Crucible Zero (3 page)

Quinten spoke up. “So, you're working for House Fire, but don't intend to collect the ransom money? I haven't met any mercenaries who go out of their way for free.”

“Especially you, Sallyo,” Right Ned added. I noted neither of the Harris boys were eating. They were watching Sallyo like she was a snake ready to strike.

“Oh, I'll get paid. Even mercenaries go out of their way if the job is worth it. And since this job is half finding you and half delivering something to you, I'll make out just fine.”

He scowled, but didn't say anything more.

“What delivery?” Quinten asked, his hands away from his plate so he could draw his gun quickly if he needed to.

Yeah, I'd stopped eating too. For all I knew, they had bombs strapped to their chests, and their answer to Quinten's question would be
explosions
.

Please don't let it be explosions.

“A letter,” Sallyo said.

“Takes three killers to deliver a letter?” Left Ned asked.

“It does when the price for delivering it is so . . . generous. No one pays top credit for the safe jobs.” She reached toward her jacket, and I heard the clack of hammers jacking back as both Quinten and Right Ned pulled guns under the table.

Sallyo stilled, but she was still smiling. It was almost like she enjoyed her line of work. “And I believe I've just made my point. The letter is in my jacket. I'm going to pull it out now.”

“Slowly,” Quinten said.

Sallyo slipped her long fingers into the fold in her jacket, her eyes on Neds alone. There was something heated in the way she looked at him. Something almost sensual and daring.

Had they been lovers in this time too?

She drew out an envelope and placed it in the center of the table, turned so the red wax seal that was intact across the back of it was clear to see.

Pressed into that red wax was the symbol of a sun.

“House Fire,” Quinten said, probably for my benefit.

“I was told to deliver it to you, Quinten Case, and if not you, to Matilda Case,” Sallyo said, settling back in her chair and watching my brother's expression. “I was also told I would make a lot more money if I could drag you back with me.”

Quinten had not moved. His eyes were focused on that letter. “Who sent you?”

She shook her head. “All I know is a contact had a contact who had a contact who wanted this letter delivered.”

Quinten's gaze flicked up off the envelope to me. I probably looked as tense and sweaty as he did. No one should know Matilda Case was alive. And certainly no one in House Fire.

Foster slurped the last of his cocoa and set the mug down with a satisfied sigh. He plucked the candy out of the cup and slipped it into his mouth.

“Open the letter,” Abraham said.

I reached for it, but Quinten pulled it toward himself. He already had a pocket knife open in his hand and sliced through the top edge of the brittle paper.

Yes, we were all terribly curious about what the letter contained. But I knew Quinten; he wasn't going to let anyone see it until he'd had a chance to read it first.

True to form, he stood and paced across the room, far enough away that none of us could see anything that was written on the single piece of paper he unfolded.

I couldn't look away from him. But I felt someone watching me. I glanced over and into Abraham's hazel gaze.

“Why did you want me to find you?” he asked.

I took a few seconds to sort through all the things that had happened and all the things that he knew had happened, and finally realized what he was asking. “You mean all those years ago when you were in jail?”

Right Ned frowned my way. He didn't know I'd gone back in time, riding this body to when she was really only eight years old, and sharing the body and mind with Evelyn. He didn't know I had to do it to save the world, to mend time.

“Yes,” Abraham said. “You knew the Wings of Mercury experiment was about to happen, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

He sat back, as if giving me room to prove my statement was true. “You told me if I didn't find you, the world would end.”

“Maybe it already did,” I said softly, “and we just didn't notice.”

He bit his bottom lip, his eyes narrowing. “I searched the world for you, Matilda Case.”

“You searched the world?” That was probably the most romantic thing I'd ever heard in my life. “For me?” And
that
was probably the dumbest thing I'd ever said in my life.

“Son of a bitch,” Quinten said, interrupting my stupidity.

He pulled his handgun in a smooth, swift motion and aimed it at Sallyo's head.

Abraham turned his gun on me under the table and grabbed my wrist above the table.

He jerked his hand back as if he'd just touched fire. He fisted and unfisted his hand, a scowl darkening his face.

