House Immortal (4 page)

Good thing for me that he did.

I shut off the light, jogged the stairs, closed the hatch, and traded the dampness and memories for the warming light of day.

The whine of a drone engine high above made me walk a little faster.

That wasn't good. The farm wasn't on any of the flight paths of low-level crafts or drones. We were a pocket of nowhere surrounded by the bustling cities of everywhere.

I knew it wasn't a coincidence to hear an engine up in the blue above me today, of all days.

Whoever this man was, he had troubles following him. Which meant I needed to get him patched up and off my property before those old enemies of my father became new enemies of mine.

H
OUSE
O
RANGE

S
later Orange preferred to walk, taking the long, narrow hallway and stairs down fourteen flights, deep into the earth. House Orange, Minerals, controlled the mineral resources in the world, and he had been the head of that house for seventy years.

Over those years, he had refined the treaties and deals held between his House and all the others to his benefit. Minerals were, after all, limited and desired. That scarcity placed his House firmly in the highest ranking among Houses, though there were those who saw themselves as above him.

But all the deals he had secured had not given him the one thing he desired: immortality.

His body, which appeared to be only forty years old, was nearly one hundred. The youth treatments developed by House White, Medical, and House Yellow, Technology, had stalled the advancement of age for him, and for most of the heads of Houses.

But it could not stall the disease that had been eating away at his body for decades.

Death ended all mortal men. This was a truth even the heads of Houses could not bribe, innovate, or deal away.

But not all men were mortal. The galvanized, six men and six women, were more than three hundred years old. Nothing short of violently destroying their brains could kill them. There had been extensive experiments on the
first galvanized to prove out that theory. Arms and legs could be removed, organs destroyed, but the brains of these twelve strange people remained active, their bodies easily repaired, stitched together, and made whole.

It had made them unholy terrors on the battlefield—foes that never fell and never forgot.

And it had made them the thing he most wanted to tear apart to understand.

He had assumed Dr. Renault Case and his wife would know why the galvanized were immortal. That question had been the center of Dr. Case's research when he was at House White. But the capture of the Cases had not gone according to plan. They'd been killed, and the brightest minds had confirmed that their research seemed to be nothing but nonsense full of antiquated theories and abandoned experiments.

His hope of applying the galvanized technique to his own failing body had ended with them.

Until three years ago, when the existence of an intelligent and overly curious man by the name of Quinten Case had been brought to his attention.

Slater Orange reached the bottom of the stairs and paused, pulling the cuffs of his silk shirt straight beneath his copper brocade vest and burnt orange frock jacket, and then adjusting the ascot at his neck. He was, after all, civilized.

Today he and his House would offer a deal he knew Mr. Case would not refuse.

He pulled a silk cloth out of his pocket and dabbed away the sweat that slicked the top of his lip. Better Quinten Case think this just another day in the long string of days that had constituted nearly three years of employment.

Better he not know today would be the day everything in his life changed.

Assured his personage was in order, he walked the softly padded hall down to the huge library and research room that served as a place of study for Mr. Case.

He held up his hand, and a door-sized section of the wall faded from sight.

“Good day, Mr. Case.” Slater stepped into the room. “How are you?”

Quinten Case was a lean man in his thirties with a mop of messy brown hair and a tightly trimmed beard and mustache. His eyes were glints of navy blue that missed no detail. He'd been contracting himself out from House Gray, People, to a variety of Houses, and had landed in the possession of House Silver, Vice, before being loaned to House Orange in lieu of a large debt between House Silver and House Orange.

He was a brilliant, restless man. Perhaps even more brilliant than his father. Slater Orange knew Quinten had agreed to be loaned to House Orange only in the hopes of gaining access to his data, as he had found a way to gain access to the data at each House where he had worked.

Slater believed he was looking for his father's research. And he had made sure he found it.

“I am well enough, Your Eminence,” Quinten Case answered from where he was pacing in front of a shelf full of rare books.

