Infinity Bell: A House Immortal Novel (19 page)

I miss my parents every day. I want to tell them I’m sorry, tell them I love them. Tell them that I know this was my fault.

—from the diary of E. N. D.

W
e left the bus half a mile out from the northeast border of our property and made our way on foot down the old washed-out road as quickly and quietly as we could. It was eight in the morning, raining, and we had three hours left before the world ended.

I was worried about being spotted, but Welton assured me that the rain would do a lot of good to keep us off certain tracking devices, and the thing—whatever it was—that he carried in his briefcase would pretty much blind or fool anything else mankind had invented.

I hoped he was right. The Houses wanted us captured or dead. And they had drones, satellites, and droppers that could be on top of us at the push of a button.

Every time we were under the tree cover, tromping through wet underbrush that made a lot of noise, I was sure we’d be caught. Out in the open made me feel even
more vulnerable. Too much sky, too much loud gravel, mud, and broken stretches of concrete.

If anyone else had worries, they kept them to themselves, so I did the same.

At least the rain hadn’t turned into a downpour. It was just a steady sort of wet September misery falling out of the sky that had me thinking more than once about the warmth of the covers I’d left behind.

And the warmth of Abraham’s arms around me.

“How close do you need to be?” I asked Welton quietly as we took the hitch in the road that would set us right down along the creek. If we followed the creek, we’d end up at the pump house.

“I’ll throw the monkey in the gears when we have visuals on the perimeter patrol,” he said.

“Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?” I asked.

He shook his head and water trickled down from his bangs into his eyes. He’d put on a wool beanie and insisted Foster do the same, even though the big guy couldn’t feel the wet or the cold. “They’re not stupid. They’ll quickly discover our ploy, and we’ll want to be moving in fast right about then.”

“And what’s going to stop them from lobbing a bomb at us?” I asked.

“That dragon of yours.”

“Lizard.”

“Whatever you want to call it, it is a delightful beast. I do not know what your father was thinking of using it for, but as a thing that can cause sheer chaos, it should be unparalleled.

“So,” he continued, “distraction, dash to the pump house where we can cut the electric to the fence around
the dragon, poke the beast—I understand it is sensitive to certain high frequencies—and let the fun and frolic begin.”

“You have a twisted sense of fun, Welton.”

“Yes. Yes, I do. Your brother, on the other hand.” He shook his head and we both stared after Quinten, who was walking ahead of us, just behind Abraham. Foster brought up the rear with Neds, leaving Gloria, me, and Welton in the middle.

“What about him?” I asked.

Welton just shrugged. “Smart man, I can say that. I would like to have met him in better times.”

“Then you would have never have known him,” I said. “We haven’t really had better times.”

“Hm.” We walked for a bit, and then Welton said, “I’ve met men like him before. Running House Technology brings a person in contact with staggering minds—brilliant, savagely genius people. I’ve seen men like your brother lock on to a problem they are determined to solve.”

We walked for a while more. The next bend would drop us at the actual edge of our property. We were close now. Almost there.

“And?” I asked.

“They all have the same blind spot,” Welton said.

“What’s that?”

“They do not see how much of themselves they give away to the problem. They do not see how much that focus makes them perceive only one thing: the problem. Your brother has cracked the code on the Wings of Mercury—or thinks he has. Impressive,” he said with a single nod. “But he has put too much of himself into that solution. Men are not pure enough to endure such heat.”

“A little less poetry and a little more clarity would be nice,” I said.

“I think . . . no, I know that if he manages to catch the moment and travel back in time, he will cease to exist.”

At my silence, he said, “That means I think he’ll die.”

I wanted to roll my eyes at him but was too busy dealing with the idea that my brilliant brother’s brilliant idea was going to kill him.

“He knows, doesn’t he?” I breathed. Now that little outburst by the bus made sense. He wasn’t angry about all the things he’d sacrificed for me in the past; he was angry that he was going to sacrifice his life for me now.

He was going to die so I could live.

