Stiletto

  Odette and Felicity sat quietly on the chaise, and Odette flipped through the file. The Checquy had done the usual battery of tests trying to come up with clues to his past, and they’d found nothing very interesting. His fingerprints hadn’t tripped any alarms in any databases. No sign of any inoculations, no old fractures. Uncircumcised. His wisdom teeth were intact, as were his tonsils. His appendix was burbling away comfortably. They hadn’t even found any incriminating calluses on his hands or feet.

  “Interesting . . .” she muttered.

  “What?” asked Clements.

  “He’s had a vasectomy,” said Odette. “A recent one.”

  “Yes, fascinating,” said Clements, edging away slightly.

  “Could the two of you shut up, please?” said the Rook. She was leaning against the frame of the glass, her forehead resting on her arm. Presumably, she was reaching out with her powers, examining the prisoner’s internal structure, but it looked for all the world as if she were taking a little standing nap.

  “Little Myfanwy,” said the prisoner suddenly, and Rook Thomas’s head jerked up in surprise. “I could feel your familiar touch, your little fingers sliding around inside my face.” He hadn’t looked up, but Odette could hear the smile in his voice. “And now you’re going down, probing in my chest and gut. I wonder, Rook Thomas, will you go even farther down? Find something interesting to play with and explore?” The Rook stepped back, her cheeks flaming.

  “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 maître 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 maître 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.”

  “Why not?” asked Eckhart.

  “We prefer to have sex,” said Ernst, causing Pawn Clements to choke on her orange juice. “Plus, anyone who wants to clone himself is usually an asshole. You don’t want any more of those running around than absolutely necessary.”

  “So the blond man could have been a clone of one of the Antagonists?” said Rook Thomas.

  “No,” said Marcel.

  “Why not?”

  “Because when you clone something, you end up with an embryo that is an exact physical copy.” Marcel looked at Marie sourly. “Provided you haven’t made any unprofessional errors.”

  “I made one error!” exclaimed Marie. “When I was nineteen! God! And may I say, that cat lived a long and happy life!”

  “It certainly lived a quiet life,” remarked Marcel.

  “You know, there are cats born naturally that don’t have ears!” said Marie. At that point, there was a knock on the door, and their appetizers were delivered while everyone sat in awkward silence.

  “Anyway,” said Odette after the waitstaff had departed, “cloning is difficult, and even when you do it right, you end up with an embryo that grows into a baby that grows into a child that grows into a person who is a physical copy of the original. Not a mental copy. And the clone ages at a normal rate.”

  “You can see why we prefer the sex,” said Ernst. “Same result, more fun, much less math.”

  “The blond man was a grown-up,” said Odette helpfully. “Older than all of my friends. They didn’t have time to grow him, and they certainly wouldn’t have the patience to raise him.”

  “You mentioned accelerated growth, though,” said Eckhart. “Could that have been used here?”

  “No,” said Marcel.

  “Possibly,” said Odette. “Accelerated growth results in accelerated breakdown, which is certainly what we saw.”

  “It’s very simple,” said Marcel. “Much easier than cloning. But if you accelerate the growth of an embryo, regardless of whether it’s a cloned embryo or a regular one, you end up with an adult with the mind of an embryo. There’s no way to speed-educate it.

  “If we are to assume the blond man was a clone, or even a normal zygote that was subjected to accelerated growth,” continued Marcel, “then, judging by the rate of deterioration you’ve described, that man was a couple of weeks old, maximum.” He took a sip of wine. “All he should have been able to do was blink a few times and fall over. Possibly he could have soiled himself. But he certainly shouldn’t have been capable of masquerading as another person. You can’t clone minds or thoughts.”

  “You did with him,” said Rook Thomas, nodding over at Ernst.

  “What?” said Odette sharply.

  “Oh yes,” said the Rook. “I got sent a human heart in a box that grew into a naked man who came into my office, brokered a peace deal, and ate all my frozen pizza.” Security Chief Clovis and Felicity listened to this chronicle of supernatural diplomacy with forks paused halfway to their open mouths. “And he didn’t dissolve into slime.”

  “Actually, I did,” said Ernst. “Why did you think I left so abruptly that evening?”

  “I thought that you had to notify the Broederschap to stand down hostilities. And that you were uncomfortable with the fact that you were wearing my bathrobe. Which I never got back, by the way.”

  “Both those reasons were true,” conceded Ernst, ignoring the point about the bathrobe. “But I also needed to have various nonperishable components of my brain removed and slotted into this pre-prepared cloned body that I had waiting in a house in Mayfair. By the time you were having breakfast, the body you spoke with was a drumful of rotting tissue and liquefying hair and bones that was subsequently poured down the drain into the sewers.”

