They were all outside of the closet. Erik was inside of the closet. And Mordecai had put his fragile body between the rest of them and the door, both arms spread.
“Em, if you don’t start talking,” Maggie said, “I am going to pick you up and throw…”
“I don’t know what it is,” he said. “But stress is obviously a contributing factor and he does not need more of it. He can’t be alone in there, but we can’t all cram ourselves in with him, so please back off!”
“I don’t know what you think you’re going to do,” Hyacinth said. She lifted her hand. “At least if I go in…”
“If someone broke his brain and there’s no damage on the outside, will you be able to tell? Even under ideal circumstances. Please, be honest with me. Will you?”
She sighed. “Maybe after a long time. I mean, if I could keep checking and get a feel for it…”
“You can’t,” said Mordecai. “And we do not have a long time. So back off.” He tried the closet door. There was no resistance, no hand trying to hold it closed from the inside, so he opened it only as far as necessary and slipped inside, closing it behind him again. “Dear one?”
It was muffled, but there didn’t seem to be a reply.
“No,” Mordecai went on, softly. “That’s all right, just do what you need. Is it hard to talk? Okay. Are you trying to get to sleep so you can wake up? Okay. Maybe I can help…”
Hyacinth yanked open the door, “Don’t…”
Mordecai flung his coat over Erik and threw up his hands, “Privacy, please!” He snatched the door shut. “These are classic stress behaviours, enough with the stress!”
Hyacinth rapped on the door and snarled, “Enough with the hypnotism! We don’t know if you did this to him the first time!”
Silence behind the closet door.
“Cin,” Ann said.
“All right, that was not smart,” Hyacinth allowed. She knocked the heel of her palm on the side of her head. “Mordecai, I don’t mean it like that, I mean… You can’t start crossing wires if you don’t know how it works!”
“It’s a black box,” Ann and Maggie said, on top of each other.
“This is a useless theoretical concept,” said the General.
Ann ignored her and began wandering around the room, retracing Erik’s steps. “Oh, let us think…”
“There is always some way of rendering any given ‘box’ transparent or nonexistent,” said the General. “To engage with a system solely on the basis of inputs and outputs is to limit oneself to the sort of experiments a toddler can perform…”
“Toddlers get results!” Maggie snapped. “And we can’t break into Erik’s head right now, so give Ann and Milo a minute.”
Ann looked down, and looked up and around. “No T-shirt… If no T-shirt then… Something to do with the walls…?”
“You are trying to define a conditional?” said the General. She clasped her hands under her chin. “I suppose, if one is willing to accept a few arbitrary limits for the sake of a puzzle, or game…”
Maggie swatted her. “It’s a person.”
The General waved a hand. “I mean the concept of a black box, Magnificent. It is more palatable if we accept it as an arbitrary limitation for the sake of expediency, or fun. Hypothetical fun,” she added, as if that mitigated it. She began to pace, swerving around Ann whenever their paths intersected. “‘If no T-shirt, then check the walls, else…?’”
“The walls,” Maggie said. “And the painting… Ducks!” she cried, startling them all. “If there’s not a picture of ducks hanging somewhere in that hotel room, I’m out of my goddamn mind. I just never saw it because it’s flat and I’ve been a bird the whole time!”
The General nodded. “‘If no T-shirt, then look for duck picture,’ but it appears to also work in reverse — ‘if no duck picture, then check the T-shirt…’”
“Multiple redundant functions,” Maggie said. “It’s like there’s a net in case he falls off the roof, and another net in case the first one doesn’t work, and maybe another net…?”
“Milo doesn’t know if he resets so he won’t hit the pavement or if he’s crashing,” Ann muttered.
“Given the evident loss of data and variance of the run order,” said the General, “I believe we must call it a crash, followed by the system’s best attempt at a reset.”
“He is a person,” Ann said sharply, in passing.
“In actuality, yes, but not at the moment. Not in theory, Miss Rose. Do you think it is possible the data loss is not a function of the crash, but of the reset? In other words, another redundancy meant to prevent him from repeating the error that caused the crash?”
“If so, General D’Iver, there is another unknown conditional preventing it from engaging effectively.”