No wonder why he didn’t want to talk to Gloria and tell her he cared for her. He knew what the endgame would be. His death.

“Yes,” Welton said. “I’m sure he does. I just thought you would want to know. I never had siblings, but . . . well, there are those of whom I am fond. I’d want to know if my time with them was about to be cut tragically short.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But I’m not going to let that happen.”

“Oh?”

“He’s my brother. He’s done his job looking after me, protecting me. For all our lives. Now it’s my turn to protect him.”

“Spoken like a true galvanized,” he said.

“Spoken like family,” I replied.

“That too.”

Abraham stopped, held his hand up. We all paused. We’d been walking for just over a half hour. We had two and a half hours left.

Abraham pushed forward through the thicker brush. I could hear the creek rushing by. It was such a familiar sound, so much a part of the pulse and breath of my home, that a surge of homesickness poured through me.

I wanted to grab my brother’s hand and run home. Forget this fight, forget these guns, forget our time slipping down to zero. I just wanted to be home with him and Grandma, my arms wrapped around them, together as the world wound down.

But that was a child’s dream, a child’s longing.

It was much too late for that.

It might be much too late for everything.

Abraham scanned the creek long enough that I was getting a little itchy from the rain and sweat.

Then he strolled back to us, and we all pulled in close, bending our heads together in a huddle so he could speak quietly.

“The creek is just down the other side of this hill.” He pulled a palm screen out and it displayed the property. Our location was a small red dot more than a quarter of a mile from the house itself. The guards were indicated by yellow dots that surrounded the house, moving along the road that ringed our pasture, and in clumps of three spaced about a mile apart that were walking the outer edge of our property.

“The next patrol out this far should be passing by in about five minutes.” He pointed at a clump of approaching yellow dots. “Does everyone remember where they are going and what they need to do?”

Everyone nodded.

“All right,” he said. “No heroic crap. I expect each of you to stick to the plan. Your death will not change time. It
will not improve this mission. You will each make decisions that will keep you alive. Do not fear for Matilda, Foster, or me. They want us more or less in one piece, and it is very difficult to take us down. We are the mostly likely targets. Do not be surprised if more than a few bullets hit their mark. Stay safe. Even if that means standing down. Are we all gold on that?”

I had to smile at his use of that old saying. “I’m gold,” I said.

“Gold,” the others echoed.

“Good,” Abraham said. “Welton, you’re up.”

Welton pulled back his sleeve to reveal a watch. “Quinten?”

Quinten dug around in his pocket and pulled out his pocket watch. He and Welton must have done some upgrades. The shapes inside the liquid face were shifting in precise rhythm to the watch on Welton’s wrist.

They held both time devices close, waited; then each touched something on the watch faces.

“Good luck to you, Quinten,” Welton said. “And thank you for letting me come along for the fun.”

Quinten nodded. “Just stay on track. Any deviation could be catastrophic to our objective.”

“Understood.” He patted Quinten politely on the shoulder. Then Welton shifted the case in his hand, placing four fingers into indents at the edge of it. “And ready,” he said. “On three. One, two, three.”

He pressed down.

I thought I heard a buzzing just outside my range, but then it was gone.

The yellow dots on Abraham’s screen paused, turned,
and headed in the opposite direction. “Let’s go,” Abraham said.

Whatever Welton had done was supposed to draw all their attention to the far side of the property and send most of the patrol there.

What we needed now was speed, not quiet.

We scrambled through the underbrush, wet limbs and brush slapping at us, the leaves under our feet slippery on the downhill slope.

The rumble of an engine fading into the distance was a welcome sound. That would be the nearest patrol moving away to close the circle, thinking we were approaching from the south.

But we still had about a quarter of a mile before we hit the pump house.

We ran along one side of the creek, using it as our guide to the pump house. Rain came down harder. Each footstep sent wet up to my knees. My wounds were healed enough that they weren’t bleeding. While running in the rain wasn’t exactly my idea of easy, I was in good shape and could handle it.

