Ninth City Burning (30 page)

And by then, my sister will be gone.

M
y imaginary friend thinks I need to get out more.

“I'm not imaginary!” Lady Jane protests. “I may be
insubstantial
. I may be
ethereal
. But I am
not
imaginary. It isn't like you're the only person who can see me. Not that it matters,” she adds, pouting with theatrical prettiness in a black evening dress,
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her preferred attire whenever I am in overalls and drenched in muck. “No one ever visits us anymore. I miss my boys.”

“They're not your boys.” I am well up inside the Project, rooting around in the core, and my voice echoes impressively, assuming exaggerated registers whenever I activate my fusing wand. The Project's central webbing of gwayd canals stretches above me like a dense canopy of interlocking branches. I run my fingers across each canal, glancing now and then at the schematic displayed in a curtain of mirrors hanging at the edge of the Project's exposed chest cavity. There is a burst of bright blue light each time I sever or fuse a connection, illuminating the delicate veins of the smaller canals, some barely the breadth of a finer-than-average human hair. Production-line legionary equi generally don't require this kind of precision, but compared to the Project, legionary stock equi are about as sophisticated as comedic flatulence.

“Well, they're certainly not
your
boys,” Lady retorts. The schematics, full of my latest scribbly and more-than-a-little-ad-hoc designs, are pushed aside to reveal Lady's scowling face. She has acquired one of the cigarettes
seen so often in CE movies and smokes it officiously from a long black holder.

“You're right about that,” I mutter. She's referring to Vinneas and Imway, both of whom used to spend the bulk of their free hours here but have become notably scarce since going on active duty for the Legion. Vinneas at least has the excuse of travel-necessary-to-the-continued-viability-of-the-war-effort, but as far as I can tell, all Imway does is hang around the Stabulum playing whist or tarot with the other equites and occasionally interrupting my repair work to insinuate that my time would be better spent polishing his precious FireChaser. I'm willing to admit (privately anyway) that the shop hasn't been the same the past few weeks, but Lady's sulkily employed tones of high tragedy and melodrama are beginning to grate. I blame the movies.

One benefit to being largely ignored by your two best friends, however, is that it gives you more time for your hobbies, and the Project has seen marked improvement as a result. “Would you mind holding those schematics back up? It's hard to work with your face in the way.”

“
Your
face, you mean,” Lady points out, rudely but not inaccurately. The two of us are physically identical, in a dermo-musculoskeletal sense. “And who cares what I do anyway? We imaginary friends are known for our flightiness.”

“Oh, Lady, no reason to get offended. I only said that because you're not real. Now move.”

“Sheesh” is Lady's take on my attitude. “I was only joking. Maybe if you'd leave the shop once in a while, you wouldn't be such a great big phenomenal bore. You've got yucky bags under your eyes, and you've already inverted two gwayd links.” Lady rustles the schematics, pointing out the faulty connections with a hand sheathed in long gloves, then watches through a pair of unnecessary opera glasses while I make the suggested adjustments.

I give the core a final once-over, devoting special attention to the film of viatically conductive material along the grips and back of the throne, before pulling myself up by the chest cavity's rim. “You ready to give this a shot?” I ask Lady, rolling up her curtain of mirrors and tucking it beneath my arm.

She speaks in a muffled voice, for effect. “Does my opinion actually matter?”

“Not at all. That was a rhetorical question.”

My work suit is thoroughly spattered in glowing blue gwayd,
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and even though the stain is already fading, I brush at it offhandedly, feeling the distant tingle, like a sleeping limb coming back to life.

“Then allow me to rhetorically tell you this is a waste of time.” Lady has reappeared on her wall, watching me through the mosaic of variously sized mirrors as though from behind a fence. She puffs dramatically on her cigarette, exhales. “You've already reconfigured the core a million different ways. If you'd only swallow your pride and—”

“Just go see if the testing floor is clear.”

Lady, huffing with offense, flounces from view. When she returns, her evening wear has been replaced by a wholly gratuitous array of protective equipment, apparently meant to signify some ludicrous amount of impending danger. Safety goggles and other precautions that might be considered sensible had Lady an actual corporeal body to injure mix freely with accessories plainly intended as hyperbole: a helmet from some extinct CE sport, oven mitts, pillows belted to her chest and back. “All clear,” she says, mumbling around her mouth guard. “Let's get this over with.”

The blank wall behind me evaporates, revealing the empty expanse of Testing Floor Sixteen. Until recently, all work pertaining to the Project was restricted to my own facilities. I have everything necessary for partial activations, basic durability and performance trials, fabrication of materials.
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But ever since we progressed to full activation, Lady has insisted we move someplace where our tests will not result in her needing to replace her mirrors every other day. Because the Project violates just about every
rule the Academy has, not to mention a number of Fabrica regulations pertaining to the treatment of dangerous materials and Stabulum protocols regarding disposal of same, all experimentation must be conducted covertly. The present time is 0239 hours, and TF 16 should be abandoned until 0600 at least.

Though smaller than most equi active in the Legion, the Project is still large enough that his head would punch through the ceiling of my workshop when standing at his full height. He spends most of his time in a knee-hugging crouch, encased in a nifty contraption of my own design that Lady fondly calls the “egg crate.” The crate is a sturdy cube of reinforced interlocking framework, infused with customized weightlessness artifices that allow me to convey the Project's multitonne bulk with ease. Once the Project is settled in the center of Testing Floor Sixteen, the egg crate pulls clear to reveal his full, glimmering splendor.

