Twincy Quinn and the Eye of Horus Part One (8 page)

That rather
uncomfortable notion ringing in my mind, I picked by way down from
the roof with care and precision.

Yet I did not
find my way into clarity. For if the events of the morning had been
strange and unexpected, they would be nothing compared to the
afternoon. For this afternoon I was to meet Twincy Quinn, or at
least we were to be properly introduced.

Twincy
Quinn

I stretched my
shoulders, brushed a hand lightly over my cheek and hair, and
smiled down at the doorway.

‘
You cannot get in unless you say the correct password,’
Vanessa said from the opposite side of the door. A small child, she
was obviously standing on an upturned box, as I could see her
determined, narrowed gaze blinking out at me from the two peepholes
in the wood.

‘
Do we have to do this every time I come home?’ I said as I
scratched briefly at my forehead, hooked my loose fringe around my
ears, and straightened my bodice.

‘
It is a security measure,’ Vanessa said curtly, her tone still
ringing with suspicion.

Rolling my
eyes, yet still managing a smile, I nodded. ‘Very well, the owl
sleeps in the tree at night,’ I offered her a short nod as I
repeated the agreed-upon password.

‘
That was yesterday's password,’ Vanessa took a rattling
sniff.

‘
I haven't been home since yesterday,’ I raised an
eyebrow.

Vanessa
paused. ‘I'm not sure that matters,’ she rallied.

Trying not to
smile too hard, lest she take it as a reason that I had been
replaced by a malevolent and sarcastic entity, I clapped my hands
behind my back and gave her a professional nod. ‘I'm sure you're
right, however, at the present moment, I'm in great need of a
bath.’

She appeared
to accept this excuse, and soon I heard several bolts being pulled
back, and the door opened with a long, high-pitched creak.

It opened to
home. My home.

Walking in,
still fixing my dress, smoothing down the skirts with one hand, I
afforded myself a smile. And it was a genuine one.

Vanessa
quickly closed the door from behind me, bolted it, then walked
several steps my way, peering at me like you would a fraud.

After several
seconds, I flicked my gaze over to her. ‘Do I pass the test?’

‘
And where have you been?’ The exact press of her lips and the
angle of her chin was one that belonged on a strict schoolmistress,
and not on a child of eight.

‘
Doing my work,’ I closed my eyes for a brief moment, massaged
my eyelids, then let my hand drop to my side. ‘Was everything fine
whilst I was gone?’

I opened my eyes to see Vanessa offer a curt nod. ‘John has
been working on his inventions, Carolyn has been attempting to find
new sources of nutrition,
Theodore
has been attempting to sell John's inventions, and
I have been looking after the rest of them.’

Though I
shouldn't have, I gave the lowest of chuckles. It wasn't because I
found what Vanessa was saying amusing, far from it; I found it
welcome.

And it was
nice to find something welcome.

Out there I
was nothing but a machine, a woman who had undergone the strangest
of changes at the hands of Doctor Elliot Esquire. I was something
to be forgotten, something to be ridiculed, or something to be
hunted viciously. In here, I was at home. And in my home, everyone
had their place, we all fit in, and we all belonged.

‘
I expect you will want a full report once you are done with
your bath,’ Vanessa walked by my side, looking for all the world
like a soldier on patrol. As she walked, she narrowed her left
eye.

While her
right eye was pretty and brown, her left was not. For it was no
eye, or at least not one that a student of biology would
recognise.

It was a
machine. The end of a spotting scope. Beautiful in detail, made of
brass, it fit snugly against her cheek.

And it gave
her extraordinary abilities. Exactly as the devices grafted into my
own form gave me strength and senses beyond that of the ordinary
human, Vanessa's eyepiece allowed her to see through objects at a
certain distance, it also allowed her to gauge reactions faster, to
ascertain the direction and speed at which objects were moving, and
to keep an eye on whatever she pleased.

In many ways
it was remarkable, however in all ways it did not belong on a
child's face.