Welton seemed to have some trouble keeping up, his breathing going too hard too fast, and I remembered that Abraham said he had had lung problems when he was a child.

Foster, who was still bringing up the rear, finally knelt and refused to go a step farther until Welton got on his back.

I thought Welton would argue, but he just cussed, then got on Foster’s back.

As for Foster, he was a tireless machine, a mountain
of muscle and scars and stitches and wires. Grim as a gravestone; determined as death.

Gloria ran beside me, and Neds clipped along at our heels. None of us wasted time on talk.

Finally, finally, the pump house came into view. There was only one narrow door into the little structure. As far as I could tell, no one had thought it was anything more than a pump house.

Which was true. It really did pump the water up to the property and out to the fields. Beneath it, however, was Dad’s lab.

I wasn’t sure that we needed Dad’s lab, but the feed to the electric fences could be controlled from there.

We slowed our approach. Just because most of the patrol was dealing with the diversion south didn’t mean they wouldn’t have eyes out here.

Abraham checked the screen again.

No sign that we’d been spotted. I strode up to the door and opened it, and Foster and Welton rushed inside into the dark with me, the others waiting outside, hidden in the trees that surrounded the pump house.

“Are you ready?” I asked, my hand on the breaker for the electric fences.

“Just. A second.” Welton opened the briefcase, looked up as if getting his compass bearings, then nodded. “Do it.”

I pulled the toggle, breaking the feed.

“And now: chaos.” Welton turned a dial and flipped a switch.

Nothing. I couldn’t hear anything.

“Is it working?” I asked. “Welton, tell me that thing of yours is working.”

He held up one finger, his head bent, as if listening for a faint call of a whistle.

That’s when I heard it. The not-at-all-faint scream of a man, followed by gunfire and the warbling hiss of a very angry Lizard that sent chills through my bones.

“Music,” Welton said. “Why haven’t I made a dragon? I really should do so. Such a fun beastie.”

“Lizard,” I said absently. “Are we clear yet?”

Abraham and the others were outside, waiting for our signal.

“Hold on.” Welton scrolled through what appeared to be a couple dozen camera feeds on my property, focused around the house.

The guards who had been stationed on the porch by the kitchen door and around the perimeter of the house had all left to take care of the three-story reptile tearing its way through the outbuildings.

Bullets bounced off the beast’s thick hide. Lizard was lightning fast when it got going, and it was going now: a streak of muscle and scales that moved too far, too fast between each eye blink, stopping only long enough to smash guards, vehicles, and weapons into an oily mash.

“Can’t see inside the house, but that’s as clear a path as I think we’ll get,” he said.

“Good enough.” I racked a round in my rifle and walked out of the pump house. I signaled the others in the brush to follow.

Sneaking up on the place wasn’t going to do us much good. Welton insisted he had control of all eyes on the place and had blocked or false-fed the other drones and satellites and spy devices that any other House might have put in place.

Abraham, Quinten, Neds, and Gloria strode out of the trees, guns ready.

We broke into a jog and made quick work of the old path up to the yard, where Abraham made us pause to scope out the house.

“Still no guards,” I said.

“Ain’t right,” Left Ned said.

“Nothing’s right,” I said. “Ready?”

Abraham nodded.

We exited the scant cover and crossed the yard to the kitchen door. In the distance, Lizard threw a vehicle that came crashing down to the west, taking out a good section of our pear orchard. An explosion rocked the air.

I was a step ahead of Abraham. Quinten was behind him, then Gloria and Neds.

I opened the kitchen door and strode in, rifle tucked against my shoulder.

The kitchen was pretty much as I’d left it: mostly clean, smelling of freshly brewed tea, and no new blood on the floor.

I heard voices in the other room; one of them sounded like Boston Sue. The other was my grandmother. My heart rattled in my chest. She was alive. Alive enough to be talking. That was a good start.

“Come in, Matilda, Quinten,” Reeves Silver’s voice called out from the other room. “You too, Abraham and Mr. Harris. We’ve just brewed the tea.”