I gave him a steady look. I knew what had happened. When he touched me, his ability to feel, to have full sensation, returned.

I could make him feel. Pleasure or pain.

Quinten didn't notice our little exchange, since he was too busy threatening to blow Sallyo's brains out. Or if he did notice, he didn't care. “Who is Slater Orange?” he demanded.

That name shot ice through my veins. My heart started beating too hard, and a wash of heat raced over my skin so quick, I was left shivering after it.

“I don't know him,” Sallyo said, avoiding a direct answer. “That isn't the name of any of my contacts.”

“You have five seconds to tell me the truth,” Quinten said.

“He's the head of House Fire,” Sallyo said.

“Bullshit,” Left Ned said.

“Rumors say he took over last month when Ina died of the One-five plague.”

“Sure are a lot of heads of sub-Houses specifically dying of the newest plague,” Left Ned said.

Quinten shot him a “shut up” look.

“Rumors?” Quinten demanded of Sallyo. “What else do you know?”

“Nothing else.” She shrugged. “Although I'm interested in what you know about those deaths, Neds Harris.”

“No,” Quinten said. “We're asking the questions. Who is Slater Orange?”

“I told you I don't know him.”

“Slater Orange is a galvanized,” I said. “Like us. Like me.”

“Not even close,” Abraham said. “He is nothing like us.”

“Quinten,” I said, “you really need to listen to me. I know him. I've always known Slater Orange.”

That seemed to sink down through his anger and reach the parts of his mind that were still capable of reason.

“How long is always?” he said to me, even though he hadn't moved the gun away from Sallyo's head.

“All
my
life,” I said, hoping he understood what that meant. “And he is a very, very dangerous man.”

Quinten took a breath, then lowered his gun.

Abraham still had the gun pointed at me under the table, but I didn't care. I'd been shot before and survived it. We galvanized could really be killed only by several bullets through our brains.

“What does the letter say?” I asked.

“That if we don't turn ourselves in—you and me, Matilda—with the cure for the plague, Slater Orange will begin bombing one House Earth compound a day, starting ten days from now. He was certainly confident you'd find us in time,” he said to Sallyo, his voice low with anger.

“I am the best at what I do,” she said.

“Can he do that?” I asked. “Can a head of a House bomb House Brown—I mean, House Earth? He has the um . . . technology, weaponry, and resources?”

“Yes,” Right Ned said.

“All right. Then we need to warn them,” I said. “We need to warn House Earth. Now.”

“Is it true?” Abraham asked Quinten.

“What?”

“Do you have the cure for the plague?”

“No.”

Good God. Quinten was lying. I'd known him long enough to catch the subtle hints of when he wasn't telling the truth.

“Then why would House Fire think you did?” Sallyo asked. “Accusing someone of hiding the cure for the plague is a rather specific charge, don't you think?”

Quinten still hadn't holstered his gun. “I have no idea what the Houses think. Nor do I care.”

“It appears they care about you. Expensively so,” she said.

Quinten stiffened, his head high, and looked down his nose at all of us still sitting at the table. I knew that brilliant mind of his was sifting through possibilities, connections, solutions. I just didn't know which problem he was trying to solve, since he seemed to have gathered a kitchen full of them.

“We need to warn House Earth,” I said again. That was the most important problem we needed to solve, and fast. I stood. Abraham stood with me, his gun still aimed at me.

That got Neds on his feet. Sallyo too.

“There are people out there,” I said, “a lot of people who are going to be killed if we don't figure out why Slater thinks Quinten has the cure. We need to warn House Earth about the bombings. We need a plan for them to escape or survive the attacks. And right now we need to either trust each other or go our separate directions. This isn't just about the prices on our heads or the money we can make. This is about the loss of innocent human lives.”

“Lives won't need to be lost if you turn yourself in,” Sallyo said.

“That's not happening,” Right Ned said flatly. “We're not coming with you to whomever you're really working for in House Fire. So you'll just have to hope that Slater fellow believes you delivered the letter, and get on out of here.”

“Put the gun down, Abraham,” Quinten said.

