It was a strange enough occurrence, it snapped me right out of my drift.
“You’ll need the medical supplies at the pump house,” Right Ned said again, his blue gaze searching to see if I was listening. “Your father’s supplies.”
I glanced between him and Left Ned, who seemed a little disgusted. But, then, Left Ned was always a little disgusted when he touched me. Right Ned never let that show. Right Ned never made me feel like I should be ashamed of what kind of things I was made up of.
“I’ll be back quick,” I said. “Watch him. Watch Grandma. And make up the spare bed. Clean sheets are in the linen drawers.”
I jogged out the door, wanting to move, to be away from that stranger and the questions he had brought into my kitchen. What enemies? How close were they? And which House did he belong to exactly?
The sun pushed up over the tree line. The birds couldn’t seem to sing enough about it, but there was no heat to the day yet. I jogged down through the trees, down past the ramble of blackberries until the rush of the stream outsang the birds.
The pump house was a long stone building set beside the stream. It generated electricity for the farm and the computers and other off-the-grid equipment we used for communication and for keeping our place out of sight. It pumped fresh water up to the house and out to the water troughs in the field and barn for the beasts.
On the inside—or, rather, the underside—was my father’s workshop that my brother had forbidden me to enter when we were young.
That moratorium had lasted one week before I picked the lock, hacked the code, and let myself in. He hadn’t found out about my frequent visits to the lab for almost a year, and by then, I knew the secrets of the place better, even, than he did.
I pushed open the door and stepped into the cool dark and damp. I didn’t bother switching on the light. I knew exactly which stone in the back wall to pull free to expose the lever for the hatch.
I pulled that lever, the sensors within it accepting my fingerprint signature. The floorboards lifted, revealing wooden stairs. I hurried down those and flipped the light switch.
Bulbs popped on, burning with such cool intensity, I closed my eyes and counted to three before opening them again.
This steel room beneath the wood and stone and dust of the pump house looked like it belonged in a spaceship.
Every wall was covered with steel and burnished to a soft shine, drawers and shelves built from ceiling to floor. Some of those drawers were locked in such ways, I’d never been able to open them. Others I never wanted to open again.
In the center of the room was an empty metal table wide enough for two people to lie on it side-by-side. The floor was carved and burned with symbols, lines, and figures that made my head hurt if I stared at them too long.
I’d asked Quinten what the symbols represented, but he just shook his head and said he hadn’t figured it out yet. Some of the things on the farm were old. Older even than Dad’s research and experiments. Maybe older than Grandma. Dad had never explained them and the records were seized by the Houses back when Dad had been killed.
Mysteries at my feet, and all around.
I strode to the drawers, counted three in from the corner and pulled on the smooth, cold handle.
Inside were a dozen master spools of thread, each filled with glassy silver strands of different thickness.Filum Vitae, or life thread. It was my dad’s concoction, made of the minerals and organic matter that filtered from the soil and river to spin out here—nanowitchery and devilry included.
Next to the threaded spools were empty wooden bobbins. I hooked the heaviest threads into the notch of two bobbins.
I pressed my thumb on the button on the side of the drawer, engaging the machinery. Bobbins spun, filling with thread from the master spools. As soon as the bobbins were fat I let go of the button and a diamond-edged blade cut the threads.
I put the bobbins in my pocket and gathered up a sheet of needles, surgical scissors, and clamps.
Most of my knowledge of how to use my father’s medical supplies was taught to me by Quinten, the genius that he was, whose hand at stitchery was even finer than Dad’s. Over the years he’d left for months at a time, leaving me to repair the beasts Dad had pieced together. Leaving me, sometimes, to repair myself.
I was human—I ate, drank, laughed, and cried. I’d grown from a baby to a girl. Then I’d gotten sick and almost died.
Quinten had spoken of it only once over a bottle of moonshine he’d gotten for repairing the Phersons’ radio. When I’d almost died, I’d been eight, and he’d been thirteen. He’d stolen me out of bed when Mom and Dad weren’t looking, and with that genius mind of his, he’d done . . . something to me.
Made it so my memories, my soul, and all themeof me were picked up and transplanted into the sleeping mind of one of Dad’s hidden experiments: a stitched-together girl child who had been sleeping for a couple hundred years.
Dad had been furious. Mom had been horrified. But shortly thereafter, my original body failed and my stitched body survived.
With me in it.
I was our biggest secret: the real monster the outside world would tear apart if found.
So, yes, I was human. But I wasn’tonlyhuman, since the sleeping girl’s body was a remnant from a failed experiment that had happened so long ago, she’d been forgotten. Dad had smuggled her out when he left House White.