Quinten won’t stop making stupid, rash decisions. I’m worried he has a death wish.

—from the journal of E. N. D.

R
eeves Silver was in my house, with my grandmother.

I glanced at Abraham. His lips were pressed together, and he frowned. Probably thinking something along the line of what I was thinking.

If we stormed into the room, shooting, Grandma was bound to be hurt.

We had planned to surrender, after all. I lowered my rifle and walked through the short adjoining hallway to the living room.

“Matilda Case,” Reeves said. “You are looking well.”

The head of House Silver wore a casual sweater and slacks, his white hair brushed up and back from his tanned face, giving his blue eyes a glacial glint.

He stood at the far side of the room, leaning on the old stone fireplace.

Grandma was in her comfortable chair, which had been placed in the middle of the room. She was knitting,
the three pocket-sized sheep in her lap. To one side of her was the generously proportioned Boston Sue, who had a cup of tea in one hand and a gun pointed at my grandmother in the other.

Three guards, heavily armored and heavily weaponed, stood near Reeves, their guns trained on us.

“Why don’t you put your weapons down?” Reeves suggested. “We’ll have some tea, and we’ll see if we can’t all get through this little business conversation unbloodied.”

The clack of guns behind us made me glance over my shoulder. Three more guards stepped into the room, guns aimed at our heads.

Neds flicked me a look, and I shook my head slightly. I refused to get into a shoot-out that would kill my grandmother before the smoke cleared.

“Call off your men,” I said, “and we’ll talk.”

Reeves pursed his lips. “You’re saying I should stand here, without any weapon in my hands”—he lifted his palms just to prove that point—“while each of you has a gun? That is called an inhospitable negotiation climate. Not my favorite way to do business. So no. However,” he continued like he was just warming up to the beginning of a meeting, “if you put
your
guns on the floor, I will have my men leave the room so that we can get on with our talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said. “This is my land, this is my home, and this is my grandmother. You are trespassing. And you are going to leave. Now.”

Reeves smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “You know what I like about these kinds of stalemates, Matilda?” he asked. “They can last for hours. Or days. I have all the time in the world. What about you?”

My heart tripped into a fast beat. He knew. He knew we had no time—well, very little time. He knew that I’d do anything to keep my grandmother safe, just as I’d done anything to keep my brother safe.

What I needed was a quick solution. Bloodless and bulletless, if possible.

“Fine.” I placed my rifle on the coffee table to my left. “My gun’s down. Tell your guards to get the hell out of my living room.”

“Done.” Reeves wrapped his hands together. “Please,” he said to the guards, “wait outside.”

I signaled for Abraham and the others to put their weapons down, which they did, Neds the most grudgingly.

The guards walked out the front door, and I heard their boots cross the porch and crunch in the gravel. I also head the Lizard warbling and the thunderous crack of a tree being uprooted.

If we got out of this, I’d have months of repair to do on the place.

“Now,” I said, “you are going to give me one good reason not to shoot you.”

“Other than Boston Sue has a gun on your grandmother? I suppose if you’d like to risk her point-blank aim, then by all means . . . take your shot. But the moment you do, all the forces I called off when I got here—not just my guards, but all the other House forces who had surrounded your house, including drop units that were carrying a squadron of soldiers armed with incendiary rounds—will be crawling over you. In seconds.”

It might be a lie. It might not.

“What do you want, Reeves?” Quinten asked.

“Mr. Case. I hope you’re feeling better now that you’ve gotten a bit of fresh air. Your release from Slater Orange’s prison seems to suit you.”

“You wouldn’t be here, in person, trying to hold all the cards in your hand, if you weren’t desperate for something we have,” Quinten went on as if Reeves hadn’t even spoken. “What do you want?”

“I want a deal.”

“For what?” Quinten asked.

We were still standing on one side of the living room, and Reeves still leaned on the fireplace.