“It may be situational. I think it is safe to say whatever program he is running was not meant to function under these circumstances…”
“Bad line of code,” Maggie said, pacing. “Can’t be run or can’t be resolved. Crash, reset…”
“Failure of multiple redundancies,” Ann said.
“Crash and reset again,” said the General. “Ah.”
All three of them said, “It’s an endless loop!”
“It needs an escape!” Ann said. She rapped on the closet door. “Em! It’s an endless loop and Erik needs an escape!”
“He’s trying to do that right now, Ann,” a shaky voice answered. “He’s doing his best…”
“No, no, no.” Ann crossed both hands in front of her and shook her head, Milo’s sign for no, but extra. “He can’t do it. You have to punch in more code and add one!”
A brief, pained pause. Mordecai sounded half-strangled, “I don’t know how it works and I can’t.”
“Should one really add code to a black box?” the General muttered, aside.
“You can,” Maggie said. “But you gotta log the changes in case it goes screwy…”
“Well,” Ann said, “we’re very certain it’s something to do with not having a T-shirt… A specific T-shirt, because he didn’t want Maggie’s. I think the safest thing would be…”
“…To patch my T-shirt so the goddamn net engages,” Maggie said suddenly. She scooped it from the floor and went back to the closet. “Hey, Erik!”
A moan followed by sobbing, and then one half-strangled, “Maggie…” but from Mordecai.
She sighed. “Is he trying to talk but he can’t?”
“…Off and on. Please don’t…”
“Oh me, oh my, oh you,” Maggie sang. “Whatever shall I do? Hallelujah, the question is peculiar…”
A faint voice joined in, “I’d give a lot of dough…”
“…if only I could know…”
“…the answer to my question, is it yes or is it no?”
Maggie spoke quickly, “I’m getting you a new funny T-shirt for your birthday, what do you want on it?”
“I…” A pause. “Who am I?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. If you had a funny T-shirt, what would you want on it?”
A sniffle. “‘Vacancy.’ In fake painted fey lights, like a cheap hotel.”
“No, you already have one like that. I’m DIYing this. I’m gonna make it look distressed and punk rock.”
“Oh. Cool.”
“Yeah, so what should it say?”
“‘Damaged.’” Another sniffle. “Yeah. Make it all uneven and fucked up.”
“Yeah, I gotcha.” She patted down her pockets and came up with a kohl eyeliner she’d been using on her feathers, and a lipstick. “Black or purple, hon?”
“…Black. Purple is glam rock.”
“How right you are.” She scrawled DAMAGED across the front of the shirt in fucked up, uneven capitals. She folded it so the word was facing up, then pulled the front page off the newspaper and wrapped it, soft-sticking the paper so it stayed that way. She rapped on the closet door and opened it, just enough. “Happy birthday, I got you a new funny T-shirt.” She threw the parcel at them and shut the door.
They all heard the sound of crinkling newsprint.
Erik laughed. “Oh. Cool!”
“Here, dear one, let me help you with that…”
“Wow. Okay…” A brief pause. Then, uncertainly, “It’s my birthday present?”
“Yes, dear one.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I unwrapped it, right? Am I Erik?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Okay. Yeah. Yeah…” Another pause, a bit longer. “Uncle, if we go out there and I’m not where I’m supposed to be, I’m gonna lose my shit. Okay? It’s not your fault. I need stuff, and I got a guy who does that, and I don’t know who it is but it’s not you. So, uh, I need the guy. Or the stuff. Or I’m not gonna be safe like you want. And, uh, I got a mind like a steel sieve so I can’t DIY it for ya. Get me?”
A sniffle, and a stifled sob.
“Uncle?”
It wasn’t Erik crying.
“Hey, no, I’m okay…”
“You are not okay and the only thing I know how to do is hurt you more.”
“Em…”
“Don’t you dare open this door, Ann!” Another sob, muffled in a sleeve.
“I’m sorry,” Erik said softly. “I’m still too sick, huh?”
“No, dear one. I’m so glad you’re here, and you’ll never be too sick for me to want you. I’m sorry. I can’t do what you need and I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t know what to do either,” Erik said. He sighed. “Do you want a god?”
“…Yes, I do. But I have to talk to Hyacinth about it. Will you be okay in here if I go talk to Hyacinth?”