The chair by the false window that displayed any view in the world was pushed to one side, the window blank. The table that had always been covered in books, papers, and recording devices—not that the frustrating Mr. Case had ever taken a single note in all the time he'd been here—was cleared and dust free.

“My contract with you has been fulfilled,” Quinten said. “More than fulfilled by months now, as I've been trying to explain to your servants. My three years are over. I have organized your research library. I have scoured every entry for the information you wanted. There is no data that indicates the galvanized experiment can be replicated. I am sorry not to have found more encouraging results. I will be taking my leave.”

“Will you?” Slater Orange asked with zero interest. “And where do you think you will go?”

“Back to House Gray, of course.”

“Such an interesting choice.”

“I wouldn't think so,” he said. “It is the House that has legal claim to me.”

Slater almost smiled at him bringing up the legality of his ownership. The Houses were the law, and the law was whatever they desired it to be.

“While you have been looking through my records, Mr. Case,” Slater said, “I have been looking through yours. Not the records of your service to House Gray. Older, hidden things.”

Quinten was still pacing, pacing. No expression on his face, no pause in his step. He was a caged thing that had finally spotted the open door. He wanted out. But he knew if he rushed his keeper, he would never be granted freedom.

“I have found something very precious to you. Something you hid away on a farm. Do you know what that is, my dear Mr. Case? Do you know
who
it is?”

Ah, there. Quinten faltered just slightly in his pacing, the surprise catching at his feet.

“I see that you do,” Slater went on. “Would you like to know how I discovered the creature you built, that lovely young girl?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Quinten said. “I do know I have a right to contact House Gray.”

Slater ignored him. “Your mother believed she could get information out to someone who cared, all those years ago before they died. She believed there would be other people at other Houses willing to take her side. To save her husband. To save her. And, yes, to save the abomination they had been so intent to keep a secret all these years. A stitched daughter.

“She said nothing of you, her only natural son,” Slater continued. “I have spent months wondering over that. Perhaps you have spent years wondering why your
mother would send out a distress message and not mention you.”

That finally made Quinten stop pacing. He turned and pressed his fingers to his lips, gathering his thoughts.

“I am a man of some intelligence, Your Eminence,” he said. “Unless I am allowed to see this message you speak of, I have no opinion on it whatsoever. I respectfully request contact with House Gray.”

“There is nothing House Gray can do for you, Mr. Case,” Slater Orange said. “I own you now. And with the press of a finger, I can send forces out to capture that young woman you built.”

“I respectfully request contact with House Gray,” he repeated.

“Let me make my intentions very clear,” Slater Orange said. “I will go to extremes to tear that lovely young girl apart slowly and brutally until I see what makes her tick.

“Or . . .” He lifted the cloth to pat the sweat at his lip, just once. “You can tell me what you know. What have you found in your father's research? Better still: how did you make that girl galvanized? Is she immortal or is she nothing more than a toy doll, slowly unwinding?”

Quinten shifted his shoulders a fraction and curled his hands at his sides. He might be a scholarly man, but he had spent most of his life out in the unclaimed lands, scratching out his survival day by day. He was a resourceful man, and maybe just a bit wild.

“I have served my contract,” he said. “You will release me now or allow me contact with House Gray.”

It was all he said. A curse of sorts. A defiance.

“Ah, now, Mr. Case. You know I can't do that. What I can do is kill her while you watch.”

Quinten didn't even blink, nor did his breathing change. He had probably already worked through the outcome of this meeting. An outcome that would not be in his favor.

Slater needed that young stitched girl alive. If Quinten
refused to give him the information on how to create a galvanized body, then she was the only person in the world who had been stitched in modern times. A blueprint. A beginning of his forever.

She was his chance at immortality. A chance he must take before his body gave in to the disease even his best doctors had run out of solutions for.

She was his last chance to cheat death.

“Now,” Slater Orange said. “Let us negotiate your life and the life of that poor, helpless creature.”