I'd forgotten Abraham's gun was still aimed at me. I raised one eyebrow. “Do you really think I'm afraid of a gun?”

He bit at the inside of his lip.

“Would you be?” I asked.

He twitched one eyebrow and tipped his head in a sort of shrug.

Then a strange growl rose outside. All the hair on my arms stood up as that guttural hum rattled through the air. I knew that sound. That was the sound Lizard made right before it started killing things.

The single growl was joined by another higher growl and a lower growl, echoed in the distance by more and more lizards, until the air was a painful clash of vibrating snarls.

Cutting through it all was a man's scream.

Good news: I've found a reason for living: revenge. I plan to destroy him before he destroys everything and everyone who is left. I'm still looking for you, Matilda.

—W.Y.

“W
ho's out there?” I said.

“No one important.” Quinten didn't seem at all worried, even though the screaming suddenly stopped.

“There were other bounty hunters headed this way,” Abraham said.

“You didn't want to mention that before now?” I asked.

He shrugged his right shoulder and holstered his gun. “We killed three on the way here. I assumed you knew they were out there.”

Everyone else was handling this like screaming bounty hunters and howling lizards were normal.

I hurried to the window over the kitchen sink and looked out.

I could see four lizards, the smallest about the size of a German shepherd, and the largest bigger than a rhino. They were made up of an oddly sleek hodgepodge of different animal parts—all reptilian—some with heavy bodies, some stretched out longer and more snakelike, and others bunched up and armored like a crocodile. Two of the lizards had enormous bat wings tipped with wicked hooked claws. The wings lifted and dropped in a predatory rhythm.

The lizards all surrounded one man. He wasn't screaming. He had a gun in his hand and looked like he'd been on the road for a bit, dressed in worn but sturdy pants, jacket, and boots. The gun in his hand was a huge lump of a thing. He eyed the lizards slowly closing in on him.

At his feet was a lot of blood. Since I didn't see anyone else out there screaming and he wasn't bloody, I could only guess that the puddle was all that remained of his companion.

Lizards were uncommonly fast when they got going, so I saw the crux of his situation. If he shot at one lizard, the rest would take him out in a snap. And that gun in his hand wasn't enough firepower to destroy one stitched lizard, much less four.

The largest lizard saved him the trouble of wasting bullets. It whipped its head forward and bit right through the middle of him like a hot knife through pudding. The gun fired once, uselessly, from his dead hand. And then he was gone, scooped up in big chunks and sent down the lizard's gullet. Eaten, so whole and completely, that between two blinks, it was as if there'd never been a man standing there at all.

“The lizards ate him,” I said.

Yes, I'd seen the one huge lizard in my time do some terrible damage—tear down trees, destroy our barn, throw cars around like they were toys. And that lizard had done its fair share of eating people and things with the same quick scoops.

But these four had swallowed two men—or so I assumed—in the matter of a minute.

“Are we sure he was a bounty hunter?” I asked.

“People know not to come knocking around our place if they haven't contacted us first,” Quinten said. “Which makes the three of you a question. How did you get past the lizards?”

Abraham shrugged. “They liked Foster.”

All eyes turned to Foster.

“I like them too,” he said as if that explained it all.

“How many mercs are after us, Sallyo?” Left Ned asked.

“Us? No one's after you, Harris,” she said.

“How many are headed to this property?”

She looked up at the ceiling as if working out a list. “Just to be safe, I'd assume everyone. It was a
very
generous reward.”

“Shit,” Right Ned breathed. “If we have every damn merc in the country looking for us . . .”

“You're screwed,” Abraham said.

“Better to turn yourselves in. Come with us,” Sallyo said. “That will shut down the mercs. Shut down the bombing of House Earth. And we have a decent chance of keeping you alive until we reach House Fire.”

“Or Slater will just bomb House Earth anyway,” I said.

“We don't know if he's serious about that,” Quinten said.

“Slater is serious about everything he threatens,” I said. “She's right, Quinten. The best move would be to turn ourselves in.”

“No. You just pointed out that there would be nothing to keep him from bombing the compounds,” he said. “House Fire and House Water have been looking for a reason to wipe out House Earth for years. But when Slater finds out I don't have the cure, he'll kill us and blame House Earth, and we'll all be dead.”

