Beating Heart Cadavers (21 page)

“I – right, sorry –”

He moved forward to take Andor's other arm, his hands slipping on the blood-soaked fabric of his uniform as they dragged him across the room to the storage closet. As his body flopped over onto the ground and Caine shoved his shoulder upwards in order to be able to close the door, Fields momentarily disappeared from his side. She hurried back with her arms filled with the bloodied papers and Sawyer's briefcase and shoved them in after him.

“The floor – clean the floor!” she hissed to Caine as Jasper's footsteps grew closer, scooting back across the room to pick up the metal notebook and weapon that still laid in the pool of blood in order to hide them as well.

“Where – I – is there a mop?” Caine asked, all too aware that he had never washed a floor in his life.

“For fuck's sake, Matt! Just do something!”

“Ladeline, are you down –” The door to the kitchen began to open and Jasper's voice sounded from the hall. Seeing that there was no chance of cleaning the floor, Fields grabbed an armful of bottles from the liquor cabinet and threw them down on top of the bloodied wood: the glass smashed and sent red wine spilling across it. “– here?”

Jasper stepped into the room and looked around, his eyes going from his sister to Caine and then the mess spewing over the floor. Caine's own eyes were fixed on the spots of thick red that looked distinctly like blood rather than alcohol.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Caine and Fields replied in unison.

The albino looked at each of them in turn, his expression wary. When his eyes reached Caine, he paused on the cut still dripping blood down the side of his skull.

“What happened to you?”

Caine's hand automatically went to his ear, but Fields responded for him.

“He cut himself.”

“Obviously,” Jasper replied scathingly. “What were you two doing? Practicing juggling with Dad's best reds?”

Fields' tongue darted out to lick her lips.

“We were horsing around,” she said, her voice as indifferent as the shrug that she gave him. “I might've caught Matt with a bottle. It's nothing serious.”

“I doubt Dad'll agree,” the albino said. “He'll flip when he sees this.”

“If you're so worried, grab a rag and help us clean it up before he gets home.”

“Yeah, right,” Jasper said. “You broke it, you clean it up.”

He threw one last dirty look at Caine and then stalked back upstairs. They listened to the sound of his footsteps on the second floor landing making their way to his bedroom before daring to let out their breaths.

“Fuck,” Caine said, letting the word expel from his mouth in a gust of relief.

“Now what do we do?” Fields asked. She jerked her thumb over to the closet where Sawyer's body was hidden. “We can't just leave him there.”

Caine halted with his hand clasped at the back of his neck, staring at the closed door with a panic that mimicked thoughtfulness all too well. He had already touched the dead body once: another time hardly seemed necessary.

“Why not?”

“Matt! It's a closet, not a tomb! Someone's going to notice that there's a body in there – we have to move him!”

“I – I know,” he tried again. “Just … does it have to be us?”

“Who do you suggest we call? The neighborhood boys who shovel the driveway?” Fields snapped. “Come on, Matt: it has to be us! We did it!”

“Right, but it was an accident. We could just tell them what happened –”

“Great idea,” Fields said sarcastically. “I'll dial your father and inform him that you're standing here covered in Andor's blood – but not to worry because it was an
accident
.”

Caine flinched and made a face.

“Right,” he said. “You're – you're right, we shouldn't tell anyone. It's just ...”

He shook his head, unsure of what to say. There was a dark line in the crack where the closet door met the floor, and he thought that it might have been blood pooling out from the lifeless body. He turned back to Fields, suddenly struck.

“Fuck, Lad: I killed someone.”

He brought his hand to his face, the reality of it only now beginning to sink in, and he was certain that he would either be sick or outright collapse from the way his legs were shaking. Fields made an odd movement as she watched him; empathy had never quite been her strongest suit.

“Right, well – you did,” she said. She cleared her throat and gave a shrug of her shoulders. “But … on the bright side, at least it was Andor. Of all the people to accidentally kill, you lucked out.”

Caine made a sound somewhere between a nervous laugh and a whimper.

“Come on, Matt – don't think about it right now,” she hastened on. “Let's just – let's just move the body and then sort out the details.”

“Move it where? And how? We can't just drag him across the sidewalk and dump him in a ditch!”

“We'll – we'll stick him in a bag,” she said, forming a plan as quickly as she could. “Then we'll – dammit, why don't you own a car?”