Settlers cleared that land, staked their farms, built their homes. They did not know a dead comet lay beneath their soil until they dug up its grave and discovered what it had left behind.—1712

—from the journal of L.U.C.

I
jogged across the porch and into my kitchen. Neds and the stranger were gone, leaving behind a good-sized puddle of blood on the floor.

Grandma still sat in the corner, knitting away, the little sheep, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, having curled up to sleep at her feet. She was singing about sawbones at the grave and hope begging for mercy's gun. For a sweet old gal, she sure did have a bloody taste in music.

“Where's Neds?” I asked as I dug in the cupboard and pulled out the jar of scale jelly.

She blinked watery eyes and lowered her knitting—still the same cream-colored scarf she'd been working on for months. It was near long enough to wrap a person head to foot with a good yard or so left over, but she insisted it wasn't long enough yet.

“Which Ned, dear?” she asked.

“Both of them.”

“I think he was moving that dead body that came to visit,” she said. “Don't know why a body would want to
die on the kitchen floor. Bedroom floor, maybe. Or porch. Wouldn't be too bad to die on the porch, would it? If you could see the sky.”

“He's not dead,” I said. I hoped.

“Oh, that's good.” She glanced around the room, then whispered, “Is he a ghost come to haunt? All these years later, I have my regrets. Of course, we all do.”

“Not a ghost either, so no need to regret anything, Grandma. Just sit here. I'll be right back.”

That was about as much sense as I could get out of her these days. Sometimes she'd clear up and every word out of her mouth was right on target. But most the time she was wrapped in that aging mind of hers, singing that one bloody song, living those old, regretful memories, while fingers counted off her remaining time in loops and stitches.

“Don't step in the blood on the floor, though,” I said as I headed out of the room. “I'll mop it up in a second.”

She went back to her knitting and song again. “Coated with blood, knife cut to the bone, filling the cup that peace drank alone . . .”

There was a time when her hush-little-baby tune was about Papa buying mockingbirds and golden rings. Now it was verse after verse of sadness and pain.

I didn't know how much she remembered of my parents being killed. She'd never spoken a word about my father or mother in fourteen years. But she'd never been the same since, really. I suppose neither of us had.

The spare room was next to Neds' room, which used to be my father's office.

Grandma and I bedded on the other side of the house—I in my parents' master bedroom; she in the room that used to be mine when I was a girl.

The entire upper floor of the house was empty and dusty and had enough space we could put up a traveling sideshow if we wanted. That space had come in handy now and then, when we'd hosted House Brown families
on the move who had lost their stakes to the creep of cities or had their farms swallowed up by House claims.

It was part of why I kept Quinten's communication network going. Those of us in House Brown were nomads, living on the fringe, unwilling to buckle to the rules and regulations of the other Houses. Unwilling to give up our lives and freedom because the rich and powerful decided to tell us how to live.

House Brown had no voice among the other Houses. Which meant we had only each other to count on for our safety and needs. Clear and fast communication was vital for the survival of thousands. I wasn't the only communication hub in the world—there were four others—but I was the only one in North America. And if the Houses found out what I was doing here, found our network and equipment in the basement, they'd shut us down and put thousands of people at risk.

Which was why I needed to get this galvanized man off my land, pronto.

I caught up with Neds in the hall. He'd hooked his arms under the stranger's shoulders and was walking backward toward the spare room, sweating hard as he dragged the man.

“You change the sheets?” I picked up the man's boots, helping to carry him. He weighed twice what I expected. No wonder Neds were sweating.

“Yes,” Right Ned grunted. “Did you get everything?”

“I think so. Brought some bandaging just in case. And the jelly. It did good for me when the pony put a hole in me last year.”

Neds stopped next to the bed, which had an old quilt and blanket pulled all the way down to the footboard and fresh, fold-creased sheets stretched out across it.

“Ready?” Left Ned said. “Lift on three.”

I nodded.

“One, two, three.” Neds lifted and swung the top half of the stranger, while I did the same for his bottom half.