“I think he'll just kill us to kill us,” I said, “cure or not.”

“How much history
do
you have with Slater?” Abraham asked.

“Too much,” I said. “He's tried to kill me. A lot.”

He frowned. “When? We galvanized knew each other from our reawakenings, and I've never met you after my reawakening, Matilda Case.”

“I've just recently awakened.”

“Then how exactly do you know Slater?” His voice was low and measured. “How could you have spent time with him, enough that he would try to kill you?”

I glanced at Quinten. The only way to explain it all was to tell the truth. Which I was pretty sure no one would believe.

Quinten shook his head just slightly. He didn't want them to know what I was. I didn't blame him. Finding out that Quinten could transfer a modern person's thoughts, memories, and personality into a galvanized body was exactly how Slater had ended up taking over the galvanized body he was currently inhabiting.

“Let me ask you a question,” I said. “Why are you here, Abraham? I thought Sallyo was the one who took the delivery job.”

“I was looking for you.”

“Right. Searching the whole world. So you could turn me in to Slater?”

He tipped his head down just a bit, and the stitches at the corner of his mouth pulled hard against his scowl, stretching the skin there into white creases.

“I will never help that vile, soul-rotted filth of a man,” he said.

Good to know we had similar opinions of him.

“Why did you come out here with Sallyo?”

“When I heard she was looking for Matilda Case, I volunteered.”

“For a cut of her fee?”

“Volunteered, Matilda,” he said very plainly.

“You aren't intending to take us in to Slater?”

“No.”

“So you're on our side.”

“I am on my own side.”

“But you're not on Sallyo's side?”

Sallyo chuckled.

“Not exactly. No,” he said.

I looked over at Sallyo. She was staring at her nails like she might want to get them done soon. “Do you really think you can drag both my brother and me in on your own?” I asked.

My long-sleeved shirt did not hide the stitches across the back of my hands, nor the line of thread tracing the edge of my neck like a grim necklace.

I was galvanized, and I was not hiding it.

Sallyo had made herself a person to be feared in my time. Her name was whispered amid furtive glances over shoulders. She hadn't been a smuggler, she had been
the
smuggler, the queen of all black-market deals who had undermined the Houses to establish her own underground rules of commerce.

But as proven by the Neds and my brother, it didn't look like the personalities of the people I'd known from my time had changed much in this time. If Sallyo had been a ruthless, clever, brutal woman in my time, she was all those things here too.

But she would be sorely wrong to underestimate me.

“I, of course, didn't have full information on the Case family,” she said. “Dragging you all in would take more effort than anyone's paying me for. Letter's delivered. I made my dime.”

“Will your contact believe you delivered the letter?” I asked.

“My contact doesn't have to believe anything. I know how to stand aside until the bullets are spent.”

“Then you should leave,” Quinten said. “Now. Night's only a few hours off.”

I thought the night thing was an odd detail to bring up, but Sallyo pursed her lips. “I suppose. I suppose I should. You coming, Bram?” she asked Abraham.

“No, I don't think I am.”

That surprised me. I think it surprised Sallyo too.

Quinten shifted the barrel of his gun toward Abraham.

These people sure did seem comfortable standing around a kitchen table, waving loaded firearms at each other.

“Foster will also stay with me,” Abraham added.

“I didn't invite either of you to stay, as I recall,” Quinten said.

“Then consider this an offer of my services.” Abraham held his wide hands out to either side of him. “I was not hired to bring you in. I came here looking for Matilda. And now that I've found her, and you, I offer—I
volunteer
—my services.”

“For what?” Left Ned said. “We don't need a farmhand.”

Abraham ignored him. “I will help you warn House Earth. If you travel, I offer protection.”

“Still not seeing your play in this,” Quinten said. “What do you want?”

“Do I need an ulterior motive for wanting to help people who are in the firing line of a fight they didn't bring upon themselves, Mr. Case?”

Oh. There. That was the man I knew and loved. The man who would stand up for what was right even if it meant doing the hardest thing. A man who would stand for those who couldn't stand for themselves.