Bo hadn’t said a word since we’d come into the room, other than to give me a smug sort of smile that made me want to slap her.

“I trusted you,” I said to her.

“Oh, baby sweet,” she said, “that was your mistake. Trust is fine, but money makes much louder promises.”

Grandma finally noticed all the commotion going on around her. She stopped knitting, her face a mix of confusion and worry. Then she noticed me.

“Matilda?”

“I’m here, Grandma,” I said. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“What is wrong?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” I said, “everything is good. We were just saying that everything is going to be fine. You have some tea there you could drink.”

She looked around, spotted the cup on the table next to her, and made a happy sound.

“My proposal,” Reeves said, “is a simple merger between our two Houses. House Silver and House Brown. Over the years I’ve been working with people from House Brown and I have been pleased with their . . .
flexible sense of morality and
infinite
need for money. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Harris?”

“Fuck bricks, Reeves,” Left Ned said. “Cut your deal or call your troops before I get it into both my minds to blow your head off out of boredom.”

“You want me to cut to the chase?” Reeves asked. “Fine. Here’s the chase: I want House Brown. All of it. Off record, of course. I want full access to every pocket and farm and compound and bunker stashed away in the world. Names, numbers, resources, capabilities.”

“We don’t own House Brown,” I said. “It can’t be bought. It’s a collection of people who make up their own minds on how they live and what they do. Those people’s lives are not up for sale.”

“What I want,” he repeated, “are your records, your contacts, names, and the history you have on every member of House Brown. All of them. I want all the information you own. You are the communication hub for House Brown, are you not? That is what all that equipment in the basement is for. Well, that’s what all the equipment
was
for, wasn’t it?”

A chill washed through me and an unshakable fear clutched my gut. That equipment in the basement was what Quinten was going to use to trigger his time travel. If Reeves had damaged it, destroyed it, taken it, our plan would be worthless and I’d be dead in a few minutes.

“You can’t own something we have no influence over,” Quinten said, refusing to react to the idea that Reeves had destroyed the equipment.

“But you
do
have influence over each and every person in House Brown. You will explain to them that you’ve made a deal with House Silver that is in their best
interests. Of course, they can stay off grid and under radar—that is one of the things I most like about House Brown. But they will do business for me whenever I call upon them to do so. I will pay monthly stipends. A little more credit in their pockets for nothing more than their silence and occasional help.”

“Help?” Quinten asked. “Help for what? Smuggling illegal compounds and products below House notice? Transporting or killing people and the other unfortunates who cross you or get in the way of your power plays and House politics?”

“You want House Brown to be your pet criminals?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he said. “I want House Brown to fall under my care. I want to nurture it and give the people in the House the niceties they currently lack. In return, I will help House Brown become fully recognized among the world powers. It will have a voice among the Houses. Isn’t that what you wanted, Matilda? Wasn’t that the price you expected House Gray to pay for owning you?”

“House Brown won’t have their voice,” I said. “They’ll have
your
voice. This isn’t about charity, Reeves. This is about you claiming people and using them however it suits you.”

“Well. These things do tend to happen that way. I am offering to lift House Brown out of the squalor, dirt, and shame of its past. The past of a failed rebellion and a war that they lost—decades ago. I am offering them victory. I will stand beside them and help House Brown become strong. A force in the world.”

All the pretty spin he put on those lies didn’t change the fact that he wanted House Brown for reasons that
would only benefit him. He already was in position to take over House Orange, and if he owned House Brown, he would become a very powerful man indeed.

He once told me all the world was a game board, and he was the only one who knew how to make the pieces dance. And they were dancing right into his control.

The last thing House Brown wanted was to be under another House’s rule. Reeves Silver was right: people who were now a part of House Brown were the sons and daughters of those who had fled from being owned by the other Houses.

Freedom was more than an empty word for them.

It was not a coin that could be traded.

“No one owns House Brown,” I repeated. “Not us, and certainly not you.”