“I'm a terrible driver: I get distracted too easily,” he said defensively. “If I'd guessed that a day would come when we'd need one to transport a body, then I would've gotten one.”

“How retrospective,” she drawled. “Doesn't really help us much now, though, does it – unless you want to prop him upright and ride next to him on the train?”

“Of course I don't!”

“Then think of another way to get him out of here! Come on: there must be another way that you get around Oneris – you don't actually walk from the station to your house all the time, do you?”

“Well, no. I mean, my father has a driver that I can call –”

“Good: call him.”

“And tell him what? To drive me to a remote spot in the woods, and then shut his eyes for half an hour while I dig a ditch to dump a body in?”

Fields paused, mulling it over.

“No, just … just call him and tell him we want a ride over to your dad's estate,” she decided. “And we'll … we'll put Andor in something – a suitcase – and deal with him there.”

“Because I would need a suitcase going to my own house?” Caine deadpanned. “The guy's not stupid, Lad.”

“Tell him it's mine, then, and that I'm staying over.”

The statement was the worst part of the idea so far, and Caine rolled his head from one shoulder to the other as he weighed his options in the hopes of finding an alternative. Perhaps he should just tell the driver that they were moving a body, he considered thoughtfully: after all, he was quite sure that his father would be more forgiving knowing that he had killed someone than he would be if he thought that his son was involved with Fields.

The floor above them creaked again and footsteps crossed the landing; Jasper must have been heading to the bathroom.

“Alright,” Caine said at last, realizing that there was no other choice given the time constraints. “But … what do we do with the body once we get to my house?”

Fields shifted her jaw from side to side.

“Well, since there's diplomatic immunity,” she started slowly, “we'll just bury him in the yard.”

Ch. 28

“Are you feeling alright, Sawyer?”

The voice floated over to Jasper seemingly from afar, and the Spöke lifted his head from his desk groggily. He had a fluttering in his chest as though a bird had worked its way down his throat and gotten caught in his rib cage, and his skull was so filled with conflicting thoughts that it felt heavier than metal.

He blearily looked up at Ratsel.

“I'm – fine,” he said, swallowing against the words. “Just a little … under the weather.”

The High Officer raised his brow but didn't comment on it further. He waved the Spöke over to him.

“Come upstairs for a moment. There's something I want to show you.”

They exited the room and walked down the metal halls of the Spöken headquarters, Ratsel's strong steps echoing against the floor while Jasper's shuffled along beside him. As they took the lift up to the eighth floor, Jasper clenched his mouth to keep from being sick, and his heart gave another surge of discomfort inside his chest.

“Here we are,” Ratsel said, going to a room at the far side of the building and pulling open the door. “Go inside.”

Jasper slipped into the room, his head nodding against his throat as he walked. He could feel the higher Spöke next to him, but his peripheral vision was failing him.

Ratsel stepped over to the metal table in the center of the room and held out an arm to indicate to the notebook that sat upon it. He smiled as he presented it – a true smile, not his usual crowing one – and his hand descended to caress the smooth silver cover.

“We have it.”

Jasper forced his neck up and looked at the notebook. He offered the older man a polite nod.

“I'm glad, sir. Caine had it after all, then?”

“As we knew he did,” Ratsel responded. “And it's back where it belongs, at last.”

Jasper nodded again. He couldn't think of what to say.

“Your father would be pleased,” Ratsel continued. “I thought that I'd show it to you first, before the others. You carry on his name and legacy, after all.”

“Thank you, High Officer.”

“Do you know what this means, Sawyer? I can't remember if you've been briefed to the full extent. This is the cure – the solution – to the Mare-folk.”

He pulled out a chair and beckoned Jasper forward, and the Spöke shuffled over to take a seat. Ratsel sat down beside him.

“We've done a great deal over the years, Sawyer,” he said, folding his hands together on top of the table. “As much as we could have hoped for, I venture to say. But with our work came trials, and there were … mistakes that couldn't be avoided.”

“The only Onerians we killed were the ones we thought were Mare-folk.”

“Yes, yes – those deaths were necessary. I think we can all agree on that.” He leaned forward hungrily, his eyes glimmering in the artificial lights. “But I'm talking about other mistakes. Ones that we … don't let onto as readily.”

His mouth twitched, altering his smile.

“I'm referring to the effects of Hilitum, Sawyer.”