“Yes,” I said into the silence. “Yes. You can help, Abraham. We accept your offer. Don't we, Quinten? And Foster too.”

I stared at Quinten, begging him to trust me on this. Begging him to trust his not-sister who knew zero about this world and the workings of it. Willed him to let the mercenary we'd just met be a part of our plan to keep the people of House Brown—I mean, Earth—alive.

“Agreed,” he said, after what felt like a very long pause.

My heart went back to a more normal beat.

“Well, then,” Sallyo said, “isn't this cozy? Maybe I should stay as well.”

“Nope.” Neds advanced on her. He'd secured his weapon too. “You'll be leaving right about now, Sallyo.”

“With all those hungry dragons out there?” she said.

“And plenty of other ferals that will eat your skin off your bones. So you'd best be going now, before dark.”

She narrowed her eyes, but there was a small smile playing on her lips. “You're not at all concerned that I might die?”

Neds hesitated. And when Right Ned spoke, it was with the evenness of old pain. “You don't need my help, remember?”

That, finally, seemed to get through her devil-may-care exterior.

“Isn't it sad how two men with one body don't even have a single heart between them?” she said.

“Good-bye, Sallyo,” Right Ned said.

“Oh, we'll see each other again. I still owe you on that promise. And I am a woman of my word.”

“Looking forward to it.” Left Ned opened the door and held it for her.

She searched his face, as if she expected him to change his mind. But if she knew him enough to say he was two men with one body—which he was—instead of one body with two heads, she must know he never unmade his mind once it was made.

She glanced over at my brother. “You'd do yourself a favor if you'd just surrender to Slater, Quinten Case. A head of a House is the worst enemy a man can have, and denying his orders is just an invitation to an early death.”

“There might be a death,” Quinten agreed. “But it won't be mine.”

That made her smile, a quick flash of teeth and delight that softened her features and made her already lovely face come alive. “Well, then, good luck to you. Good luck to all of you.”

She stepped through the door, and Neds strolled out after her.

“Is she going to get eaten?” I asked Quinten. “Because I don't think she deserves that for delivering a letter.”

“No. Neds will tell the lizards not to eat her. This time.”

He started pacing slowly, the unfolded paper in his hand. “I want you to know that I do not share my sister's trust in you, Abraham,” he said, not looking away from the paper. “But we could use some information and contacts, and I imagine a person in your position, who knows who you know, could be very helpful.”

“As long as our goals remain in agreement,” Abraham said, “I will tell you anything you need to know.”

“Good,” Quinten said, as if they'd just given a verbal handshake. “We have a lot of things to take care of and not a lot of time. Evelyn, would you check on Grandma, please? Tell her I'm going to call the Grubens to come stay with her for a bit. She's probably in her room.”

Grandma! I'd almost forgotten she was here. I glanced in the corner where I'd last seen her knitting and her chair was empty, the little light blue pocket sheep that followed her around nowhere to be seen.

I didn't know exactly who the Grubens were, but hopefully Grandma would.

“Sure. I'll be right back.”

The kitchen had two doors, one to the outside, and one leading to the hall that stretched between the two wings of the house that contained the bedrooms, and the stairs leading down to the basement and up to the attic. Through the hallway was the living room, sitting room, and door to the front porch.

I hoped.

I walked down the hall to where Grandma's room used to be and paused with my hand on the latch.

*   *   *

Dizziness swept over me again. A rush of roses filled my nose and lungs as a distant bell toned.

The door in front of me was gone, replaced by what I'd seen before—a pile of rubble instead of a house. The explosive blast that had sent me back in time and the bullets and whatever bombs the Houses had set upon our property to try to bring me, Abraham, Foster, and Quinten in to justice had destroyed our home.

“This is a surprise,” a familiar voice said behind me. “Evelyn.”

I spun.

Slater Orange stood there in Robert's galvanized body. He wore a fine dark suit. The stitching that had run across his shaved skull was now covered with light brown hair kept short and combed back from his high forehead. His other visible stitches were carefully covered in flesh-colored makeup. Robert's bird-sharp features twisted with Slater's disdain.