The springs creaked and moaned under the man's
weight, and the mattress sagged alarmingly. But the frame was hardwood and held up.

“Feet hang over pretty bad,” I noted. I got busy unlacing and unbuckling his boots—a good, sturdy pair that had seen years of wear and repair. I tugged those off and dropped them to the floor.

Right Ned wiped at his sweaty bangs, then tucked thumbs into the tool loops on the sides of his overalls. “You need anything else? Water and rags for the blood maybe?”

“Water's a good idea. A bucket should do. Then maybe some help lifting him if I have to wrap the bandage all the way around his middle.”

“He shouldn't be here,” Left Ned said. “House Gray. Probably a spy. Or worse.”

“Isn't your say,” Right Ned replied. “This is Tilly's house. Her decision.”

I turned away from setting the supplies on the nightstand to find Neds standing right behind me.

Left Ned was scowling and obviously working to keep his opinion to himself. Right Ned raised one eyebrow, and I grinned at the spark of humor in his soft blue eyes.

I didn't know how that man could stand Left Ned's attitude sometimes. But they were brothers. What else could he do?

“Do you think there's something dangerous about our visitor?” I asked. Neds had more worldly experience than I, since he'd been in and out of the big cities and traveled for most of his life. “Seeing as how he's unarmed and unconscious,” I added.

“Go ahead,” Left Ned said, “joke about it. But he's trouble. Galvanized trouble.”

“It's fine,” Right Ned said. “Nothing about him you can't handle. We've seen you take down crocboars bare-handed.”

“You should have kicked him out on his heels, not dragged him in here and bedded him down like a lost puppy,” Left Ned muttered. “He's a stranger.”

“I take in lots of strangers,” I said. “Plus, he's wounded. A Case always tends to those who are hurt. Even if he was my sworn enemy, I'd patch him up before kicking him to the crocs.”

“We know that's your way, Tilly,” Right Ned said. “And we respect it. Don't we?” he said to Left Ned.

“No,
we
don't,” Left Ned said. “Too much kindness will just get you trouble. And that”—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the bed—“is already too much trouble.”

Right Ned rolled his eyes. “We'll get the water. Be right back.”

I knew Left Ned was right. Sometimes it was better for all involved just to let a wounded thing lie. Sometimes kindness only reaped a bitter harvest.

But the man had come to warn my father. He'd come to help him, quite possibly at the risk of receiving that wound he now suffered. If for nothing more than his stated intentions, I felt he deserved to be mended.

And quickly, before he drew unwanted attention to my property.

Neds, probably Right Ned, had pushed the curtain back from the window, letting the daylight in to cheer the place.

From here I could see the row of oak trees stretched out on either side of it, all the way down the two miles before it ended at the old highway no one used anymore now that the cities were connected by freeways, sky, and tubes.

I pushed my hair out of my eyes. Grandma said my hair was the color of maple syrup and beautiful. I just thought it was bouncy and got in the way too much. I turned back to the supplies.

Thread, needles, scissors, clamps, plain cotton, and bandages. Regular disinfectants didn't work on me, and I'd guessed they might not work on him either, which was why I'd brought a small jar of scale jelly. It looked
like fruit jelly, a nice amber yellow of peach or tangerines boiled with sugar. But it was not eating jelly at all.

It was boiled-down lizard scales. When Neds had taken some of it down to the feed and seed just to see if they had ever seen the stuff, the owner had no idea what it was made of.

Dr. Smith, who'd been buying wormer for his goats that day, took an awfully strong interest in it, and said it didn't look, smell, or feel like any medicine he'd ever used to patch up people or animals. He'd volunteered to run it through his lab to see what made it up.

Luckily, the Neds aren't the sort who trust easily. They'd told the doctor no, laughed it off as just a single near-empty jar they'd found down by the old nuclear power plant at Clark's River, and come on home.

We didn't know why it worked on me—maybe it was a stitched thing. It did nothing at all for the Neds. But as long as it worked, I was happy for it and did my best to keep a supply stocked.