“I don’t think that you own it, Miss Case. But you are respected within it. You and your brother. All I need is your approval on a few key matters. When I call on you to endorse my desires, you will do so. Quickly and without falsity. In exchange, I will ask your fellow House Brown neighbor, Boston Sue there, not to murder your grandmother.”

I didn’t look at Bo or Grandma; I just kept my eyes on the devil.

“We contact House Brown,” I said. “Tell them we approve of the new management, and you walk out of here, leaving us all to live happily ever after?”

“Oh no,” he said. “Not at all. There is a price on your head. Yours and Abraham’s. You will both come with me—your lovely grandmother too. We’ll leave your brother to send out the message to House Brown.”

“No,” Abraham said, speaking up for the first time since we’d stepped into the room.

“This is the
only
offer you are going to get, servant,” Reeves snapped. “You shouldn’t even be breathing right now. You’re mine to do with as I please, Abraham Seventh.”

“I am no man’s property,” Abraham said in a low rumble. “My allegiance is to House Gray, not Silver.”

“Such delusions of your station in life,” Reeves said. “Oscar was soft. You liked him that way. You made him that way. You used him and that soft head of his so you could get what you wanted. Oh yes. I know how you made him think you were his friend while you made decisions behind the scenes. But Oscar is dead now. And that death is on
your
hands.”

“
You
killed him,” Abraham said in a way that was a promise, a threat.

“No,” Reeves Silver said, “my bitch of a galvanized, Helen, killed him. Do you really think I would order her to shoot another head of a House in plain sight at the most publically viewed event of the year? Do you know what that did to my plans?”

“I know
exactly
what you would order her to do,” Abraham said. “You know we talk, don’t you? The stitched? Helen was more than happy to tell me what you had done to her. And what you’d told her to do. If Slater hadn’t shot me, I would have been there to stop her.”

That surprised me. I didn’t know if Abraham and Helen had talked in the short amount of private time the galvanized had spent together before the gathering. I did know Helen didn’t seem to like me much. But maybe she was just angry and trying to get out of doing something she didn’t want to do. Something that could lock her away for life.

Although I’d seen her eyes when she shot Oscar. There had been no regret in them.

Truth or bluff, Abraham’s comment was enough to make Reeves pause.

“Willing or unwilling,” Reeves said. “You are mine. All of you. Mr. Case here has convinced you both that he can do something to stop you from dying today. That is not true. There is no break in time from that ancient experiment. There is just this sorry, desperate child-man who can’t get over Mommy and Daddy dying in the front yard. He has convinced himself he can travel through time.”

He was angry, yelling. And he was wasting our time.

“He’s deluded!” he said. “The only reality here is my generous offer, the gun in Boston Sue’s hand, and the snipers who have you in their sights. You will deal with me, or, so help me, I will just
kill
you all and remove you from my list of problems.”

“We’ll do it,” I said. “We’ll give you House Brown.”

Abraham didn’t look my way, but every muscle in his body tensed, his fists curling into a white-knuckle grip.

“Tilly,” Right Neds warned.

I wasn’t listening to him. And I didn’t believe Reeves about the time event not being true.

I wanted Grandma out from under that gun, and I wanted access to the machine in the basement. I didn’t care how greedy or crazy Reeves Silver was. Let him think we would do what he wanted. He could have his game.

There were only minutes left before time was going to end me.

Anything I agreed to would either change after I died
and Quinten fought for what he really wanted out of the deal with Reeves, or I went back in time and changed this so that none of us had to talk our way out of a life of servitude.

“I’ll say whatever you want me to say to House Brown,” I said. “Just take the gun off Grandma and keep her out of the negotiations. I’m agreeing to be yours, Reeves. You own me. I will stand and do as you ask as long as you leave my grandmother out of it. Out of all of this.”

Reeves’s gaze flicked between me, my brother, and Abraham. I didn’t look at either of them, but I didn’t have to to know how angry they were.

Well, I hoped we’d have time to argue about how stupid I had been to play into Reeves’ hands and agree to his deal.