“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.
“I wish we had more time together, Miss Gallow. There are a so many things that I would like to talk to you about. I think that one day we will meet again, as we are now. Maybe then we can talk more. I sincerely regret what I have to do, now. To make it up to you, I’m going to fix Xia, too, okay? I know how protective you are of him.”
Alice’s instinct, her drive for survival, was primal and fundamental to her nature. Even in her lulled, half-conscious state, she reacted apprehensively to what she perceived as a threat.
“I’m sorry, truly — but I can’t allow you to remember any of this. With your condition that seems particularly cruel. However, I’m being indulgent — there is a child I that I spoil, I’m afraid, and there is a boy that she is fond of. He won’t make it if you don’t. I’m counting on you, Miss Gallow, even if you won’t remember me. If you can remember anything, remember this: the Church of Sleep, Miss Gallow. They are always watching us…”
There was an interval that was lost to her. Not forgotten, not exactly. Lost like a dream to morning sunlight.
Alice picked herself up and dusted herself off, and then probed her bruised head and jaw hesitantly, as if she expected it to break if she handled it roughly. She tried to remember, and she could only recall snippets, bits and pieces of what had happened after Mitsuru had gone berserk. She felt sad about it, and that usually meant that she’d forgotten something good, something that had made her happy. She shrugged it off with the benefit of long experience.
Poking at her jaw with her index finger, Alice Gallow walked through the rubble and wreckage that dotted the site of Mitsuru and Leigh’s battle, wondering what had happened, wondering if anyone else was still alive. There was something, stuck like a barb on the surface of her mind, an itch she couldn’t scratch. Her mind insisted on returning to it, like remembering a melody but forgetting the words, vague but insistent, infuriating. She tried to think in his direction.
“Gaul?”
“It’s about time. Pull yourself together. There are things that must be done, and you, Chief Auditor, are the one who needs to do them.”
Today, Alice thought, is going to be a big day for the old diary.
There was something wrong with these Weir. They were… twisted, somehow. Malformed. Hideous and rank, their skin crawling with tumors and sores, their features obscured and deformed. Alex couldn’t help but wonder if they were somehow already dead.
Katya ducked underneath the outstretched arms of one of them, and one of three needles she clutched in her left hand disappeared. The Weir’s howl was muffled, as she had impaled it with a needle through the jaw and into the skull. She opened her hand and the other two needles disappeared, and the Weir behind it fell as well. Then it was his turn, stepping up behind her. He had practiced it dozens of times, but he had never felt more nervous than with a Weir lunging at him and nothing else at all to rely on. He reached out his hand, using his arm as a rough visual guide. Wait until the Weir was twice as far… Katya had taught him to aim, and he did, for the point right between the beast’s eyes…
The Black Door skidded open a crack. Alex let a little bit of the cold in through an opening the size of a pinhole. The blood in the Weir’s brain froze, along with some of its head and most of its eyes. The creature made a ghastly sound, and then fell to the ground and twitched as its nervous system died in shock.
“You only need to freeze like five centimeters, max,” Katya scolded. “You’re still overdoing it.”
She walked over to the Weir he had killed, and kicked its head experimentally.
“It’s like someone poured a slushy inside a pumpkin,” Katya observed dryly, then paused, and looked away. “But you did pretty good, all in all. You’re still slow, but I don’t feel quite as bad about you watching my back.”
“I’m going to accept that as a compliment,” Alex said happily, “because I know it’s as close as I’m going to get. Look, we do this, and I’m gone, okay? We get Rebecca back on her feet, and then I’m going back down to Central.”
“Through the woods,” Katya said coolly, tapping her foot impatiently.
“Yeah.”
“Which are filled with…? I don’t know. Anathema, I suppose. Lots of them.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I have to, right?”
“I suppose,” Katya mused. “The only other girl in the world who was willing to sleep with you decided that she preferred death, so your options for the future are limited.”
“Hey,” Alex said, genuinely hurt and not fully able to disguise it. “That’s really harsh, even for you.”
“Sorry. You’re just going to have to deal with it.”
“Well, whatever. I have to go for Eerie. I said some things that I wish I hadn’t… and now that I think about it,” Alex said, wondering why he was confessing this to Katya, of all people, “there are some things that I want to say that I should have said. Right now, I’m trying not to compound my mistakes. So, while I appreciate your help, I’d appreciate it even more if you would lay the fuck off. Please.”
Katya regarded him narrowly. It could have gone either way. He wasn’t sure how many of the needles she had left woven into the lining of her jacket, and he found himself watching her hands intently. Then she shrugged and walked off, toward the gate, stepping neatly over the corpse of the Weir, head steaming from internal temperature deferential.