“Don’t call me that.” I took a deep breath. “Just don’t. You could’ve found another way. You were brilliant, Basil. You were—you could have done it.”
“I tried. I’m trying. I’ve been designing a machine that’ll let an ordinary person do what I do, manipulate this power, but it doesn’t work. It’s too unstable, it’s dangerous for the Renewable and for the user. I’ve tried everything.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t even look at him. Part of me wanted to just get up and walk away, because who could stop me? Not Basil. Not his Eagles. Not Adjutant. Walk away into the wasteland above and never come back.
But Oren was here, and Wesley, who risked everything for us.
“Let’s go.” My voice sounded cold even to me. I got to my feet, my back to my brother.
“Wait.” Basil touched my shoulder, but I felt nothing, no tingle, no pull of shadow, nothing but the weight of his hand. “Let me see.” He reached for the lifeless pixie cradled in my hands.
I felt my fingers curl around its body, protective. “It saved me,” I mumbled. “Even though it didn’t remember me, it flew in front of the blast.”
“Lark,” Basil said softly in the same voice he’d used when I was a child, when I’d wake from a nightmare. “I’m good with machines. Let me look, please.”
What could it hurt? Nix was gone twice over—first its thoughts and memories, now its very life. I let my brother take it gently from my palm.
We made a strange picture, huddling over a tiny machine in a pool of flickering light. The corridor stretched away on both sides, silent and still. The Eagles hadn’t even had time to call for assistance. We had time—but how much?
Basil turned the machine over in his hands, inspecting it carefully, lifting it to his ear to listen for any signs of life. Though my ears strained, I heard nothing—and I could tell from Basil’s lack of reaction that he didn’t either.
Then he reached into his pocket and took out sheath of soft brown leather, which he unrolled on the floor to reveal a set of tiny, delicate tools. Architect’s tools. Was this something the Institute gave him before he went, or did he have them made for him here? I didn’t ask, gritting my teeth as Basil opened up Nix’s tiny body, gazing down at it through a tiny magnifying glass that fit between his brow bone and the top of his cheek when he squinted.
Nix’s inner workings were made up of hair-thin wires and pins, and gears so small I couldn’t even see their teeth. Behind all of it, nestled amidst the incomprehensible clockwork, was its tiny crystal heart. When I’d half-destroyed Nix when I first encountered it, its heart had pulsed blue as it repaired itself. Now it was quiet, still. Dead.
I leaned away, pressing my back to the wall and forcing myself to breathe. Even when Nix vanished without a trace, I’d never truly believed anything had happened to it. I always assumed it was holed up somewhere, hiding. I always, always thought I’d simply wake up one morning and find it perched on my bedpost, watching me with its unblinking stare and criticizing my laziness. But now it was here, dead, the man I used to call brother poking around in its corpse.
I was about to tell Basil to stop, to close it up, let it be, when my brother let out a soft “Hmm,” voice registering surprise. I felt, rather than saw, Basil reach out with his own magic to feel around inside the pixie.
“That explains how they got around its programming,” he said, fascinated. “There’s some kind of override here. The blast must have overloaded it.”
“Override?”
“The Institute built this model like a tank—the programming is so well shielded even I can’t get to it. But this—Adjutant must have had them put something here that supersedes that programming, takes over before the incoming data even reaches it.”
In spite of myself I felt a flare of familiarity, listening to my brother speaking gibberish as he tinkered with some machine or other. While I sat with him on the couch, in our home. How could he be so like him, and so unlike him, all at the same time? More and more I didn’t know how to feel, how to react. There’s no one I loved more than my big brother, and yet—and yet.
“I didn’t even know we had anyone who could do this,” he continued softly, fascination shifting to confusion. “Adjutant handles recruiting, and he never . . .”
“Maybe you let him run too much of your city.” My voice was soft too, but bitter. “Maybe it’s all getting away from you.”
Basil looked up, the magnifying glass falling from his eye into his lap. “Adjutant is absolutely devoted,” he replied, a flare of anger in his voice. “He’s my oldest supporter, my oldest friend. He’s been with me since the beginning—without him, none of this would be here.”
“You mean the enslaved Renewables? The all-powerful uniformed guard everywhere? The people forced to live in secret and fight for their freedom? None of that would be here?”
Basil’s jaw clenched. “This city wouldn’t be here.”
Just then, footsteps echoed down the corridor. Basil tore his gaze from mine, glancing down the hall behind me. Then, silently, he pulled me into the alcove of a doorway, pressing me back against the wall and then pulling as far into the corner as he could. We each held our breath as a pair of guards approached the intersection behind us.
If they happened to look to the right, down our hallway, and saw the two bodies lying at its far end, then we’d have to add two more bodies to our count.
We waited, ears straining. But the footsteps soon faded again, the two guards continuing on their patrol, not even noticing that two of their fellow Eagles lay unmoving at the other end of the corridor.
Basil let out his breath. He glanced at me, his brown eyes meeting mine for a brief moment. Then he looked back down at the pixie in his hand and closed his eyes.
“What are you doing now?” I whispered.
“Seeing if I can remove the override.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know how it was done.”
“I said I didn’t think anyone else did.” Basil sent tendrils of magic out, making the air taste of copper and silk. “I never said I couldn’t. Its original programming may well be intact underneath.”
I closed my eyes as well, the better to watch as he explored the pixie. His movements were so subtle I could barely follow what he was doing. When I acted using magic it was like swinging a battle-ax. Basil wielded it like a scalpel.
Trying not to hope, I reminded myself that even if he could remove the programming, the pixie was still dead.
I itched for action—the magic buzzing through me demanded an outlet, and I couldn’t sit still while I knew that Oren was here somewhere, in danger. I started tapping my fingers against the floor, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Long moments stretched in which I strained to listen for the sound of footsteps or an alarm that would mean they’d discovered I was missing. I wondered if it was nighttime here, if everyone was asleep except for the Eagles on patrol.
And then there was a sound. A tiny screech of metal on metal jerked my eyes back down to the ground where Basil was working on Nix. As I stared, the empty crystal heart flickered once as though it contained a tiny bolt of lightning. Then, like a star winking into existence, the blue glow swelled.
“What did you do?” I gasped, afraid to move for fear of dashing the illusion.
“Removed the override,” Basil said, leaning back with a grin. “It was fried by the blast, clogging up its systems. Remove it, and it’s back to normal.”
As I watched, Nix’s spindly little legs came shooting out, busily putting itself back together where Basil had taken it apart. It made a spluttery sound of indignation, as if protesting the state in which it had found itself.
“Nix?” I whispered, my heart pounding.