“No idea, I forget stuff all the time. If you’ve got uh, uh… I don’t know what it is, but I like to look at it and feel sleepy. It’s super fun and I won’t do anything else. Do you have one of those?”
“I think I do, dear one, but I’m afraid it will hurt you.”
“Nah, I do it all the time.”
“I know, and I think someone was using it to hurt you.”
“Huh.” Erik paused, perhaps considering it. “But you won’t.”
A deep breath and a shaky sigh. “If I do that for you, Erik, will you hold still and let Hyacinth check you? Top to toe, so we can figure out what you need?”
“I guess, but I got a guy…”
“I know. Just in case.”
“Sure. I mean, I’ll probably do whatever.”
“…Okay.” The door popped open, just a crack. “Do you see how the light… Are you sleeping?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, gods. Okay. Could you just hold this for me, and look at it, and not pay attention to anything we say?”
A laugh. “Yeah, that’s easy. Cool.”
◆◇◆
“Well?”
Hyacinth cast one more glance back at Erik, and shut the closet door behind her.
“Aw,” a muffled voice complained.
Mordecai stamped past her and opened the door again, just a crack, so the light shone through.
“Yay,” Erik said.
“You don’t have to listen to us, dear one.”
“Yep. Cool.”
Mordecai turned back to Hyacinth.
“Stop making cow eyes at me,” she said. “I don’t have answers.”
“What do you have?” he said.
“Vague, disquieting things. He’s low on vitamin D and a few other things, but nothing that would mess him up like this. His brain isn’t working right, it’s like someone is muting the strings, but some things are higher than they should be and some things are lower. There are some happy chemicals floating around in there, but no drugs, so this is a response to something that hit him like a baseball bat and didn’t hang around. I don’t know what’s going on because I’ve never seen anything like it.
“There is a burn somewhere in his head area, it hurts, but I can’t tell where it is and when I looked I couldn’t find it. There could be something hiding under his hair, but it didn’t hurt more when I touched it, so I don’t think it would do any good to shave the boy’s head.” She put up her hand, “And before you flip out, it is not on his brain, because if it were, it wouldn’t hurt.
“I also found a small burn on his index finger. I don’t know if that’s related or if he touched a hotplate to see if it was on or something.
“Now, if you want to haul David’s ass back here and interrogate him about this shit, I guarantee you…”
He put up a hand. “No, I do not want the pathological liar who told us this carnage would fix itself. The damage that you’re seeing still hurts and hasn’t healed yet?”
“Kee-rect.”
“And if there’s damage to his brain, just his brain, like somebody did it with magic to keep him compliant, you can’t see it at all?”
“I can see what it does to the rest of him, but the brain can’t sense itself very well, that is true.”
“All right. Then I want him to call Beauty.”
“Oh, hold up!” Maggie cried.
“Who or what is that?” Hyacinth said.
Ann frowned. “I think someone mentioned…”
“It’s a rapist who might knock him into a coma for the rest of his life!” Maggie said.
Mordecai lifted a single finger. “It will do one of those things or the other but not both.” He lifted a second finger. “Obviously, we will not be requesting the coma option, because we need to get Erik mended enough to go home as quickly as possible.” A third finger. “And it is not possible to apply human morals to gods, so stop trying.”
“I can apply human morals to humans who call gods that assault other humans, Uncle Mordecai!”
“No one involved is going to feel assaulted, Maggie. It blocks all of that out…”
“And that,” said the General, “is a permanent alteration to what is legally defined as ‘the inner being,’ so we have zoomed past ‘assault’ and begun discussing a war crime.”
“That is what they all do,” Mordecai snapped. “That is what they do to us. That is what they’ve been doing to us since the dawn of time, and that is what they will keep doing to us, because nobody is capable of holding them accountable for it. At least this one cleans up after itself — because it wants you to call it again. It does not have human morality and it never will.
“But it has something Erik needs, and Erik is the only one who can pay for it. I will take responsibility for doing a war crime on Erik to save his mind and possibly his life. And we are in a hostel full of horny young tourists who want to drink, do drugs, and have lots of sex with dubious consent anyway, so…”
“That is their prerogative,” said the General, “not permission to inflict it upon them.”
“Erik sure as shit can’t consent either!” Maggie said.
“No,” Mordecai said coldly. “He certainly can’t. I want to do something about that so maybe we have some faint hope that maybe, someday in the future, he can.”
