He disappeared. Marlow looked at the weights, then at his hands, still refusing to believe it. He jogged after Seth, then stopped, seeing a heavy bag hanging from the ceiling. He jabbed at it and the punching bag ripped free from its mount and cartwheeled across the room, thumping into a treadmill hard enough to knock it over. Plaster dust rained down from the ceiling and Marlow backed away, walking swiftly through the door.
“What was that?” Seth asked.
“Nothing,” he replied, steering the old man away. “Definitely nothing. What did you want me to see?”
“This way,” said Seth, reaching the end of the corridor and opening the elevator. He pressed the button for the bullpen. “So you see, the Engine rewrites the physics of your particular pocket of existence. It hears what you want and reprograms the code accordingly, granting you any wish.”
“And the only price you have to pay is your soul,” said Marlow. Seth grinned.
“Yes, once upon a time that was true, for our friends the Knights. Originally you would have had to part with that piece of you, the very essence of your being. It was inevitable. There was no way you could crack your contract.”
“But why?” Marlow asked. “What can a soul do? Why is it worth anything?”
“Who knows. I certainly don’t. Not one scientist on the planet could explain the nature of the soul, but few would deny we have one. It is one of the mysteries of the human condition. Perhaps one day we will unlock it.”
The elevator grumbled to a stop and Seth heaved open the gate, walking into the bullpen. Two of the Lawyers were still there, one of them startled out of sleep when he heard Seth’s voice. He jumped to his feet, slapping his face gently to wake himself up. He was a young guy, twenties maybe, and his messy hair and Halo T-shirt made him look more like a surfer than a lawyer.
“Yo,” he said. “I wasn’t sleeping, honest, just resting my eyes.”
“And practicing his nocturnal flatulence,” said the woman. She was his senior by at least a decade, dressed like an old-fashioned librarian. She peered over her glasses at Marlow. “I take it we’re repairing some rookie mistakes?”
“Yes, Annie, we had an unfortunate wish, didn’t we, Marlow?” Seth said, still smiling. “A certain, ah, unrequited desire.”
“You wished for the dish,” said the guy. “Happens all the time.”
He moved across the room to a storage locker and pulled out a pair of gloves and a helmet, connected to each other with wires. He chucked it to the woman called Annie, who just managed to snatch it out of the air.
“Tim, I really wish you wouldn’t treat our equipment with such disregard,” said Seth. “You do know how expensive it is, don’t you?”
“Sorry, boss,” he replied, donning a pair of gloves of his own and pulling the helmet over his head. It looked like a virtual reality set, or something Daft Punk might wear.
“This is quite something,” Seth said, pulling Marlow to the edge of the room. Tim snapped his fingers and the huge bank of computers along one side of the room roared to life, a noise like the pounding rush of a waterfall. He clicked his fingers again.
“We need section, um, 808-FR-403.2,” he said.
“Correction,” said Annie. “408.2.”
“Whatever,” muttered Tim. He waved his hands like he was a cop guiding traffic. Lights embedded in the walls blazed to life, beaming out lines of white laser as delicate as cobwebs, hundreds of them. They converged in the huge empty space in the middle of the room, taking on the shape of cogs and pistons, chains and gears and levers. It looked like a phantom version of the inside of the Engine and it took Marlow’s breath away. Tim moved his hands again and the entire hologram shifted, pushed across the room, new sections appearing as the old ones vanished into the wall.
“It’s an exact simulation of the Engine,” whispered Seth. “Well, the parts of it that we have documented. This section here, as far as we can tell, deals with what we shall call affairs of the heart.”
“We may have a slight irregularity in the eighth quadrant,” said Tim, spreading apart his hands and causing the hologram to enlarge. He zoomed in some more and Marlow saw a series of pins lined up together, some raised, some lowered. They reminded him of the arms and needles of a record player. Each one contained a small vial filled with a drop of dark liquid, swimming with flecks of light. “Four and five?” said Tim.
“No,” replied Annie. “I don’t think so, go north.”
