A Local Habitation

“What are you going to do now?” My options were limited by our surroundings: there was nothing for me to throw or hide behind, and if I went for the knife, we’d find out fast whether or not her gun worked. I was sure she’d planned it that way. A waist-high railing ran along the catwalk’s edge, broken only by the ladder access gaps. Even if the gun didn’t work and I managed to outrun her, I’d never get Quentin down.

“That’s easy.” There was a deep, wide madness in her eyes. It was there all along; I’d somehow mistaken it for grief. Stupid me. “April’s gone for the equipment. You should be grateful. You’re going to have a grand adventure!”

“Our last one,” I said. Elliot was bleeding to death on the floor below, Tybalt was taking care of Connor, and Terrie was out for Oberon-only-knew how long; no one was going to find us until it was too late. She could kill us both and walk away unscathed. She was going to win.

“The odds that you’ll survive aren’t good, but it’s not impossible. We’ve made great strides! Every failure is another step toward success!”

“You’re talking about killing us!”

“Isn’t it sad? But this is important! We’re making sacrifices for the greater good!”

“Sacrifices like Barbara?”

Her manic cheer slipped for a moment, showing the anger behind it. “That was an accident,” she hissed, finger tightening on the trigger.

I have a few basic rules for dealing with guns. First, don’t let anyone else have one. Second, if you must let someone else go armed, try not to tease them. I put my hands up, saying soothingly, “I’m sure it was.”

“I didn’t know it would kill her! I thought I’d fixed the problems, and she was so upset about the cats. She was going to demand we abandon the whole project, and . . . and . . .”

“And you thought you’d show her just how well it could really work.”

“Yes,” she said, desperately. That’s the nice thing about insanity: evil people kill you, but crazy ones try to make you understand. “I could do it one last time—do it right—and she’d see. We’d be finished. We could go public, and everything would be . . . better.”

“But something went wrong.” She was silent. I frowned. “You still don’t know what went wrong, do you?”

“I’ll find it!”

“I’m sure you will.”

Gordan shook her head as if to clear it, and then smiled. “I will, thanks to you and your courtly boy. Every bit of data helps. If you survive, it’ll tell me everything, and if you die, you’ve helped save Faerie. Be proud. You’ll be remembered as pioneers of our brave new world.”

“Sacrifices are always remembered that way.”

“If it bothers you to think of yourselves as sacrifices, don’t. Think of yourselves as . . . explorers running the risk of sailing off the edge of the world. It’ll only hurt for a second. Once the current starts up, you won’t feel anything at all. You won’t even be able to move.”

That explained why none of their victims struggled. Use April to get the machine on them, flip a switch, and they were frozen while they died. April didn’t help to kill Jan, and so she wasn’t caught the right way. “Let Quentin go, Gordan,” I said. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Maybe if you’d sent him away when I told you to, I could have, but it’s too late now.” She glanced over her shoulder. “April should be back soon. It’s nice, having an assistant who doesn’t understand that space is supposed to be linear. She’s so efficient.”

I began inching away from the wall. She turned immediately, a small, chiding smile on her face. “Uh-uh. No funny business.”

“You’re using her,” I said, slumping back against the wall.

“Who, April? I didn’t use her. She came willingly.”

“Did she understand what she was doing?”

“What we were doing, you mean? Of course she did. She understood we were helping others be like her. Of course, she didn’t know they wouldn’t come back after they were shut down, but that doesn’t matter. She still agreed.”