“You're lucky I was a nosy and willful child,” I said as I rolled up the sleeves of my checkered shirt. “Even luckier Quinten answered my questions. Well, most of them, anyway. Let's get to patching that gash of yours.”

I braced my knees against the box spring and lifted him a bit, then tugged off his jacket sleeve by sleeve.

I put him down as easy as I could, but it must not have been that easy. He moaned a little, and his eyes rolled under the lids.

“Now I'm going to take off your shirt,” I said in a friendly voice. I wasn't sure if he could hear me, but I didn't want him to wake up fighting. I'm strong, but preferred not to stitch up a wound while ducking a fist.

His hands, covered in half-dried blood, were twice the size of mine. And the rest of him matched that proportion.

Not much could knock me out cold, but I figured if he clocked me, I'd be seeing stars.

“I'm starting here with your sleeves.” I made sure all
the cuff buttons were undone, then leaned over him. “Rolling up the right sleeve, my friend.” My fingers brushed against the ridge of stitches that circled his forearm.

I'd never touched another person life-stitched like me. Never touched a man, unless the few times I'd patched up Neds' cuts counted. My father, then brother, had insisted I stay hidden. Said if I let any other person find out I was stitched, they'd come to kill me, kill us all—land, beasts, and every last Case included.

So I didn't have the experience with men that other woman my age had. I had long ago accepted that was just the way it would be.

Unless I found someone whom I could trust with my secret. Whom I could trust with my life.

And that only happened in fairy tales.

Gently, I dragged one finger along the stitches on the man's arm again. It wasn't a horrible feeling; it wasn't frightening or odd.

Being stitched was evidence of a mending, an overcoming of pain. Our scars were proof that we were strong enough to keep living.

I carefully slid the button at the top of his collar through the hole. His collar loosened. He caught his breath just slightly as my knuckle brushed the bare skin of his neck.

I didn't think the galvanized had much feeling. Just in case I was causing him pain, I decided to keep talking.

“My farmhand says you're trouble. I hope you prove him wrong and see that I'm just here trying to help you.”

I thumbed the next button open. “So just stay still. I'll try to be gentle.”

I hadn't put my hands on this much of a man, well, ever. I was trying not to get distracted by it, but couldn't help but let my imagination wander over him a bit.

I undid the rest of his buttons, then assessed the situation of his torn-up undershirt. Seemed a shame to cut up a man's shirt, but it already had a slash through the
front from whatever sharp edge he'd gotten into an argument with.

Didn't look like a crocboar did it. Too clean, and he had too many of his guts still on the inside.

I tugged his undershirt up out of his pants, exposing just an inch or two of his bare stomach above his belt. His skin was a shade lighter than his hands, several shades lighter than my skin.

No stitches at his belt line, just smooth ridges of muscles.

I took up the scissors and cut along the seam of his undershirt, holding the material in one hand away from his skin. Even at rest, he had a body of a fighter: muscular arms, chest, stomach, and thighs. I knew the galvanized fought for show, but I'd always suspected it was just for show.

I was wrong.

“Hold still. I'd hate to stab something important.” I slid the scissors under the narrow strap over his shoulders. Snipped, blew a breath to get my hair out of my eyes, stretched across his chest, and cut the other shoulder free.

I folded the material down and away to one side, leaving him bare beneath me.

Stitches ran from the muscles of his left shoulder, crossed with another set over his well-defined chest to make an X over his heart. The stitches continued over the tight muscles of his stomach, skirted the edge of his wound, and ticked down across the muscle ridge above his left hip bone. Three thinner lines of stitches tracked from the center of his chest and buried in the knotted muscles across his right ribs.

Other stitches ringed his right shoulder, elbow, wrist, and ring finger.

I'd seen Neds shirtless once when he'd gone swimming in the creek. He was put together in a pleasant, natural sort of way: skin and muscles all the same smoothness, tone, and stretch, making a well-built man
who happened to brace a bit wide at the upper back and shoulders to make room for both heads.