Abraham pressed the wristband into the scanner above the latch and the door swung open. “If you’d rather, you are welcome to walk up to the front door, Mr. Harris.”
“No, this is fine,” I said, throwing Neds a look. “The quicker we get there, the quicker things can be put in order.” And the quicker I could find out where my brother was, and how I was going to keep myself, my grandmother, and my property safe.
Also, how I was going to bargain for my freedom.
Right Ned gave me another look that made it clear he was sure I’d lost my mind.
I was beginning to think he was right.
“Just this way,” Abraham waited, holding the door open.
“Said the spider to the flies,” Left Ned muttered.
I hesitated. It looked like a trap. It felt like a trap.
“Please,” Abraham said, “I’ll answer any question you have as soon as we’re on the other side of this door. This garage isn’t safe for long.”
So I stepped through the door, holding my breath and questions for the time being.
13
HOUSE ORANGE
He preferred to wait until his captive looked up. It was power, eye contact. And once that contact was made, the power became his.
“Ah,” Slater Orange said, looking into Quinten’s sharp blue eyes, “perhaps we can come to an agreement today.”
He wiped the silken cloth over his forehead, mopping the perspiration there. Then he pressed the cloth along its edges between his fingers, folding and folding again, until he tucked it into his breast pocket.
Quinten remained in the library, with access only to the small sleeping area and bathroom behind the door to the left. He was pacing, always pacing, his hands folded behind his back.
“This.” Slater Orange held up the slim translucent screen. He was not wearing gloves. There was no need for them. The blood he was about to draw wouldn’t stain his flesh.
“Your freedom,” he said.
Quinten’s gaze ticked to the screen, then away. “I want contact with House Gray. There is nothing more I will do, nothing more I will say, until that human and legal right is fulfilled.”
“All these years,” Slater Orange said, “I had assumed galvanized was a process that could be duplicated. Given enough time, enough medical and technical advancement, any body part could be grown, transplanted, replaced.
“But every body part ages . . . and the brain especially suffers, falters, fails. You must understand, Mr. Case, it is not just a new body that I desire. It is immortality. Forever in one body, with a brain that will never degrade.”
“I am not a doctor,” Quinten said. “I cannot help you with such things.”
“You are a genius, resourceful, willing to build with what you have on hand. Just as you built your sister, Matilda.”
Quinten did not stop pacing.
“But you had good parts to start with, didn’t you?” Slater said. “A body that had been forgotten, hidden, stored away. A brain that had slept for three hundred years instead of waking as all the other galvanized awoke. Your sister began, as all galvanized began: a human who survived the Wings of Mercury.”
Quinten stopped. Turned, folded his arms across his chest, and gave him a bored stare. “I demand contact with House Gray.”
Slater Orange held up the slim screen again. “I can only assume that you found a way to transfer her personality, memories, and self into that blank brain. Or perhaps the brain was not blank. Perhaps you cleared away the original personality so that your sister’s mind, thoughts, and awareness could be implanted unimpeded. What I do know is that the brain she now lives within was changed by that secret experiment centuries ago. I also assume that if a sniper sent a bullet into her brain or heart that she might survive it, that she would not bleed out and die. Shall we see if my assumptions are correct?”
The screen flickered and split, both images focused on the interior of an abandoned building. In that building were four people: Abraham Seventh of House Gray, Robert Twelfth of House Orange, a mutant with two heads, and Matilda Case.
“A single word from me and the triggers will be pulled.”
“It’s a recording,” Quinten said, studying the time stamp at the top of the screen.