He began to pace in front of the closet door, almost talking to himself, “I couldn’t do this for him when he was a kid. He’d never called a god before. He didn’t know how. And I didn’t know he was preternaturally accurate and he probably would’ve got it right on the very first try, so I didn’t even think it was possible. I didn’t think we could’ve just sent him to sleep for a few days and had him wake up with his skull healed and his brain and his eye back in his head. I didn’t have to decide whether that was worth the risk he might never wake up, that wasn’t how I paid for taking my eyes off him and letting him get hurt.
“No.” He stopped in his tracks and stirred the air with a finger, glaring at them. “I had to watch that kid fighting and clawing for everything he wanted to do and couldn’t. I had to watch him figure out in real time that he’d lost some things he was never going to get back. And I know, you all know, how fucking terrified he is that it will happen again. He has a goddamn crate full of memories in case he forgets — and whoever did this to him is making him forget everything, randomly, all the time. If he ever comes back enough to realize it, he will be trapped in his own personal hell.
“So, yeah, I am about to assault a random tourist who won’t feel hurt by it, because we’re going to add a little war crime on top — unless you’d like to assault me and stuff me back in that suitcase and leave me there until whatever mystery damage scars over and we can’t do fucking anything about it!”
“Oh, no,” Ann said. “We remember. Erik told us — it fixed his mother. But it doesn’t fix scars. There’s a time constraint. But, Em, he said all her friends volunteered…”
“All right, so have it assault me,” Maggie said.
“Maggie!” said the General.
“Damn it, at least I can consent!”
Mordecai put up his hand. “No. Categorically, no.”
Maggie huffed. “Why not? Is he too young for me?”
“Obviously not,” he said. “But I think, if you’re not already involved that way, you want to be someday. If you have a… a… what is by all accounts a mind-blowing encounter with a god in Erik’s body, that is going to affect everything you might do together afterwards. So, no. You’re off-limits.”
“Hell, now you’re making me curious,” Hyacinth said acidly.
“You are also off-limits, but it doesn’t matter because it always chooses someone of the opposite sex who is about the same age. Maggie is the only one in any danger, and we are going to tuck you in the other room and keep it the hell away from you.”
Maggie sputtered. “You… You’re just going to guide him to a tourist like you’re pimping him out and come back here and… Right here?”
He sighed. “The other rooms are shared and so are the bathrooms. We can’t leave the building. We probably shouldn’t even leave the floor. Do you have a better option?”
Maggie wandered away and kicked the box spring under one of the beds. “Fucking Dracula-ass, Harker-molesting bullshit.”
“This is morally reprehensible,” said the General. “And while, on the surface, it may appear tactically sound, I would remind you that Erik and yourself, Mr. Eidel, are illegal here. Even if this hypothetical woman does not see fit to run screaming from you, she will certainly mention what has occurred. I doubt we will be able to leave this place with Erik in time to escape the consequences.”
“We have all of David’s shit in the laundry bag,” Hyacinth said. She bent and retrieved it from beside the bed. “I’m not endorsing this, but we can’t rule it out that easily. We have plenty of makeup…”
“If you try to put makeup on everything,” Maggie grumbled, “it’s not going to… Oh, hell.” She slumped and hefted a sigh. “Hang on.”
She stamped over to the desk, found several batteries in a drawer, and set three on the blotter, for good measure. She picked up the desk lamp and smashed them, pressing down with both hands to make sure every ounce of magic-sustaining human blood was exposed, then she set the lamp aside, and pointed a finger at the bulb.
It switched on and turned green like a party light. She made the ceiling lamp orange and purple, one bedside lamp red, and the other blue.
“There,” Maggie said. “Welcome to the Rainbow Sex Dungeon, everything here is a weird colour — and now I’m complicit.” She sat on a bed. “Fuck.”
◆◇◆
In a modest apartment not far away, a malfunctioning bug that had only recently fizzled to life in time to broadcast a live cover of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and the beginning of what sounded like an interrogation, switched on again and said, “Welcome to the Rainbow Sex Dungeon!”
The spy spat out an entire mouthful of coffee, drenching the speaker in hot bean juice, sugar, and cream.
◆◇◆
“We’re not really,” Ann said. “Are… are we really going to do this?”
