Tim Akers - Heart of Veridon

“I didn’t tell her,” Wilson said. “Yet.”

“We found a map, at the Tomb place. It shows a city, huge, way downriver.”

“Like another Veridon?”

“Nothing like Veridon. Veridon’s a damn outhouse compared to his place. I don’t know what it is.”

“Okay. One thing at a time.” Wilson pointed to me and shook his head. “I don’t think so, by the way. I don’t think they made it all the way to that city. But I think that’s where they were going. They just ran into some trouble.”

“The Angel?”

“The Angel. Maybe he was a scout, maybe he lived well outside the city. If they’d gotten all the way there, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation. I think there’d be a whole swarm of those things turning Veridon to mulch.”

“Shit,” I said. I meant it, too. Veridon had been tough on me, but it was home. People here I cared about. Streets and buildings I’d known my whole life. “So, what? They found an outlying building, stole the Cog, and then the angel caught them and chased them.”

“Better than that. Or much, much worse. Depends on your point of view. I think they found that angel, killed him, and stole the body. Or at least part of the body.”

“Why would they do that?” Emily asked.

“Question for Marcus. Or Wellons. Maybe that Sloane guy you met. But I think they‘ve done it before.”

“Stolen body parts from angels?” Emily asked.

“Where does the cogwork come from, Emily? Where do they get their patterns? They aren’t making them up, that’s for sure.” Wilson was pacing again, agitated. He stabbed his finger out at us. “That’s for damn sure. They’re getting it from somewhere else. What’s to say that this isn’t the source?”

“We should ask the Church,” I joked. “I’m sure they’ll be very forthcoming on that.”

“Not the Church,” Wilson said. “But the people on your list. Angela Tomb. That Sloane guy. They’ll know.”

“Yeah, well. But Angela doesn’t seem much like talking. And Sloane? I’ll ask him, if I find him. But what makes you say they stole a part of the body?”

“Because now we have it. And they want it back. And so does the original owner.”

“The Cog?”

“Yeah. I think this is nothing less than that angel’s pattern. I think it’s his damn heart.”

“So what happened with Wellons?” I asked. We had decided that whatever the Cog was, we had to keep it out of the hands of the Council. For now at least. I wanted to know more about what we were doing, what we were handing over.

“For whatever reason, the angel seems to need a host. I’m going to assume that has something to do with this,” Wilson said, holding up the Cog. “And so far he’s only infected people who have been heavily cogged. You said Wellons was an assault trooper, right?”

“According to his uniform, yeah. And those guys are metalled up to the balls.”

“Lovely terminology. And the Summer Girl, we know, had the beetle hive implanted. None of the other Artificers would have had any modifications, so she was the only choice.”

“Infect? Like he’s some kind of disease?” I asked.

“More like a parasite,” Wilson answered. His eyes had a far away look, and his voice was drifting into university professor territory. What had he done with his time, before his days as a black-market doctor? “Takes over the body and the mind, remakes it. If the angels really are the source of Veridon’s cogwork, then who knows how advanced they are. What they’re capable of.”

“That’s creepy,” I said. “But isn’t that Church theology? That the early Wrights were able to heal the dying Camilla, and in return she gifted them with the first cogwork?”

Wilson shrugged. “Seems a convenient story, but maybe. Maybe.”

“So it infected Wellons,” I said. “Then followed Marcus back to the city. For whatever reason it had to leave him, then took over the Summer Girl. So what happened when I killed her?”

“You tell me. What happened?”

“She… fell apart, I guess. It looked like the maker beetles, leaving her body, splashing down into the rain.”

Wilson nodded. “And it might have been something very similar. Maybe the cog-heart serves as his pattern, holds him together. And he needs the host body just for the pattern in their implanted cogwork. Something to hold him together. Disrupt that, and the thing falls apart.”

“And then what? How does it find a new host?”

“Goes dormant? Reforms somehow, and latches on to someone new? This is all just theory, Jacob.”

“But we saw it again, so we know it happened. Somehow the thing reformed.”

“A new host,” Emily said. “Who was at the party?”

“Pilots,” I said. “Lots of Pilots.”

“There you go.” Wilson spread his hands and grimaced. “If cogwork is necessary for infection, Pilots are pretty close to the perfect candidate. If one of your Corpsmen wandered down into the gardens, maybe looking for you, they could have stumbled into the angel’s scattered corpse and gotten infected without knowing what happened.”

I looked down at my palms. “How did I not get infected?”

“Who knows? Maybe when you disrupted the body it needs some time to spin up again. Let’s just say you got lucky, and you’ll be more careful in the future.”

Emily had been quiet, standing a little ways away from us. I turned to her.

“So what are we going to do now?” I asked her. When she didn’t say anything, didn’t even seem to hear me, Wilson stepped in.

“Badge is after you, that thing in the sky is after you.” He shrugged. “Sounds like maybe the Family Tomb is after you, too. We’re going to need a better place to hide.”

“What’s wrong with here?” Emily asked. She seemed distracted.

“Not deep enough. Too close to the Families, to the centers of the Badge’s power. Too many crowds. People here don’t love the Badge, but if they’re serious about finding you, well. Someone will talk. Enough money and enough threats, people will talk.”

“So where do we go?” I asked. I stood and stretched my back. My thighs felt like lead, and my chest was stiff. “I can’t go far, or fast.”

“I have some ideas. We’ll wait until tonight, until you’re a little better.”

“I feel pretty good right now. I just don’t want to push it. And with that thing in the air…”

“I think the Tomb set you up,” Emily said. Wilson and I stopped and turned to her.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I think she set you up. That bit about the Badge interrupting, I don’t think that was part of the plan, but I think she set you up.”

I walked carefully over to the wall and sat down with my back against it. “What makes you say that, Em? What do you know about this?”

“Nothing. I mean, nothing solid. But the Cog missing like that? It hadn’t been there long, like they were waiting for it to show up. And they had to know you’d come for it.”

“Maybe. But that’s hardly evidence.”

“And on the Heights too, I think.”

I tensed up. I’d been wondering about the Heights, what Emily knew about that job, really.

“That job wasn’t from Valentine, Jacob.”

“Okay,” I said, carefully.

“I wanted to make sure you’d take the job. I knew you wouldn’t turn down work from the old clockwork.”

“That was risky. If he found out, if I said anything to him about it. A real chance you took there, Em.”

“The drugs, with Prescott, that was his. But the music box wasn’t.”

“That got Prescott killed, you know.”

“Yeah. I know.”

I flexed my hands, loosened my shoulders. “So. Who did the job come from, then?”

“I don’t know. A guy, he looked… I don’t know. Noble.”