“Be careful,” Eerie said, taking off her headset and putting it down next to the laptop. “When Mitsuru wakes up, she’s going to be able to operate her Black Protocol at will.”
“You are going to have to explain some things to me,” Gaul said, looking quizzically at the girl in front of him, as if she reminded him strongly of someone whose name who could not quite recall. “I think, after all this time, that you owe me an explanation, Eerie. How long have you been able to do these things? Who are you, really?”
“It’s true that I am not myself right now,” she said, nodding gravely. “But I have to go.”
“What do you mean?” Gaul demanded, barely suppressing the urge to shake her. “You activated the most treacherous and forbidden protocol I can imagine in one of my Auditors, over the Etheric Network. Then you turned it off like a light switch. That was the Ecofage Protocol, wasn’t it? Self-replicating nanites that devour the surrounding environment? The last time she used that protocol, the Operator with her died, and Mitsuru was hobbled as a result. I have watched over you since you were a child, and I feel a certain investment in your future. Why have you kept all of this from me?”
“Director, you are right,” Eerie agreed. “You should get an explanation. But another time. I need to be somewhere else, and you have other things to worry about. You have to protect the Source Well. You know that already. They are coming for it. Can’t you feel it? Your old ghosts, Director, coming back to haunt you.”
“What?” Gaul demanded, taking the girl by the shoulders and holding her there, forcing himself to be gentle. “What are you saying?”
Eerie sighed and looked at him as if he was stupid. It was an intensely surreal experience, like watching a video of a friend with an actor overdubbing their voice with a profoundly different one. Gaul had all sorts of nasty ideas occur to him, but he also felt inclined to doubt them; after all, Eerie was the first changeling raised entirely amongst humans, and the Fey themselves were such an unknown commodity that even he hadn’t met one before. No one knew how Eerie would change and evolve as she aged.
“There is someone else who needs my help,” Eerie said patiently. “And you have other things to deal with. They are already inside the Academy, you know?”
“Don’t worry,” Gaul snapped, letting go of her. “It’s being dealt with. What concerns me, Eerie, is you. I’ve never seen you like this before, and I had no idea you could do these things. Are you the same girl who grew up here?”
“Mostly,” Eerie hummed, nodding. “Whoever I am, I still like you, Director. I hope you live through this. If I do, too, you can ask me again. I won’t have the answers you’re looking for, though. I don’t know myself.”
Gaul looked at her for a long time with his faded red eyes.
“Director,” she said softly, urgently. “I have to go. Please.”
“Then go,” Gaul said, shrugging. “But, Eerie — this discussion is in no way finished.”
“Let’s hope not,” Eerie said pleasantly, heading for the door.
24
“I hate your life,” Katya said, crouched down in the brush beside him. “I would like to make that clear.”
“I hear you,” Alex said, nodding.
“I’m not too fond of your attitude this evening, either.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” Alex said, shrugging, watching the road a hundred meters distant; it was empty, for the most part, or rather, nothing was moving. The stone strip was dotted with distant shapes that could only be bodies. He hoped it wasn’t anyone he knew. He tried very hard not to worry about Eerie. “I wouldn’t call this a good mood.”
Katya was silent for a while. Alex enjoyed it as best he could. He wished, he really wished, that he had his headphones.
“Look, I liked Emily, all right? She was fun, and a good cook, and whatever,” Katya said, looking like it embarrassed her. “And you should understand that your indecision played a role in this situation, and that you have some things to own up for. But if you’re holding yourself responsible for what happened to Emily, you need to stop. She was a big girl. She did that shit to herself.”
“I’m trying not to think about that right now.”
“I know — and you’re going to screw everything up because of it. You need to clear your mind, so you can focus on what we are about to do. You can’t do that with the big black cloud you got over your head right now. Let it go, Alex. You aren’t responsible for her actions, and your guilt is gonna get both of us killed.”
“Wow,” Alex muttered. “That’s a sympathetic response.”
“What, I’m supposed to be impressed by your compassion? Alex, she’s just someone you fucked. If you are planning on taking responsibility for the actions of every single person you sleep with, you had better consider celibacy.”
“Look, we have to get the medical wing,” Alex said darkly. “As for the little pep talk, you can skip it. I’m not worrying about Emily at all. I’m worried about finishing this stupid job so that I can go find Eerie. The sooner we get this done, the sooner I can move on to that. So, are we doing this, or what?”
Katya looked away and swore under her breath.
“Fine, tough guy,” she said, finally, shrugging. “Let’s go.”
“Try and hold still, Miss Gallow.”
Alice’s head hurt. It felt like someone had hollowed out her skull and then filled the space left behind with broken glass. She sincerely hoped that she was dying. If she wasn’t, then the pain was too much to bear.
“Please, Miss Gallow. Hold still. I am trying to put you back together again.”
She became aware of her senses slowly, one by one, as if she was repeating infancy in fast forward. First, the smell. Incense, like sandalwood. Then a sound, like a recording of a child’s voice, pitch-shifted, high and unnatural. Finally, there was a light, a light that had all the warm qualities of amber, translucent, tinted with an iridescent rainbow. The more she was aware of the light, the more she paid attention to it, the more the pain receded. So she stared at it intently, not entirely sure her eyes were even open, and listened to the horrifying sounds of her skull realigning, bone grinding against fragments of bone and then fusing, with the patience of one who has become familiar with horror.
“I’m sorry, Miss Gallow. I’m sorry that they did this to you. I’m sorry I can’t fix what’s truly wrong with you. All I can do is help you put the pieces back together, and help you loosen some of the fish hooks they left in your mind.”
The voice sounded like singing, which she thought might have meant something to her, previously. It rang in her head, it reverberated in her shattered, fluctuating skull, but it was not unpleasant. Like the light Alice bathed in, the more she was aware of it, the better she felt. She listened raptly, even though the words made little sense to her.
“It’s funny, as old as you are that we never met. You are remarkable. You know, of course, that no human could survive the implanting of the kind of nanomachinery that made you? But that’s for the best. I could never heal an Operator like this. Too fragile. Oh, you must have guessed by now, even if you have forgotten? Some Operators do not appear to age, it is true, and they can have long lives, but there are limits to everything. I heard about you the first time in Holland, when Napoleon’s troops were arriving in Amsterdam. You arrived with them, to make other, more private inquiries. I don’t know whom you were working for then. I don’t know how old you were at the time. How old do you think you are, Alice?”
Alice couldn’t wonder. She couldn’t follow much of what was being said. The whole experience was too extreme, and the words too small and insignificant a part of it. Whatever her mysterious benefactor had to say, its relevance paled next to the reformation of her skull. The process didn’t hurt as much as she would have thought it might, her whole being permeated with that ephemeral, translucent light.
“Or your protocol, have you ever thought about that? It isn’t anything like any of the Operator’s protocols. How would nanites explain what you can do, Alice?”
It was almost like an orgasm. Not that it was pleasurable, but it was consuming, overwhelming, indescribable. The sound of her bones knitting in high speed. The sound of tissue rebuilding itself, each cell molded from the blueprint of the last, the shrill crescendo of her nerve endings coming back to life.
