“It’s like that in the Checquy too,” said Felicity. “It’s very hard to keep a secret.” Not impossible, though, she thought. “And everyone knows what your powers are.”
“Sounds familiar. Well, my bones got strengthened, and my second cousin gave me some really nice new kidneys. My spinal cord and nervous system have been augmented and improved, and they put in some fixtures in my throat that allow me greater control over Broederschap constructs and creatures — oral commands and whatnot. They’re all still healing and kind of sore. I haven’t had time to learn how to use them yet, so they’re pretty much off-line.”
“So why did they bother to put them in before you came here?” asked Felicity.
“As a sign that they trusted me,” said Leliefeld. “It’s like your parents giving you back the keys to the car. Only we get new organs. It really meant a lot to me.”
“I’m sure,” said Felicity. There was a silence.
“What are our plans for today, then?” asked Odette. “Am I back in quarantine? Do we just stay here and watch movies?”
“Far from it,” said Felicity. “Once you’re ready, we’re going to the Rookery to help them track down the Antagonists.” She very carefully did not say “your friends.”
*
“Last night’s attack left us with a few leads,” said Clovis, the Checquy security chief, as he led Odette and Felicity through a series of subterranean corridors. Apparently, tucked away in the bowels of the Rookery was a whole series of tiled rooms used when Checquy people needed to be sewn up or when non-Checquy people needed to be cut open. “The first is the catatonic blond man, and the others are the various augmented corpses. Bishop Alrich did manage to leave two of them alive but I’m afraid all of them went into simultaneous seizures at about four a.m. — even the dead ones,” he added grimly. “And let me assure you, that gave the morgue attendant a nasty turn. She emptied an entire clip into them.”
“She had a gun?” asked Odette, startled. “I thought people in this country didn’t carry firearms.”
“Oh, everyone who works in the morgue is required to carry a pistol at work,” said Clovis. “And we keep a shotgun and a flamethrower on hand, just in case.”
“I see.”
“Yes, terribly tiresome. Still, as you are no doubt aware, all sorts of information can be divined from a dead body. Your great-uncle is already working on one of them, and he suggested that you, Miss Leliefeld, might be willing to assist with another one.”
Please don’t ask this of me, Odette thought. It’s hard enough that I chose this route, but now you’re making me work against my friends directly. It was a ridiculous plea, she knew. She’d set herself against her friends months ago, in that hotel in Paris.
“Absolutely,” she said sadly. They arrived at the door of what looked like another medical suite. A tall Retainer in a white coat introduced himself as Dr. Robert Bastion and told them he’d been assigned to assist Odette in her examination. His hair was the same pasty color as his skin.
“It’s a genuine pleasure to meet you, Miss Leliefeld,” he said. “I’m eager to watch a member of the Broederschap in action.”
“Thank you,” said Odette. “Now, before we plunge in with scalpels and crowbars, my first concern is booby traps. We’ll need to be very careful about activating anything.”
“Yes, Dr. Leliefeld warned us not to put them into any scanners, so we brought in one of our people to check them out,” said Dr. Bastion. “Pawn Motha can see through flesh. And pretty much everything else. He sketched out the details.” He handed Odette a thick sheaf of papers. They were covered in beautifully done pencil sketches of absolutely hideous things.
“Good,” said Pawn Clements. “So I don’t have anything to do with this task, right?”
“Not right now,” said Odette absently. “Ugh, this is a mess.” She sighed as she looked through the pictures. Organs, implants, and weapons had been crammed into the man’s body, but without the meticulous placement that the Grafters were drilled in. “Clearly, whoever did it was in a huge hurry.” Still, they should be ashamed, leaving a subject like this. “What kind of metal or ceramic components did your guy pick up?”
“Not as much as we expected,” said Bastion. “Some solid objects in his forearms — no moving parts.” He tapped one of the pictures, where three pointed rods were clustered together.
“Okay, looks like weapons,” said Odette. “A couple of them had blades implanted in their arms. Have you drawn any blood or fluids?”
“After your great-uncle warned us about the booby traps, we haven’t done anything. Fortunately, there was an astounding amount of blood on Bishop Alrich’s suit, which we managed to intercept before it was incinerated. The lab results all came back fine, nothing unusual except for some generic antirejection drugs.”
“Do we know the identities of the attackers?” asked Odette. “A medical history from before they were modified might be useful.”
“We’ve ID’d four of them,” Dr. Bastion told her. “They had no driver’s licenses or phones, but their fingerprints were in the criminal database. Assault. Possession of narcotics. One of them robbed an off-license with a knife. They’re thugs, essentially. We haven’t got a name for the man you’ll be examining, though. Not yet.”
“Oh, well,” said Odette, “that’s fine.” She peered at one of the sketches and thoughtfully traced a finger around the supernumerary lungs that had been installed. “Fascinating.” She looked over to Pawn Clements. “Are you coming in for the autopsy?”
“If you don’t need me, I’ll pass,” said Clements. “I can keep an eye on you from the viewing gallery.”
Because they hadn’t told her what she would be doing, Odette had not brought her own surgical clothes or tools from the hotel. Asking for them to be fetched seemed unreasonably diva-ish. Instead, she stepped into a changing room and pulled on Checquy-supplied scrubs.
“I’m going to need the most heavy-duty protective garb you can muster up for this,” said Odette as she scrubbed her hands and arms vigorously at the OR sink. “I’ve no idea what I’m going to find in this man.”
“Not a problem,” Dr. Bastion assured her. “We’re used to venturing into unfriendly territory.”
Apparently he wasn’t exaggerating, because once they’d both scrubbed in, a couple of medical squires proceeded to garb them in a startling combination of heavy plastic and light metal. Stainless-steel plates were strapped to their chests and arms.
“What are these?” asked Odette, plucking at the hoses that trailed out from under the armor.
“They wind back and forth under the armor. You plug them into the sockets in the examination lab and we pump cold water through them,” said one of the assistants. “It gets very warm inside all the layering.”
After the armor, they were draped in a series of surgical chemises and petticoats, each one apparently providing resistance to a different possible threat. They were all very thin, but Odette was already feeling the heat. Latex gloves were snapped on, and Kevlar gauntlets slid over them and closed at the wrists with duct tape. Finally, they were robed in surgical gowns with the density of tarpaulins. She found herself crumpling slightly under the weight of it all.
Well, it’s not what I expected, she thought, but it shows they’re taking it seriously. One of the squires held up an enclosed helmet and waited for Odette to bow her head.
The helmet shut around her head, and Odette heard the faint hiss of oxygen, ensuring she didn’t suffocate. The heat inside the getup was vile. She shuffled awkwardly after Dr. Bastion into a little air lock outside the operating room, one of the squires holding the train of her surgical gown like a bridesmaid.