Tim Akers - Dead of Veridon

It was Gray's face looking back at me, once again. I cycled the chamber of my revolver, dumped the shells onto the floor, and then reloaded. I wasn't a good friend. Wasn't a good person to be friends with. You end up dead, then you end up coming back from the dead, and I have to shoot you in the chest. Not a good friend.

Wilson was already downstairs before I left the room. I think I was the only one who heard the pipes laughing as I clattered down the stairs. But I probably didn't hear that. Probably just in my head.

A Maker Beetle is kind of a leftover miracle. A scrap from something that came before us, that we don't fully understand. The only people who had any knowledge of such things belonged to the Artificers Guild, and they only knew the bare minimum. There was a time when the Guild was a broader interest, with offices at the Academy of Thought and Practice, and apprentices and masters and a bustling trade of scientific inquiry. Now all that was left of that was the Council-sanctioned Guild. They were mostly for entertainments, like The Summer Girl or the other engram singers, who performed a very specific series of songs or plays, the memories clipped from the original players and recreated for generations.

Those memories were somehow stored in the beetles. Wilson tried to explain it to me, once. How Wilson knew is its own mystery, and maybe he didn't really know, because I couldn't really understand it. But basically, a memory could be engraved in the queen beetle, the pattern of the singer and the song, what it felt like to be that person and do that thing. And then the queen could be implanted in an engram singer, and her hive of maker beetles would… well… remake the singer into that memory. There was a lot of cogwork involved, since the singer need to be able to accommodate a whole hive of scuttling beetles. The details of how those machines worked was a closely guarded secret within the Guild. Understandable. The Academy didn't advertise how they made the PilotEngine, either.

The end result was a memory that could be played out in flesh. With the help of the beetles, an engram singer could become a specific singer, and perform a song exactly as it was sung decades ago. Even hundreds of years, as long as the queens were well bred. That's what the Guild did these days. Breed queen beetles, maintain hives, and teach little girls to sing like memories.

We watched them arrive at Crane's house from a couple blocks away, sitting in the second floor of an atrium bar. An automaton pillar in the center of the atrium was playing out all the bawdy scenes from "The Fifty Nights of Winter" in clacking, whirring earnest. Even the painted wooden whores looked embarrassed. Wilson and I drank coffee and looked out the window.

They arrived in a sealed carriage. The engine was nice and new, brass plates shuffling behind the baffles in quick time. Not the kind of carriage you usually saw in this district. Which was sloppy. It was memorable. Unless they didn't care if people knew they were dealing with Crane.

Three figures went inside, dressed in heavy black coats and hoods. No-one I recognized, although at this distance I wouldn't have recognized myself in a coat and hood. Not a minute later one of them came out and signaled down the road. More carriages, bearing the sigil of the Badge.

"Council people, then?" I asked. There weren't a lot of other patrons at this hour, but I kept my voice low.

"Could be. Badge has become awfully mercenary in the last couple years." Wilson drank from his cup and grimaced. "Could just be someone with the right amount of coin."

I murmured something about getting a price list and finished my coffee. The waitress came by to fill the cup, all smiles and bust. When she was gone I turned back to the window.

"So where next? To the Artificers? I don't know anyone in that set."

Wilson held his cup about halfway to his mouth, staring idly out the window. Not sure he was seeing anything.

"I'd rather not. We have other leads to follow. The mask, for example."

"What was that about, do you think? What Crane said?"

Wilson shrugged. "Maybe you'll be wearing the mask this time? Who knows. I think our friend Crane may be a little insane."

"Yes. A little," I smiled. "It was the bit where he animated my dead friend so he could have a conversation with us that sold me on it. Before then, you know, with the thing where he changed all the Fehn into mad corpses, that wasn't quite insane enough."

"You have very high standards, Mr. Burn," Wilson said.

"I have to. Look at the people I hang out with."

Wilson snorted and put his coffee down. "I take it you've recovered fully from looking into the mask, then?"

"Not at all," I answered, shivering. "Not even a little."

"What did you see?" he asked.

I told him, as best I could. It was the feeling of being rooted out and cast aside that was the hardest to communicate. I felt like a tree, torn out at the root and thrown on a fire of absolute heat. The brightest fire ever imagined. Just talking about it made me sweat.

"Well. That's not completely different from what I saw. Just more," Wilson paused, considering his next words, trying not to look me in the face. Finally he raised his eyes. "More personal. Like it was written for you, and not me."

"Written for me? That's good to know. Should we go around the city showing it to people, to see how they react? Maybe we could figure out what it means by triangulating how terrified different people are of it. We could start with my dad, couldn't we? He's been a bit mad in the head ever since…" I stumbled. Ever since I had lost Emily, ever since he had finally, utterly thrown me out of the family. Ever since he swore he would never see me again, and shut himself up in the house, and refused to acknowledge he even had a son. Ever since then. "Yeah. Maybe that extra bit of madness would do him some good. Do you think?"

Wilson wasn't listening to me. He was absolutely still, the coffee cup gripped firmly in his fingers, staring out the window.

"Wilson? Are you even hearing me?"

"Jacob. The young lady out there, the one talking to the Badge. Does she look familiar?"

I looked. All smiles and bust.

"No wonder no one's refilled my cup," I spat. As we watched, the girl turned and pointed back to the bar. The Badge turned with her, then set off towards us at a trot.

"Time we were going," Wilson said. We stood and took two steps toward the iron corkscrew stairs that led to the main floor, and the exit. There was someone standing at the top of the stairs, looking at us. Waiting for us.

She was young, or at least had the body of a young woman. Dressed scandalously in pants and a vest, all cinched closely to her form. It reminded me of how factory workers secure every flap of clothing, to keep it from the hungry machines. An odd contrast. The vest was covered in button-flap pockets, and her belt was wide and black. Many weapons hung at her hips. She wore bulky gloves that contrasted sharply with the grace and cut of her form.

Her face was bound in an iron mask, fitted with brass around the eyes and along the jaw. Eyes hidden by matte black goggles that flexed and whirred as we stood there, staring at each other. A single thick braid of dark hair coiled down her back. She reached toward me, and put a hand to her belt.

"Back door," Wilson barked, and we jumped across the floor, toppling narrow tables in our wake. She followed us through the broken glassware, the jangling forks, and the yells of the Badge who were just now reaching the iron stairs.

Bars like thiS have a lot of back doors. It's sensible. The sort of place where, if the Badge comes in the front door, there are going to be a lot of people who might want out of the building. Quickly. Wilson and I fit this description exactly, with maybe double emphasis on the quickly. The girl was of a like mind, though possibly of opposite intent. I assumed Wilson would just head to one of these many doors. Incorrectly.