  Felicity carefully put her fork down and pushed her plate away.

  “So this is a different body?” said Rook Thomas. “It looks exactly the same.”

  “That’s why they call it cloning,” said Marcel drily. “And we had to start growing the current body twenty-odd years ago.”

  “You really plan ahead,” said Rook Thomas, sounding impressed. “So could the Antagonists have done that thing you did? Where you get a clone that has your thoughts?”

  “That wasn’t a clone,” said Ernst. “A clone is a copy. That was me. The only me. The procedure with the heart means that you strip core elements from yourself. Your old body breaks down. You see—”

  “We get the picture,” said Chevalier Eckhart. “So, could they have done it?”

  “No. It’s classified material,” said Marie. “Still extremely experimental.”

  “The Antagonists have already shown they can get at classified material,” said Odette meekly. “Remember the booby trap in that corpse?”

  “Also, it’s an extremely complex and time-consuming process that you need a special lab for,” said Marcel. “And it’s horrendously expensive. That heart we sent you cost almost one hundred seventeen million euros.”

  “And you just mailed it to us?” asked Rook Thomas, aghast. “What if we’d thrown it away? Or incinerated it?”

  “It wouldn’t have happened,” said Ernst comfortably. “We have two men working in the Checquy morgue.”

  “Had,” said Security Chief Clovis pointedly.

  “Anyway,” said Marie, “the Antagonists have money, but not like that.”

  “And what would be the point?” asked Odette. “So they maybe have a shot at killing you before they rot away and die? Not their style. They’re not suicide people.”

  At this point, the maître d’ knocked on the door, and everyone stopped talking as she led in two servers to collect the plates.

  “Your mains should be here shortly,” said the maître d’ into the silence.

  “Thank you,” said everyone simultaneously, and then they all were quiet until the door had shut.

  “Look,” said the Rook, “we simply cannot stop talking every time the servers come in. They’re going to think we’re here plotting something illegal. So, for God’s sake, try to make conversation when they bring the main course.”

  “About what?” asked Marie.

  “What’s our cover story?” said Clovis. “We need a context for conversation.”

  “We’re a family out to lunch,” suggested Ernst. Felicity looked around the room. Apart from Ernst, Odette, and Marcel, no one looked likely to be related to anyone else. “Here to meet Odette’s new boyfriend, Clovis, of whom I do not approve.” Odette winced. “It’s not a race thing,” he said defensively. “It’s because he’s so much older than her. And he’s a drummer.”

  “How about we’re a firm of graphic designers,” suggested Odett
e. “Here to talk about a major project.”

  “Yes!” said Marie. “Good! We can be artsy and interesting, so no one will expect us to be particularly coherent.” Her blond haircut grew abruptly jagged, and streaks of blue poured through it.

  “They’ll expect our hair not to have changed between courses,” said the Rook.

  “Of course,” said Marie. “Sorry, I got a little overexcited.” Her hair snapped back into shape and became a uniform blond again.

  “All right, so we’re graphic designers,” said Chevalier Eckhart. “Fine. Now, back to the actual reason we’re here, the mystery of the melting blond man. I’ve had a thought. What about the self-destruct thing you did with your soldiers in Hyde Park? Could it have been something like that?”

  “The Chimerae,” said Marie. “They had a discretion function that reduced them to paste.”

  “I don’t think it can be the same thing,” said Odette. “The Checquy examined the subject and found no sign of Broederschap implants. That function requires them to have sacs full of chemicals all through them. There’s no way those implants could have been missed. I saw the scans.”

  “Marvelous, another possibility down the drain,” said the Rook. “Okay, so, not a clone?”

  “No,” said Marcel firmly. “Not enough time.”

  “Not a member of the Antagonists with a self-destructing bowel?”

  “No,” said Odette uncertainly.

  “Could he just have been some man off the street they paid to get a vasectomy, wear someone else’s face, and try to kill Myfanwy before bashing himself to death against a window?” asked Eckhart. The lunch party contemplated this possibility.

  “It does not seem likely,” said Marie finally.

  “Where would you even find someone willing to do that?” asked Odette.

  “And even if you did find someone like that, how did he dissolve?” mused Rook Thomas. “Plus, he seemed to know me. He was certainly taking the whole thing very personally.”

  A knock at the door heralded the arrival of the mains. They all composed themselves in a manner that they imagined befitted graphic designers. The food was brought in, smelling delicious. They were all still silent, though, apparently lacking any clue as to what graphic designers might talk about.