nodded, and she snapped out of it.

She dropped the hood over my head and tugged on a string around my neck. It was snug but I could breathe.

Darkness. The cloth smelled like cedar and whiskey and dust. Even with my eyes open, my eyelashes scraping the cloth, I couldn’t see a damn thing. I couldn’t hear very well either.

So this was more than just a blinding hood. They’d rigged up some sound buffering in the thread composition; might even have had them wired to tune out sound on command.

The idea of the hood being wired brought other, more gruesome ideas of what it could be used for.

I did not like putting my head in Sallyo’s hands. A bullet to the temple would end this trip awfully quickly for any of us.

But Neds could be trusted. He’d promised he could be trusted. He’d promised that he wasn’t a spy for House Silver too, which had been a lie. But he’d promised he hadn’t been spying for a long time.

He’d even promised he’d take over House Brown if I died.

Whether it was smart or not, I believed him.

“Move,” someone—I think the woman who had hooded me—said. She grabbed my bad arm, and I grunted in pain.

Was that it? Was that enough of a noise that Sallyo would kill me, kill us?

“She’s injured,” Right Ned said. “Take her other arm.”

How did he know what had just happened? The only way he could have seen that was if he wasn’t wearing a hood.

Did that mean he wasn’t going with us? Did that mean that he’d just sold us out?

A strong hand gripped my other arm and forced me to walk.

I could hear the scuff of footsteps from the others around me, so I knew we weren’t being separated, but I didn’t hear Neds’ footsteps. No, what I heard was his voice, barely above a whisper, as he said something halting and tender, and was hushed by Sallyo.

Then a door shut behind us and it was impossible to hear anything through the damn black hood.

I went up a bridge or plank or ramp and then down something similar, and was told to stand still. Something rumbled, maybe a door on tracks. I was led along a space that echoed loudly enough I could hear all our footsteps almost clearly, unless that was a trick of the hood, and then there was a blast of cold. I held my breath on a gasp as we pushed through the cold quickly, and then there was more walking.

I have a good sense of direction. You grow up in the scrub, you keep your whereabouts about you. But I didn’t have any idea where the hell I was in relation to where I had just been.

I did not like it.

Finally, we stopped and the woman’s hand left my arm. Fingers fumbled against my neck. The string released, and I took a deep breath even though it hadn’t been restricting my breathing. Then the hood was pulled free.

We were in a room decorated like a nicely appointed study.

A quick check showed me we’d all made it. The last guard was removing the hood from Abraham. Neds were here too, sitting on the plush couch and watching mostly me.

Any other day, I’d make myself comfortable, and there was plenty of room to do so. Three couches; several wide, stuffed chairs; a wall with shelves that held books; and another that seemed to have a window that looked out over the ocean, a selection of alcohol and chemical delights below it.

Thick carpet at our feet. The guards exited through a door that I didn’t think was carved rosewood, as it appeared to be.

There were a lot of visual tricks going on in this room.

The door locked, bolted, and sealed.

“We can talk now,” Right Ned said.

“Where the hell is this?” Quinten asked. But Neds were still watching me.

“It’s mostly hologram, isn’t it? The window, the door?”

Right Ned nodded slightly.

“We’re in a speed tube, aren’t we?” I asked, putting it all together. It was the only manner of transportation that wasn’t a plane that could fling us across half of the country in two hours. I was certain this was not a plane compartment.

“Speed tube?” Abraham asked. “Those are all owned and closely guarded and regulated by the Houses. There are no other speed tubes.”

“None that the Houses know about,” Right Ned said. “Sallyo will go to extreme measures to make sure it stays that way. Breathe a word of this to anyone, ever, and she will know. And then she will kill you, everyone you love, and anyone you’ve been in contact with for the past ten years.”

“Little brown boxes,” I said.

“Tied up with string,” Right Ned said.

“That seems . . . excessive,” Quinten noted as he paced the parameter of the room.