I will admit that to someone without my overwhelming maternal investment, the Project would cut quite the ghastly figure. When fully arrayed in the armor I'm building to his measurements, a marble-quartz amalgam that finishes to a gallant and heroic white, I have no doubt he will be absolutely magnificent, but naked as he is, the impression is more of a flayed corpse. Stripped-down equi are always mildly unsettling, too thick about the shoulders and limbs to be really human, with the head—undersized, eyeless, mouthless—hinting at alien or potentially demonic lineage. The Legion's current models are all built with single-alloy thurgo-muscle, though, which at least gives their exposed bodies the clean, machined look of an anatomical model cast in metal. The Project's muscle, by contrast, is a never-before-seen composite conceived and fabricated entirely by me, which demonstrates unheard-of levels of speed and power in early-stage testing, but also has an unfortunate combination of greasy opalescence and deep gunmetal coloring that, in certain lights, gives it the look of dark meat on poultry.

Once he's up and running, the Project will be absolutely worth the absurd amount of time I've spent assembling him, the risk of expulsion-slash-incarceration, and the fact that I can no longer eat fried chicken. All my experiments, all my calculations, all my instincts, tell me he's already stratospherically more advanced than anything the Legion has. But before he can begin trampling notions about the limits of equus design, not to
mention what a cadet who's failed her general exams three times running
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can accomplish, I have to calibrate his interface, matching the movements of the mighty beast to the intentions of the frail human being inside. For that, I have to activate him all at once, so that I can tweak and tinker with his fine motor functions. In this regard, the Project has proven somewhat uncooperative, no doubt due to the delicacy of his groundbreaking design. Fully activating an equus for the first time is like setting the keystone into a newly built arch: All the supporting forces are coming together at this single point, and once that's stable, you've got a nearly unshakable whole, but unless it's done just right, the whole thing falls apart. In the Project's case, the pieces that need to be held in suspension—the nebulous structures of artifice that make him a magnificent, animated symphony instead of a creepy hunk of inert material—are singularly and exceptionally precarious. With the exception of his frame,
5
every bit of him, down to the tiniest filament of muscle, constitutes a feat of engineering previously thought impossible, all of it woven together with a system of artifices so elegant and complex that likening it to the corresponding blocks in a normal equus would be like comparing a dragonfly to a paper airplane. Needless to say, not an easy puzzle to assemble on the fly. This will be my fifth attempted activation in as many weeks.

Equi can only be fully controlled from inside their core, and since the Project doesn't have working entry protocols, I have to just climb into his open chest cavity. I settle onto the throne and begin strapping myself in,
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running through the activation checklist in my mind. Throne contact? Check. Starting posture? Check. Sensory receptors? Almost completely lacking, but we'll add those later. Hardheaded determination and unreasonable sense of optimism? Check.

From the direction of my workshop, Lady Jane's voice echoes across
the testing floor. “I'm just going to go ahead one more time and register my opinion that this is a horrible idea.”

“Noted,” I say, adjusting the armrests and grips. “Here we go!”

I take a deep breath, close my hands around the Project's grips, and settle back into the throne,
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trying to imagine myself seeping down, flowing out into the great metal body, imbuing it with my soul or essence or whatever part of you makes an equus work. Above me, the branching gwayd canals begin to glow a gentle blue. Animation has always seemed a pretty frivolous study to me, but since beginning the Project, I've been working on perfecting my skills.

I shut my eyes, tell myself I
am
the Project. His arms are my arms. His legs, my legs. I can feel it starting to work, feel the shiver down his spine (
my
spine), spreading out toward the extremities. Sensation flows into the tips of his fingers, and I'm thinking this might really work, when suddenly the Project's fist clamps shut and swings wildly to the side.

“Gah!” I shout, trying to restrain the hand, but it won't respond. I open my eyes just in time to see the egg crate fold with a shrieking groan as the Project's right arm smashes into it. I concentrate everything on seizing back control of the arm, but just then it goes dead, and the Project's left leg kicks out, launching us up and back. No sooner have I shifted attention to the leg than the Project's torso begins to twist and his head to jerk, then the rest of his body, activating and deactivating in random, manic spasms. In moments, the egg crate has been flattened, its hyperdurable structure crumpling like wet paper as the Project thrashes and rolls across the testing floor. I see, alternately, ceiling, floor, ceiling. Distantly, I hear Lady screaming for me to hit the kill button, but centrifugal force has made my own personal arm almost too heavy to move, my vision dimming as the blood rushes from my brain. And then the Project pauses, like he's catching his breath, and it's enough for me to punch the big red button marked “Oops” mounted above my head.

There is a series of popping explosions as the Project's gwayd canals blow. Glowing blue gwayd sprays freely over the testing floor, gushing from predetermined cut points at the Project's wrists, elbows, knees. A
particularly heady jet from the neck coats the walls blue as the Project continues to convulse, but more slowly now, until, finally, he slumps, crashes to his knees, and collapses sideways to the floor.

Everything is silent except for my breath and the last glugging flow of gwayd. I watch the weakening dribble of blue drip from the edge of the Project's chest cavity, things still spinning, but only in a dizzy psychoperceptive way.

Again I hear the echoing voice of Lady Jane. “Kizabel? Are you dead?”

Not unsurprisingly, I've survived. Forgetting the Project's posture, I pull at the straps holding me to the throne and fall nearly a meter to the testing floor with an ectoplasmic splash of gwayd. Slowly, heart still thudding, I get to my feet and regard the Project, a gruesome, otherworldly rag doll splayed in glowing blue muck.