Jasper's brow pulled into a frown.

“You mean how it sterilizes the Mare-people, sir?”

“No. I'm referring to how we said that that's what it does.”

He watched Jasper closely, waiting for his reaction, but the Spöke's brow only tilted further downwards.

“But it does cause sterilization,” Jasper said. “We know that. We've witnessed it. The Mare-folk don't reproduce, and Onerian people have been affected –”

“They've been affected, yes, but not by the Hilitum,” Ratsel cut in. He leaned back in his chair as he spoke, but there was no sign of unease in his stance. He seemed to be weightless now, as though all of his concerns had melted from his metal uniform, and the act of confessing to Jasper was only making him even lighter. “Hilitum itself is nothing more than a charging mechanism, and no more dangerous than a standard battery that you might have in your car. It doesn't leach chemicals into the bloodstream, nor does it cause sterilization.”

Jasper shook his head. He was certain that his failing heart was causing him issues with comprehension: he knew that he wasn't hearing the other man properly.

“But I don't understand, sir. If the Hilitum isn't dangerous –”

“When the epidemic of Mare-people became apparent, it was the Spöken's job to do something about it. Back then, when all of this began to come into the light, we were even less equipped to deal with it than we are now. The Mare-folk look like us, act like us, live like us – there was no way to distinguish a real man from a metal-hearted one, and guesswork was more flawed then than it is now.

“We knew that the only way to achieve some sort of hold on the Mare-folk would be to infect them, but we didn't have the knowledge to poison them without poisoning our own, and our options were limited. The only thing we knew for certain was that the Mare-folk needed the Hilitum to charge their hearts, and so we did the only thing reasonable that we could: we melded the Hilitum with a toxic metal that would cause sterilization, thus preventing them from reproducing.”

Jasper tilted his head partway to the side. His purplish eyes stared unblinkingly at the High Officer.

“But ...”

“It wasn't until afterwards that we realized the sterilization wasn't contained to just the Mare-folk, and that it could be transmitted to our own. But even then it was thought of as an asset: not only were we sterilizing the Mare-folk, but we were also determining who had unjust relations with them.”

“But what's the point of sterilization?” Jasper asked. “It's not – it's caused so many problems already. All of Oneris is at risk of being infertile.”

“Initially the thought was that the Mare-folk's condition could be genetic,” Ratsel explained. “When the parents have metal hearts, the likelihood of their offspring having it, too, only seemed reasonable.”

“And is it?” Jasper asked. “Is the condition genetic?”

“The findings have never proven apparent,” Ratsel said. “What we do know is that perfectly healthy Onerians can still have children with metal hearts, so sterilization didn't provide the cure that we had hoped for. Now, of course, none of that matters: your father found the cure, and it's right in here.”

Ratsel tapped the metal notebook. The erratic rhythm matched Jasper's heartbeat.

“What is it, sir?” he asked, his voice low.

“We'll know soon,” the High Officer replied. “It seems that there's a sort of key that was supposed to go with the book – one made of the toxic metal, no less – but it hasn't been uncovered yet. But our team is getting another piece of metal fitted to unlock it as we speak.”

Jasper nodded. His head felt numb.

“That's … wonderful, sir,” he said.

Ratsel leaned forward and patted him on the shoulder like a father congratulating his favorite son.

“You've done good work for me, Sawyer,” he said. “Andor would be most proud. Not many men could have completed the task I gave you concerning Ambassador Caine's son, and I want you to know that your loyalty will not go unnoticed. From now on, you'll work directly beneath me.”

Jasper swallowed, trying to smile despite his urge to be sick.

“Thank you, sir.”

Ratsel squeezed his shoulder a bit more firmly.

“Why don't you take a few days off?” he asked the albino, a look of almost concern coming to his face. “Look after yourself a little, and come back refreshed.”

Jasper nodded.

“I … I will, sir. Thank you.”

The High Officer rose and left the room. When his echoing footsteps had disappeared down the hall, Jasper slowly got to his feet as well. The metal notebook gleamed up at him from its place on the table, and it seemed to hold everything that Jasper had ever been or would ever be within its unbroken grasp.

He reached forward and plucked it up, tucking it beneath his arm. He wasn't worried about getting caught taking it from the headquarters. He was Ratsel's right-hand man now, after all: no one would question him when he carried it out the door.