He swiped his hands and the floor moved, the hologram passing through Marlow, making him feel giddy. He ran his hands through the light, seeing it dance on his skin, wondering how on earth somebody had managed to think this up.
“There,” said Annie, pointing to a clutch of coiled springs, more needles attached to them. “Six, seven, eight … the ninth point has shifted.”
“Good spot,” said Tim.
“What are they doing?” Marlow whispered, not wanting to disturb them. Seth leaned in, speaking quietly.
“The Engine uses those filaments to write your contract. There are millions of them, billions, each one as small as a hair on your head. We’re not sure how, but they have the power to rewrite the code, reprogram the universe. When they do, they change position, like that.”
“But how the hell do you know if they have?” Marlow asked. “There are so many of them.”
“Our computers pick up some discrepancies,” said Seth. “But the computer isn’t as sharp as a human mind. These guys are genii, photographic memories. They can identify when something in the machine has changed. And when they do, they reset it, they cancel the contract.”
“Like Lawyers,” Marlow said, nodding.
“Oh come on,” said Annie, genuinely irritated. “Not you, too. We’re not lawyers, we’re quantum mathematicians. There’s a big, big difference.”
“Sorry,” said Marlow, watching as she walked through the hologram toward the area they were discussing. She reached down, touching one of the filaments with her glove.
“Definitely the ninth,” she said. “Confirm.”
“Confirmed,” said Tim. “This is … section 808-FR-408.2, subsection fourteen, and filament nine. You ready?”
“I was born ready,” Annie said. She plucked the filament like it was a guitar string and it moved, popping up. There was a rumble beneath Marlow’s feet, like continents were shifting deep beneath the surface. Something sharp stabbed him in the side of his head, as if he’d been bitten, and he slapped a hand to his temple.
“That is normal,” said Seth. “Especially the first time the Engine is cheated. It doesn’t like it, not one bit.”
“What’s happening?” he grunted.
“This display is connected to the actual Engine, to each and every filament. If they change position here, they change position inside the Engine.”
“So that’s it then?” Marlow asked. “My contract’s broken?”
Seth laughed again, but his eyes were full of a profound sadness.
“If it were that easy, then I would have had three fewer heart attacks and my hair would still be the same color as my eyebrows,” he said, shaking his head. “No, that is most certainly not it.”
Tim was swiping at the floor, faster now, giving the illusion that they were all sailing down a river of light.
“There, the eighteenth,” he said, and they flicked another filament. Something burrowed into Marlow’s skull again and he winced. “If the eighteenth is gone, then we’d better check out thirty-six too.”
“Every contract is different,” said Seth. “Some involve perhaps several thousand filaments. More complicated contracts, such as Pan’s last deal, have a total of hundreds of thousands. The more you wish for, the harder it is to locate and repair the filaments. To make it more complicated still, the filaments correspond to the individual. Two people wishing for the same thing would have a very different contract. Somebody of more advanced years, such as me, would unfortunately have a contract involving a million filaments. Which is why old farts ca
nnot make a deal. And when too many people have a contract at one time, it becomes too muddled, impossible to differentiate, which is why we do not have an army at our disposal. Come, Marlow, we must leave them to their work.”
Tim and Annie burrowed their way deeper into the holographic Engine, shouting to each other as they navigated his contract. It looked almost as if they were playing some hi-tech sport, virtual tennis—only the prize they were playing for was his soul. He jogged after Seth, pulling the elevator gates shut behind him.
“How long does it take them?” he asked as they rumbled upward.
“For this? Not long. Several hours. It could be longer.” Seth saw his expression of disbelief. “Remember, the Engine does not want you to beat it. The contracts are designed to be unbreakable. It is only because of the technology we possess that we even stand a chance. The mathematics here, the equations involved in breaking the simplest of contracts, they are mind-boggling. Some contracts take the full twenty-seven days to crack.”
“Couldn’t you just, y’know, make a contract to know how to break a contract?” Marlow asked, feeling like a genius himself for even suggesting it. Seth shook his head as the elevator came to a halt.
