Right Ned added in a dollop of cream and didn’t look at me as he stirred it. “It isn’t like the images we see from other people,” he said quietly enough, I might have thought he was talking to his other half. “There was a desperation in it. A drive to survive, to live. No matter the cost.”
“Abraham’s was the same,” Left Ned said. “Survive. No matter the cost.”
“It’s strange,” they said together.
And that, hearing them both come to the same conclusion at the same time, was so unusual it gave me chills.
“What kind of strange?” I asked.
“There’s something too similar about their memories.”
“Well, not a lot of people are more than three hundred years old. Think it’s that?”
“No.” They both drank coffee, then Right Ned sighed. “It’s almost as if both memories happened on the same day. Maybe at the same time. That bell Robert Twelfth heard ringing out . . . I think I heard it in Abraham’s memory too.”
“It’s unnatural,” Left Ned said.
“Did you hear bells when you first touched me?”
“Yes,” they said.
“The same damn bell,” Left Ned finished.
I didn’t know what to say about old memories and visions. The body my brother had implanted my thoughts, personality, and awareness into had a healthy, viable brain that had lingered so long in a vegetative state, the personality had been wiped clean. All my memories were my own, and I’d never heard voices or felt the presence of anyone else in the body with me. Still, it was pretty clear the body I was stitched into wasn’t just some random forgotten experiment.
Abraham had said galvanized brains, if uninjured, were immortal and would continue living even if separated from the galvanized body. He had said their thoughts and personality remained. So what could have happened to this girl to send her into a coma she never woke up from?
That question was disturbing, but I wasn’t as spooked about it as my farmhand seemed to be.
“If you settle on what it is that bothers you about the visions, I want to know,” I said. “But until then, do you have any contacts that might help us find my brother?”
“I know some people,” Right Ned started. “People who could make you disappear if you wanted.” He said it very quietly, cautiously. As if it were something he should not be sharing.
“I can’t. Not yet, anyway. Maybe when I get my brother free, and my land clear, and Grandma safe . . .”
“It would need to be now, Tilly,” he said. “Right now. We leave from here and are never seen again. You should say yes.”
They were both wearing the same expression—a mix of dead seriousness and maybe just an edge of fear. They knew something they weren’t saying. Probably knew a lot of things they weren’t saying.
“Tell me everything you know. I can’t make a decision that would leave Grandma and my brother stranded without something solid to go on.”
The door to the diner opened.
Three men in black jackets, black hats, and dark glasses walked in, scanned the shop, and moved to either side of the door, guarding it.
Left Ned glanced that way. “Too late, I think.”
Right Ned was still looking at me. “They work for House Black. And they’re looking for you.”
House Black. The House that had killed my parents. Maybe even the House that still held my brother.
“I got this,” I said, just before swallowing down the last of my coffee. “I’ve wanted to settle something with House Black for a long time.”
I made my way through the crowd toward them. Neds cussed, and then I heard them move away from the table and head after me.
None of the three appeared to be the head of House Black nor a galvanized, although that was just a guess. Two of the three men stood stock-still, staring forward, and one turned his head to watch my approach.
So I guessed he was the boss here.
