Except for the lead surgeon. She stared at him, waiting. No hope, no trust in her eyes.
She was, after all, a very intelligent woman.
A pity he couldn’t use her for something more.
Slater turned and paced toward the door. “Thank you, one and all. You have been very useful.”
He stepped through the door. It locked behind him.
A small button was hidden in the wall just outside the door. He pressed his finger against it, triggering the gas that filled the room and killed them all, quickly, silently, and without a mess.
A pity they had not been more useful.
He paced down the hall and tugged off his gloves, finger by finger. Five years of failure was still a success in one manner: he now knew there was only one way forward.
If he wanted to live forever, if he wanted to change the world so that he alone ruled, he must force Quinten Case to pick up a needle and thread.
To stitch him, as he had stitched the girl, Matilda.
He tucked his gloves into his overcoat and then slipped the silk kerchief from his pocket. He wiped away the new blood from the corner of his mouth.
He would need to press Mr. Case into service soon. Before there was no time left for him.
12
Their cobbled, monstrous appearance clothed human needs and desires that even torture and experimentation could not destroy. Heroes in war, they returned to a world in which they had no place.—1945
—from the journal of L.U.C.
“So do we walk right into House Gray?” I asked after we’d been traveling in the speed tube for a while.
“No. First we will meet with a friend of mine who helped me find you,” Abraham said.
“Who’s your friend?” I said to keep the conversation going. Sure, my mind was made up about going into the city and claiming a House, but my stomach was fluttering with nerves. This time, right here in this car, might be my last moments of real freedom.
Abraham glanced over at me. “Robert Twelfth.”
Right Ned, in the backseat, jerked at that name.
“Isn’t he galvanized?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Since when did he go House Gray?” Left Ned asked.
“He didn’t. He is claimed by House Minerals and works very . . . closely with the top of that House, Slater Orange.”
“What does House Orange have to do with you finding Matilda?” Right Ned asked.
Abraham shook his head. “Nothing. Robert is meeting us as a favor to me.”
Right Ned whistled softly. “If he’s going behind his House to smuggle an unclaimed galvanized into an opposing House, then you must be very good friends.”
“For more than one lifetime,” Abraham said.
Immortality—everyone wanted that, right? From the sound of his voice, the answer was somewhere in the not-really zone.
A chime rang out in the car, and then the scenery faded to reveal the tube’s internal walls and flat blue-white lighting. Our vehicle slowed and stopped, though it wasn’t until the vacuum released that I felt the clack and rattle of machinery moving our capsule out of the arrival port and onto the line of other vehicles waiting to take the ramps into the city.