Many, many things did not belong both within me and within the
children I lived with, yet we made the most of them. At any given
time there were about 10 or 12 of us living here, and the core
group—Vanessa,
Theodore
, Carolyn, and John—I had rescued from Elliot. They had all
been changed, just like me. Yet they all worked to take down
Elliot, just like me.

In a way we
were our own private militia. An organised group that set itself
its own tasks, and attempted to complete them. Tasks which began
and ended with the intended destruction of Doctor Elliot Esquire's
plans of domination.

We were all
young, though of course I was the eldest by far. None of us had
parents, and we certainly did not have anyone who would be bothered
if we ever went missing, no one, that is, save for each other.

We lived in an
abandoned warehouse. Consisting of three dusty wooden floors, it
was riddled with devices and machines and objects of interest. Not
only was it stacked with rubbish we had reclaimed from the streets
and attempted to repair, but devices of spinning disks and cogs and
wheels and lights and electricity littered the tables and chairs
and walls.

Though it was
not a palace, in many ways it functioned as one. We had our own
food, our own water, we even employed that mysterious energy called
electricity to run certain gadgets.

Walking over
the creaking floorboards, I quickly got the attention of the other
children, and they all looked up from whatever they were doing to
greet me. Carolyn even flung herself up from the rickety rocking
chair she was painting to trundle my way, and throw her arms around
my legs in a cheerful hug.

I watched
Vanessa roll her eye and tick her head to the side. Vanessa was not
one for shows of human emotion, let alone tenderness. She had not
hugged me when I had saved her from Esquire, and it would take the
inevitable destruction of the world for her to even consider it.
Carolyn, on the other hand, was a little bit more like an ordinary
child.

‘
I've missed you,’ she said as she ground her cheek into my
leg, looking up with one pressed-open eye, and smiling as best she
could.

I returned her
smile, and patted her lightly on the head. ‘Vanessa said you've
been working on a new food source?’

‘
Yes, I have been analysing the molecular structure of the
plants growing near these parts,’ she finally extricated herself
from around my leg, and gave a demure nod, though a thoroughly cute
one.

None of the
children who had been changed by Esquire could be classed as normal
any more. Whatever abilities they had once had had been added to,
extended, and augmented. Though Carolyn was all but six, she had a
brain for analysis, and a memory for fact. Elliot had taught her
chemistry, and she wasn't just good at it; she was brilliant.
Though I often wondered whether she understood the full extent of
what she knew, that would not stop her from attempting every single
day to blow something up, isolate some new element, or track down
some new elusive compound. We had to cordon off a whole section of
the warehouse just for her experiments, lest they get out of hand,
create massive clouds of gas, and scare the rest of the
children.

‘
Plants,’ Vanessa said through a huff, ‘she means moss, and
mould, and mushrooms.’

Carolyn
pressed her lips together. ‘They are still potential sources of
nutrition. I just have to find a reliable way of isolating their
powerful neurotoxins and eliminating them.’

‘
Okay,’ I tried encouragingly, though of course I could not
keep the note of suspicion from my voice entirely.

Vanessa huffed
again, and Carolyn gave me another tight hug before trundling off
to make something else explode.

It felt nice
to be home. It always felt nice to be home. It was the one place I
was safe to be myself. I didn't have to act as if I were normal,
because everybody around here knew that I wasn't.

‘
I will have John turn on the bath heater,’ Vanessa took
several quick steps away from me, marched over to find John huddled
over a desk completely scattered with old brass cogs, and promptly
told him what to do.

Bath. I
certainly needed one, and a change of clothes. More to the point,
however, I needed to chide myself. No matter how warm and inviting
that bath would be, I would spend the entire duration feeling
guilty.

Whilst I had
managed to get the child back, perhaps I had not been as careful as
I should have. In the past 24 hours I had experienced multiple
slipups. From falling into that alleyway only to surprise an old
man, to lingering too long on that roof above that child's house,
and having a policeman glance my way—I was becoming lax. While
Doctor Elliot Esquire knew who I was and what I was capable of, the
rest of London did not. And I had to keep it that way.