“In real terms,” said the General. “We are stranded behind enemy lines with no backup, two of our men will be shot on sight if they are discovered, and one of them is wounded and incapable of extricating himself, rendering our whole team paralyzed while we care for him. This is not a situation in which one usually has a lot of time to make decisions, or a lot of good options. People die in situations like this.”
“It’s not a war,” Maggie said.
“I don’t think that matters, Magnificent. No matter the context, thinking tactically requires a wilful anaesthesia of the soul.” She glanced at Mordecai. “Which is why, during the siege, they outsourced it to a god.”
He nodded. “Helping a friend without killing anyone or indefinitely prolonging a siege is one of the least awful things I’ve had to do.” He cocked his head at her. “You too?”
She nodded.
“Whoever did this to Erik was probably ‘thinking tactically,’” Maggie disdained. “So why aren’t we cool with letting him be permanently damaged to accomplish whatever fucking important thing?”
Ann broke in, “Because we love him. Maggie. That’s not wrong.”
“So we’re going to pass on the damage to someone else? Because… Because we’re telling ourselves it’s less?”
Hyacinth scowled. “Damn it, Maggie, you’re making it sound like triage.” She sighed. “All right, I admit it. Doing permanent damage — including letting people die and letting my friends cut pieces off them — to save people’s lives is kinda my jam,” She, too, glanced at Mordecai, “As you know.”
“And I am very grateful for my jury-rigged metal lungs that try to kill me every winter,” he replied, with all due seriousness.
“Right. And you were so fucked up at the time that you wanted to die, so I held you down and made the decision for you — thus signing you up for a lifetime of pain and disability instead of the poetic demise you requested.” She touched a hand to her chest and bowed with mock politeness. “I do understand that sometimes we assault our friends, and random strangers, truly.”
“And they forgive you,” Mordecai said sternly.
“Please do shut up,” she said. It sounded so much like David, who had not left all that long ago, that he did a double take, and she caught herself and covered her mouth with a hand. But she went on, “We have the option to mitigate the damage, and I’m going to cling onto that like a life preserver.
“Yes, we are in a hostel full of horny tourists who are looking to get high and have consequence-free sex — so I am going to march myself into that bunk room and offer them some. I will make up some god-awful story — my mouth has a mind of its own and I grew up matching wits with David, I can do this — I will ask for volunteers, and I will bring them back to the Rainbow Sex Dungeon for you. Will that work?”
“At least two,” Mordecai said, “to be safe. It took two to heal Alba from a gunshot. They need to be girls, and they need to be close to Erik’s age, or it will walk him off looking for someone it likes better.”
“I think I can fill that order, Dracula,” said Renfield-in-Hyacinth’s-clothing. “I’m very good at convincing girls to experiment.”
Maggie cried, “They still won’t be able to consent when it takes them! And Erik can’t either!”
“Maggie,” Ann said weakly, “Milo and I don’t like it, either, but we can’t come up with anything else to do. Auntie Enora doesn’t fix injuries at all, and Erik’s the only one who can hold her, and… And we’d be too terrified to push him that way without understanding how he’s hurt…”
Mordecai nodded.
Ann went on, counting the options on her fingers, “And we can’t knock him out and put him in the suitcase, not with drugs or magic, because we don’t know if that will hurt him more. If we have the god knock him out and store him that way, it might wake him up in a timeless void dimension, and that would hurt him too. And if we get David back here, he’s just going to tell us more lies. We can’t hide Erik, we can’t get him out of here, and we can’t keep him safe. Maybe, if we heal him, we’ll be able to do all those things. So maybe it’s the least wrong thing.”
Maggie turned and walked away from them all, but she didn’t say anything more.
“Do you want to be a sex cult?” Hyacinth said. “That woman downstairs keeps saying we’re up here sacrificing animals like a cult, I think I can make us a sex cult. Plausibly.”
Mordecai said, “I don’t care what you make us, just please find someone who’ll help Erik, and I’ll organize things here.”
“We just need to charge up our crystals or some shit,” Hyacinth muttered, pushing her way out into the hall. “We may not need all of you. But who’d like to help us charge up our crystals…?”
Mordecai opened the door between the rooms and motioned them through. “The rest of you are going to stay in here for the duration. I will let you know when it’s safe.”