“We tried it,” he said sadly. “The Engine knew we would. It was an impossible contract to break. We lost an Engineer, right here. Would you, please? My strength is not what it was.”
Marlow opened the gates and Seth stepped out, walking to the third door along the corridor.
“This is where you will sleep,” he said. “It is not a five-star hotel, I am afraid, but it is comfortable. You should rest. If you do not feel tired, then by all means use our gymnasium, or sit in the recreation room. But whatever you do, please stay inside the complex. The Engine is powerful, but secrecy is our most important weapon. The fewer people who know about us, the less likely it is that the Circle will discover our location. We fly far beneath the radar, so close to the ground that our bellies are scratched by the trees.”
“Seriously?” Marlow said, raising an eyebrow. “Since I’ve met you guys you’ve blown up a hospital and taken out half a block in a city of eight million people. You don’t so much fly under the radar as blow the hell out of it.”
Seth hissed out a dry wheeze of a laugh.
“Nothing to do with us,” he said, waving a hand and winking. “The events you talk of are terrorist attacks, gas explosions, terrible car accidents, catastrophic and tragic building collapses, midair collisions, riots and stampedes. These are the events that make the news, yes? And surely the news does not lie.”
“But—”
“Enough, Marlow. I must go, or you will be carrying me to my bed. Just remember, do not leave this place.”
He shuffled away to another door.
“Thank you, Seth,” Marlow called after him. The old man waved, then disappeared, the door closing behind him. Marlow stood there for a moment. He was tired, no doubt about it. He didn’t think he’d ever been so tired. But he knew there was no way he could sleep, not now, not with so much power inside him. He set off toward the gym, wanting to test himself, wanting to see exactly what he was capable of. He was halfway there when Bullwinkle stepped out of the door, wiping his sweating face with a towel. They both almost jumped out of their skins when they saw each other, and Marlow was the first to recover.
“Not so tough now, eh?” he said.
Bullwinkle straightened, but he looked afraid. The guy was under contract—Marlow’s arm still ached from where he’d been held by phantom telekinetic fingers—but he knew that if he punched him now the way he’d punched Hanson downstairs he could tear him in two. The thought made him feel sick and he unclenched a fist he didn’t even know he’d made. Bullwinkle saw it and he took a step forward, lobbing the towel back into the gym.
“You shouldn’t be out wandering the corridors, mutt,” he said. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“Isn’t it past yours?” Marlow replied. He knew it was probably the lamest comeback that had ever been uttered but he had been too tired to think of anything else.
“You better be in the dorm before Hanson catches you,” Bullwinkle said. “There are rules. You shouldn’t be pissing around out here. What were you trying to do? Find Pan’s bed?”
“I wasn’t—”
“I’m telling you to go to your dorm, rookie,” Bullwinkle said. “You understand me? That’s a direct order.”
Bullwinkle walked past, barging Marlow with his shoulder. Marlow stood firm and the big guy bounced off, grunting.
“Disobey me and you’ll have Hanson to answer to,” he grumbled as he walked into the shower room. “And give up, she doesn’t want you.”
Marlow heard the rush of water from inside. He sighed and took a couple of steps toward the gym. Then he stopped. He’d rather eat his own crap than take it from Bullwinkle and his eyeless freak of a boss. Besides, Bullwinkle was right. It would do him good to get away from Pan for a while, try to fill his head with something else.
He turned and walked back to the elevator, quietly shutting the gates before pressing the button for the top floor—the way out.
Time to have some fun.
DOUBLE DOUBLE DOUBLE CRAP
Pan wanted nothing more than to be able to sleep, but Marlow was making that impossible.
He was the only thing in her head, invading every thought. She tried to fight it, but he was a tick burrowing into her skull, impossible to dislodge. She thought about how annoying he was (how beautiful he looks when he smiles). She tasted his breath, a hint of vomit from when she’d kissed him (but his lips are so soft, so warm). She tried to focus on all the negatives, on how much she hated him, but then she’d see him there, grinning at her, moving in for another kiss, and she felt her heart melt into a warm, gooey mess, her stomach doing loop-the-loops.