Marching over
to me, and giving me another brief nod, that reminded me of a
general saluting a junior officer, Vanessa cleared her throat.
‘While you are taking your bath, I will prepare a briefing for you.
Whilst you have been away, I have come across several intriguing
facts. Are you aware of the new museum piece that will be exhibited
in several weeks?’

I sighed,
stretched my shoulders, and shifted my fingers through my hair,
trying to pry apart any knots I found. And there were many. There
was something about flinging yourself off roofs, chasing after foot
soldiers, and clambering over rooftops that always made a girl's
hair as knotty as could be.

‘
I will take your silence as an indication that you are not
aware of this upcoming exhibition,’ Vanessa continued with hardly a
pause. ‘Well, unfortunately, I believe we will have to pay strict
attention to it. It is being funded by Lord Ridley,’ she left it at
that, and I was aware that she instantly locked her gaze on me, and
likely that simple brass eyepiece of hers was set to pick up every
single movement I made, every micro expression, every change in
temperature, every possible indication of what I felt and how I was
reacting to that most unpleasant news. Because it was most
unpleasant news.

Lord Ridley.
The major benefactor and funding source of Doctor Elliot
Esquire.

‘
This information has been publicly available for some time,
and last night an event was held in preparation for Lord Ridley's
exhibition. Many prominent Londoners attended, including senior
members from Scotland Yard.’

‘
What is he showing at the exhibition?’ I asked, my voice dark
and low. A shiver crossed my shoulders, sharp and tight as I waited
for her answer.

Not only did
Lord Ridley fund Elliot, he also sourced the unique and special
objects the doctor used in his devices. Ancient artefacts, machines
from centuries gone by, objects that had been hidden from history,
and possessed powers and abilities beyond that which ancient
societies should have wielded.

‘
Unclear,’ Vanessa answered, and it was a thoroughly worrying
answer. ‘Yet I have put in force an immediate investigation, and I
will not rest until I have that information in full.’

I gave a very
careful nod, staring at her as I did. Keeping my gaze even with
just a hint of warning, I moved backward with a single step. ‘Be
careful,’ I began.

She put up a
hand, spreading her fingers wide in an obvious stopping motion.
With a bored look on her face, she gave me a dismissive gaze. ‘I am
always careful, you, on the other hand,’ she began.

I chose to
cough heartily at that moment, and then turned to head towards the
bath.

‘
There is other information of which you should be aware,’
Vanessa said as she trotted after me.

No doubt there
was. There was always new information, new data, new circumstances,
and new plans of Doctor Elliot Esquire’s to pique our concern and
attention.

Yet right now
I had the feeling they could wait. Because right now I needed more
than anything to sink under that warm water, for however many brief
seconds, forget my problems, forget who I was, and forget my
life.

It wouldn't
last. Of course it wouldn't last. One thing meeting Doctor Elliot
Esquire and his fantastic machines had taught me was that our lives
in London were changing far more rapidly than any one person could
keep up with.

Yet for now,
gosh darn it, I was going to have that bath.

Michael F.
Stanford

I was sitting
at my desk, drumming my fingers industriously on the wood, staring
out of the small window on the other side of the room. My eyes were
narrowed, my brow crumpled low, and my mouth pressed into a deep,
deep frown. Quite understandably, I did not fathom what had
occurred. Just how had Jennifer found her way back home, and could
her fantastic tale be believed?

I finally cast
my glance away from the window to note that someone was at my door.
Straightening up, I could see it was one of the junior officers, he
gave me a short nod and cleared his throat as he tucked his hands
neatly behind his back. ‘Sir, the inspector would like to see
you.’

Though I
wanted dearly to roll my eyes, fob the man off, or give a wild and
sarcastic hoot of laughter, I controlled myself. Barely. Planting
my hands on the desk, I pushed back, stood, ran a hand down my
vest, and returned a low, curt nod.