“And now you’ve let go,” said the prisoner. “Too bad.” His voice was a little slurred, as if he’d been drinking.
Could he be one of the Antagonists? wondered Odette. His English accent is perfect, but all they’d need is a neurolinguistic patch, and there’d be no trace of a European accent.
The Rook looked down at the tablet in her hand. Her finger hovered, and then she pressed at something.
“You sound very calm about all this,” said Thomas, and the prisoner cocked his head a little. Obviously, she had switched on the intercom.
“Well, you know how it is,” he said. “You take your best shot, and if it doesn’t work out, weellll... there’s always another time, isn’t there?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Thomas. “I have to tell you, you’re not in good shape at all. I’m not sensing any Grafter additions inside your body, but there’s something very wrong with you. I can feel it in your flesh. I don’t think you’re going to have enough time to come after me and fuck me up. Plus, of course, you’re, well, in prison.”
“You never know, Myfanwy,” said the prisoner. “Things can change, just like that,” and he sat up and looked directly at the glass.
“Oh my God!” exclaimed Odette, almost falling off the chaise. Pawn Clements hissed in horror, and Rook Thomas took another couple of steps backward.
The hours since Odette had last seen him had not been at all kind to the prisoner. His face looked pretty much the same, but it was drooping, almost hanging off his skull. The skin of his scalp and neck was sagging too. The color seemed to be leaching out of his hair, clumps of which had fallen out. He was shirtless, and the skin of his chest was gray and mottled. Perspiration was pouring from him.
“Who’s that?” said the prisoner.
“That’s Odette,” said the Rook, and Odette looked at her incredulously. The Rook shrugged.
“Odette,” said the prisoner softly. “Right. You made the wrong choice, back in that hotel lobby in Paris.”
He is one of them! Odette thought. “Wie bent u?” she asked intently. Who are you? Which of her friends was looking out from behind that mask of skin? Could it be Pim? What had he done to himself? He cocked his head and smirked when she spoke but didn’t say anything. He simply stared at the glass.
This doesn’t feel right, she thought, staring at the man. Too many things that don’t make sense. The accent I can explain, but they would never talk to me like that. I can’t see any of them putting on a different face and leading a team of thugs to assault a Checquy Rook. They don’t do hand-to-hand combat. And what is wrong with his skin?
“Well, apparently you don’t feel like saying anything useful,” said the Rook, “so we’ll chat a bit later. I can guarantee you’ll want to tell us everything.” She stared through the glass, waiting for a reaction, but nothing came. Then, suddenly, the man lurched out of bed and flung himself at the glass. The barrier didn’t shake, but the bang of his head against it echoed through the observation room. Rook Thomas flinched back in shock, bumping into Odette and Pawn Clements, on the chaise, who had, without thinking, clutched at each other.
“You want answers?” screamed the man, his spit flying. His face was contorted, and he pressed himself against the glass so that his skin squashed and twisted alarmingly. “The answer is, you’re going to die!” He drew his head back and smashed it against the glass. The sound was terrible, stomach-turning.
Jesus, thought Odette. All three of them were transfixed by the sight.
“Die!” he screamed, smashing his head forward again. This time, the sagging skin of his forehead split, and blood stained the glass.
“DIE!
“DIE!”
And then he fell back, twitching, to the ground. The Rook warily put her hand against the glass and frowned. Suddenly, she exclaimed, “Hit the panic button! He’s damaged himself severely. I think he’s fractured his skull.”
“Not just that,” said Odette shakily. “Look at him. Look!” The man’s skin was fizzing and peeling away from his bones. As they watched, his pectoral muscles tore in several places and they saw his ribs melting like ice cream. His hair was a slick of slime, and his eyes were pouring out onto his face, which lay unchanged over his collapsing skull. She looked at Pawn Clements and Rook Thomas. Both of them were staring incredulously at the rotting mass on the floor. Then the Rook turned to Odette and Clements.
“I totally didn’t do that,” she said firmly.
36
“And here we are again,” said Ernst. “Are we actually awake this time?”
“Yes,” said the Rook testily. Odette pinched herself surreptitiously, just to make certain. “Although it would certainly save on our entertaining budget if everyone were simply unconscious.”
They were seated in the private upstairs dining room of a restaurant in Wapping. The room looked out onto the Thames, and the building appeared to date back several centuries. The floor was made up of gigantic beams of warped wood, and the table could have been older than Graaf Ernst. The Checquy contingent of the party consisted of Rook Thomas, Security Chief Clovis, and Chevalier Joshua Eckhart, with Pawn Clements sitting warily at the end of the table next to Rook Thomas. The Grafters consisted of Ernst, Marie, Odette, and Marcel.
For all the restaurant’s battered age, its menu was surprisingly modern and decadent. Rook Thomas drummed her fingers as the ma?tre d’ who came with the room recited the specials and they all took their time perusing the offerings before making their selections. She endured Ernst’s close questioning of the ma?tre d’ as to how wild the wild boar had been before being made into sausage; Marcel’s asking to check the sage, dill, and basil before they were washed and used in the meal; and Security Chief Clovis’s request to substitute a garlic-and-potato smash for hand-cut vegetable chips, carrots for squash, and lemon juice for béarnaise sauce. Finally the woman left the room, and Myfanwy was opening her mouth but Marcel spoke first.
“Why were we called to this restaurant?” he asked. “Not that I’m complaining, but it was a little abrupt. I was in the middle of examining the only one of those hooligans that didn’t have a Tartarus gourd tucked away in him. I’d just started unpacking his cranial cavity and had to leave brains and wires spread out on the table with some plastic wrap from the kitchen draped over them.”
“It was a preexisting meeting that we could co-opt,” said the Rook. “I wanted Chevalier Eckhart present for this discussion, and this was the only thing in our schedule that I could shoehorn everyone into without raising suspicion.” On the official Checquy books, the gathering was still described as a working lunch to brainstorm the integration of incoming Grafter troops into existing Checquy forces, since “a meeting to discuss the actions of supernatural terrorists being kept secret from not only the British government but our own people” did not fit into any billing code.
“So,” said Thomas, “there has been a development.”
“Oh?” said Ernst.
“Yes. Much to the consternation of the medical staff, the detention staff, and the janitorial staff, the blond man melted,” said the Rook. “What does that mean to you?”
“Clone,” said Marie promptly. “A botched clone.”
“Except that it couldn’t be a clone,” responded Marcel, equally promptly.
“What about accelerated aging?” suggested Ernst.
“That wouldn’t make any sense either,” said Odette.
“Hold on,” said Rook Thomas. “What’s this talk about clones?”
“A clone is a genetically identical copy of a living thing that’s produced asexually,” said Marcel.
“I know what a clone is,” said Rook Thomas. “They made a sheep. So, you clone things?”
“We can,” said Marcel. “We don’t, though, not usually. Of course, we grow bits of people, but we don’t make whole people.”