She cursed, turning onto her side. She knew it wasn’t really Marlow’s fault (nothing could be his fault, he’s perfect—oh, god, shut up, brain!). It was Hanson. He’d known exactly what he was doing, planting that image in Marlow’s head right before he went into the tank. He’d done it before, the first time Truck had brokered a contract—although luckily Truck was of another persuasion and it hadn’t worked. Hanson was just an asshole, but he was one of Ostheim’s favorite Engineers so there wasn’t a damn thing any of them could do about him.
Except Marlow. He stood up to him, punched him in the face. So brave, so strong.
She growled, pulling the pillow over her head. Marlow stared back at her from the darkness, moving in for a kiss, and her mouth was open, ready … She threw the covers off and sat up, her heart drumming, her skin cool with sweat.
“Goddammit!”
“¡Silencio!” said Night from the other side of the dorm. “Some of us need our beauty sleep.”
Pan crashed back down, thumping her fist against her forehead to try to knock out the Marlow images. She knew it was just the Engine messing with her thoughts, but it felt so real. She loved him. She wanted to shout it from the rooftops, I love Marlow Green! But it couldn’t be true because she’d sworn never to fall in love, never to give anyone that power over her. Not again. Not after what had happened last time.
She saw him now, the guy she’d met when she’d been taken into foster care, the guy who told her she was special, told her he wanted her more than anything else in the world, wanted to own every little piece of her. And she’d believed him, right up to the point he’d tried to take those little pieces for himself. She’d just turned thirteen and she hadn’t even known she was capable of violence until that point, until she’d snatched up the only thing she could find—a cast-iron lamp by her bed—and beaten him to death with it.
If only Marlow had been there, he’d have saved you.
“Oh shut up,” she told her head, the rush of emotions—love, hate, love, hate—churning inside her stomach, making her feel sick. No, she was never going to put herself in that position again. The day Herc had marched into her holding cell, the day he’d given her a
choice about who she wanted to be, was the last time she would ever let somebody else control her head, her heart, or any other part of her.
Apart from them, of course, Herc and Ostheim.
She wasn’t stupid. She knew they had manipulated her. That’s what Herc did—picked the troubled kids, the ones in care, the ones who’d been kicked out of school, the ones shivering inside a cell. She knew why, too. These were the guys who had nothing to lose, the ones who’d run right out of choices.
Marlow fit the bill perfectly. They’d run a background check while he was out cold in the Manhattan tower—minor criminal record, just been expelled—he was a model candidate for an Engineer. Herc would have recruited him on the spot if he hadn’t wanted him to escape, to become bait. But thank god he did recruit him, otherwise I wouldn’t be in the same building as him now, wouldn’t be so close to him, wouldn’t be able to sneak out of my room right now and find him …
“Traitor,” she whispered to her brain.
He was cute, though. Marlow. Too young for her, obviously, and annoying as all hell. And his breath stank, and he was a pretty awful kisser, and his hair was truly atrocious. She sat up again, probing her thoughts, picturing Marlow. She screwed up her face, nothing there but distaste.
“Thank god,” she said, scrubbing her lips with the back of her hand, a sour taste on her tongue. The Lawyers must have cracked this part of Marlow’s contract. Maybe now she’d finally be able to get some rest. She closed her eyes, her thoughts blissfully empty, sleep wrapping itself around her like a warm, comfortable blanket.
* * *
The alarm ripped its way through the beginning of a dream and Pan shot up, her heart just about catapulting through her throat. Night was already out of bed, a blur as she bolted to the door. Pan struggled into her pants, buttoning them as she went. It was rare that the alarm went off but not unheard of. Usually it was a contract that was nearing expiration and needed emergency work, other times it was a drill. Plus Herc had set it off at least twice trying to smoke a secret cigarette in the toilet.