◆◇◆
“Do you want to listen to the radio?” Ann said, at library volume. The connecting door was soundproofed and it really wasn’t necessary, it just seemed appropriate. There was a sick person in the other room trying to get better. “Maggie?” Ann had the mini tape-player in her hands. “Milo and I took the signal booster. Do you want to listen to radio from home…?”
Maggie was sitting on a bed, some distance away, with her elbows in her lap and her head in her hands.
“Leave it, Miss Rose,” said the General. She sat beside her daughter, and put a hand on her back. “It gets easier.”
“It shouldn’t be easy.”
“I didn’t say ‘easy,’ Magnificent…”
The connecting door clicked open. They all looked up, confused. It had barely been five minutes.
Erik was standing in the doorway, expressionless, silent, cold. He was barefoot, but wearing David’s pants and shirt. He didn’t seem to care, about that or anything else. He glanced at them each, once, briefly. He didn’t smile. There was no sense of recognition, or even appraisal. No reaction at all, like a doll with a frozen face.
Ann thought Milo had often looked like that in the mirror, during the siege.
Erik extended a hand towards Maggie. She stood up and took a single step towards him.
“No.” Mordecai was beside him, with a hand on his arm. “Please. Not her.”
Erik paused and glanced at him, motion without any reaction or feeling. He dropped his hand and offered them a subtle bow. The door clicked closed again. It had only been open for half a minute.
“Maggie?” the General said.
Maggie sat down again, shuddering. “Oh, gods, I wasn’t scared of it. I… I know what it does and I couldn’t be scared of it…”
Ann and the General both sat beside her, holding her.
“It’s all right,” Ann said softly. “We’re all right. Em knows what he’s doing, we’re going to be fine…”
◆◇◆
Miss Mila’s shift ended at six PM, making “day clerk” something of a misnomer, especially in the cold months. She had a modest basement apartment — fully furnished, came with the job, and she had seniority — and her commute was literal minutes away, so it wasn’t much of a hardship.
Misha vacated the crinkly paper bag when she picked up her purse, galloping ahead to the door marked “Employees Only” in several different languages.
“No,” she told him. Again. “Stay.”
She collected the shopping bag with a sigh. “I will let your stupid friend deal with this,” she told the cat. “Bite him for me. Vomit in his shoes. Make his life miserable.”
“Mao,” Misha replied.
Speak of the idiot, and there he was, busting in the front door with a garment bag and a large cardboard box.
Miss Mila did not hold the door for him, but she regarded the box hopefully. “Are you quitting?”
He laughed and smiled at her, with the glass door awkwardly crushing his whole body. “Ha-ha-ha, you ask too many questions, Miss…” The box fell out of his arms, landed in the snow with a crunch, and coughed up a large bag of noodles. “Miss Fiala!” He guided the box inside with a kick, wrinkling the door mat and jamming the door open.
He didn’t seem to know what to do about that. Once again, she did not help him.
“What is that?” he asked of the shopping bag.
She frowned at it, and at him. “You ask too many questions, Mr. Andreyev.” She strode to the elevator to deliver the bag herself, with the cat following at her heels.
◆◇◆
The insane blonde woman was standing outside the rooms at the end of the hall, with two giggling tourists. Both were female, of less than half the woman’s age, and passing a bottle of strawberry margarita mix back and forth.
Miss Mila decided, before she even stepped off the elevator, that she had no desire to know what the crazy people were doing now. She would’ve turned right around and gone back to the lobby, except that would mean explaining to Andrej. With a low growl, she put her head down and walked towards the insanity, followed by the cat.
“I have your shopping bag,” she said, preemptively. “Someone found it. Here.”
The woman did not want to take the shopping bag, and denied all knowledge of it.
“Well, it’s your shopping bag now!” Miss Mila said.
She dropped it at the woman’s feet and stamped away.
◆◇◆
“I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what’s wrong with him, I don’t know anything!”
“Oh, dear, no. I’m sure it will be fine…” Only Ann was willing to comfort Mordecai, under the circumstances, but Maggie at least looked uncomfortable with refraining.
