Tim Akers - Heart of Veridon

“I wouldn’t call them little. The engrams are pretty incredible.”

“Nothing compared to what they could be. What they were before you were born, before the Church… nevermind. Bitterness clouds my argument.” Wilson held up his hand. The beetle was crawling around his knuckles, eventually climbed its way to the top of his finger, clinging to the talon. “Biotics is the study of the living form. What it can do, and what it can be. The patterns found inside, and how those patterns can be used to change the form.”

“Sounds like the Church.”

“The Church is interested in the pattern without. The Algorithm of the Unseen, as their Wrights are fond of saying. They try to divine a pattern from the cogwork they dredge up from the river, the scraps that come downstream, and they seek to impose that pattern on the world.” He flourished the beetle, waving it at my face in slow circles. “But there is already a pattern. Here,” holding up the beetle, and then waving at me, then at himself, “And here, and here.”

“Still sounds like the Church to me,” I grumbled. “Is this going somewhere?”

“It is,” he said and smiled. “Your engine, supposedly designed to allow you to impose your will on the mighty zepliner, is something else. All cogwork derives from the patterns of the Church, and yet this is something different. Something I have never seen, and I have seen a great many things. It is a pattern.” His smile was uncomfortably bright. He presented the beetle, “That I wish to understand.”

“The Academy installed it. Ask them.”

“They are not here. Beetling is nothing to be afraid of, Jacob Burn.”

I looked around the room, desperately. My chest hurt like hell, and Wilson’s eyes were exceptionally bright, his teeth exceptionally sharp. “Where’s Emily?”

“She’s not here either. Take the beetle. I only want to imprint the pattern of your heart, to see what has been done to you.”

“I told you, it’s a PilotEngine, the Academy installed it.”

“They may have, but I assure you.” He leaned into me, close. His breath smelled like old linen stored too long. “That is no Pilot’s Engine. If it were, you would be dead. The Engine can do many things, and yes, it is designed to provide the Pilot with a great deal of resiliency. But nothing the Church can produce would have saved your life today. So.” He took my chin in his hand and forced my jaw open. He placed the beetle delicately on my teeth. I struggled, I put my hand on his wrist but in my weakened state his muscles were like iron bands. The beetle scurried forward, clicked against my back teeth as I gagged to keep it away, and then it was down, it was forcing its way down my throat until all I could feel was a dry scuttling in my lungs and heart.

I fell back against the table, the light leaving my eyes, the darkened ceiling of the theater swelling down to fill my head and I was gone.

Emily was leaning across me, her breasts smashed against my ribs. I tried to make a joke and coughed instead. It sounded like a rusty winch, that cough. She sat up suddenly and put her palm in the middle of my chest.

“You look horrible,” she said.

“Feel it.” My throat was sandy-dry. I put a hand to my mouth and felt sticky blood on my lips. “Nice friends you got.”

Emily shrugged. “Wilson does his things, and he does them well. You should feel lucky that he owes me. His services are expensive.”

“My debt.” I tried to sit up, but the pain in my chest was too much. “Where is he?”

“Out. Some things he needed. He wanted to wait until I was back. Didn’t want to leave you unattended.”

“And you? Where were you, while your expensive friend was stuffing bugs down my throat?”

“Some errands.” She leaned away from me and looked around the theater. The room looked brighter, but that might have just been my tired eyes. “Strange things going on, and I have interests to protect.”

I coughed. My throat was a little better, but not well. Felt like I was breathing glass. “You want to errand me up some water?”

Emily stood up and got me a glass, poured from a tap in the grimy wall. She sat next to me on the bed while I drank. The water was warm and cloudy. It tasted like blood. That might have just been me.

“Better?” Emily asked. She was standing by the bed with her hands on her hips.

“Some.” I tried to sit up again, and it went better. My chest felt like a stack of very precariously balanced plates, cracked and tottering. I put a hand on Emily’s shoulder. Her skin was cold. “What the hell’s wrong with me?”

“Wilson said something about the bug not reading right. And you’re mending fast, like nothing he’s seen.” She carefully shrugged off my hand, took the empty glass and set it on one of the work benches that circled the room. “The healing is taking up a lot of you, all at once. Here it is.”

She came back to the bed, holding a stoppered bottle. She presented it to me, turning it so the bug inside clinked against the glass. “Make any sense to you?”

I peered in at the bug. The beetle was dead, its legs curled up like burnt eyelashes, its back shiny and black. The pattern scrawled across its shell was complicated and unfamiliar.

“What do I know about engrams?” I peered at the pattern on its back. When you took foetal metal for an implant, the docs had you memorize a pattern for the living steel to imprint upon. That pattern should somehow be reflected on the beetle. It had been a while for me, but the bizarre scraping in my hand looked like nothing I’d seen before. It hurt to look at. “Mean anything to you?”

“Mm,” Emily said, her lips pursed. “Means you’re one complicated son of a bitch. Wilson thinks maybe the beetle was bad, or the massive damage in your body threw it off. He insists you couldn’t make anything with a pattern like that.”

“Well.” I slid the beetle back into the bottle from my cupped hand, put the stopper in and set it by the bed. “That’s a mystery for another mind. How’d your errands go?”

“Poorly. Lots of Badge out there. Most folks are just staying low. You’ve made a hell of a mess out there, Jacob Burn.”

“I have. Did you get in touch with Cacher?”

“No,” Emily said quickly. “I was… his business and mine don’t cross, right now.”

“Business.” I grimaced. “He seemed pretty worried about you, last I saw him.”

“Well. Maybe with good reason. Hanging out with you seems to be a world of trouble.”

She was leaning against the bed, her arms crossed, just a crack of a smile leaking across her face. I smiled and put a hand against her elbow. She didn’t move it.

“Hanging out with me has always been trouble. Why should now be any different?”

She smiled a little more, but didn’t move her arms. She turned away and walked to one of the tables nearby.

“I got you some new clothes. Took the sizing from the ones you ruined. I hope the cut’s not too modern.”

“I’m sure they’re fine. Emily, what happened in your apartment? What did you do with the Cog?”

She paused, rearranged the clothes on the table, folding and refolding the pants and vest.

“What’s the story with that Cog, Jacob? What’s the real story?”

“Like I said. Marcus gave it to me, but I think there’s a lot going on with it.” I didn’t want to tell her more than that, yet. I didn’t know what she had to do with all this. Didn’t know I could trust her.

“A lot going on with it.” She nodded and turned to me, leaning against the table, her hands behind her back. “That’s one way of putting it. There were some men, after you left. They must have been watching the place.”