“It’s not going to help! They… They did whatever it was over a year ago, and it’s not even going to help! He… He burnt his mouth on some soup or something and I flipped out and thought we could fix what they did to him. It’s… It’s not fixable! I shouldn’t have done it. This… This is Erik now, this is all that’s left of Erik, and I’m torturing him trying to get him back the way I want him…”
“Now, Em, that isn’t true at all. Maggie, tell him…”
“I don’t think we should’ve done it either,” Maggie said flatly. “Why didn’t you think of that soup thing fifteen minutes ago when we could check?”
Ann gave an irritated click of her tongue. “Well…”
Hyacinth’s voice was on the other side of the door, “It’s me.” She opened it and held up the shopping bag, with Milo’s smart card clutched in her opposite hand.
“What?” They all drew nearer and read the card.
Ann was rather disappointed to discover she hadn’t used any of Milo’s nice, prewritten messages, scrawling her own in pencil across the back instead: THE DAY CLERK SAID SOMEONE LEFT THIS BAG FOR US. I FIGURE IT’S A BUG OR A BOMB. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
“What?” Mordecai reiterated.
Ann touched a finger to her lips. “Shh.”
“I gotta go,” Hyacinth said, inclining her head towards the waiting tourists.
The General accepted the shopping bag with an eager grin, allowing her to depart. “Ah. At last, a rational task.” She set it on the desk. “Show only me.”
“Mom, I can help,” Maggie said quickly.
“No,” came the absent reply. “I’m bored. Go away.”
Maggie backed off with a snicker.
“Should we be in the same room with it?” Mordecai hissed at her.
She assumed he must mean the bag: “Nah, Mom’s got it, we’re good.”
The General discarded a pink box lid, followed shortly by a smashed black top hat. “Irrelevant… Ah, there it is.” A few moments later, she dropped a handful of rubber bands on the desktop. “Hmm… Various full-motion photographs, many with sound, a great deal of paper, much of it with simple enchantments suitable for copying, scrolling and displaying multiple images, and one single sheet of enchanted ‘smart paper,’ which is capable of sending text and images to other linked sheets of smart paper, but they have not been tagged with their locations.”
The General turned back to the rest of them, holding an open manila envelope that had been stuffed nearly to bursting. “None of these items are capable of broadcasting sound or exploding, but there are quite a lot of them and they seem rather disorganized…”
Maggie took the envelope and began leafing through it. “It’s from John!” she said. “He…” she trailed off, pained.
“Perhaps,” said the General, “if we…”
“Mom, did you look at this?” Maggie said numbly.
“Only via the spell. As I said, there is so much of it, I was about to suggest we divide…”
“We don’t have to do that,” Maggie said.
The General turned back towards her, drawn by her peculiar, flat tone, and pushed up her glasses. “Maggie…?”
“I… I don’t know, I guess maybe we do, but… Not now.” She upended the envelope and shook its contents out on the desk. The mixed papers and photographs sloughed out in a crooked pile. “I,” she said. She picked up a square, colour photo. There were a lot like it, but that one had been near the top and she couldn’t stop looking at it.
A cluster of children were clinging to each other on a dark floor strewn with loose straw. The walls around them had horizontal slits where the light leaked through, and a single high, barred window on each side. They were cringing away from the camera flash, many of them with visible tears in their eyes, but almost none with open mouths indicating that they were crying aloud. A heavyset woman with a rifle slung across her back stood off to one side, mouthing silent words at them with her arms spread, as if she wanted to encircle the whole mass of them for a hug. But they weren’t looking at her. They had all turned to look at the camera, terrified of it.
The children looked like patchwork dolls. Their clothing was mostly whole and unmended, but their skin and hair were a riot of conflicting patterns. Snow-white had melted haphazardly into blond, brown, black, and red — one alternate colour per child. Bright rainbow hues were similarly mottled with uneven blotches of fair, tan, and olive, as if someone had hit them with some peculiar paint-remover, and quit after only refinishing them halfway. Some of them even had freckles, but you could only see them in the places without colour.
They were dirty, bruised, and thin — not yet swollen from starvation, more as if they had been cast out onto the street and failed to find any food, money or shelter for a week or so. Many of them had scrapes and scratches, mostly scratches, with a few deep gashes that could’ve used cleaning and bandaging.
Not one of them could’ve been older than twelve.
“…I found Erik’s train car full of people who don’t want to die.”
