The Two Fangs

Chapter 13

Along the way, Valle had studied Dresden's model extensively, and decided upon a point of entry. His, at least. Some ways down from the rooftop where they knelt to eat, there was cargo door with a platform for a drone or helicopter to land and unload. It wasn't the pair of large slatted garage doors he was eyeing, but a small slot off to the side, a conveyor belt peering out through it. The size and shape of it was so specific: it was to carry bodies. Or, he predicted: one particular body.

He and Grid didn't say goodbye before they parted. Rather, Valle clasped the hawk's hand and gave her the most forceful look he could conjure. Then she fired the harpoon to string the zipline across for him, and he swung down to the cargo platform.

Following a frightful, clumsy descent, Valle's feet touched down on the gravel of the Osah building. He dislodged the harpoon so that Grid could retract it, and approached the slot.

It was covered by a metal shutter hung over with a sensor. That was what Grid's plan had hinged upon since she had decided to seek him out. Valle heaved himself onto the conveyor belt, lay still on his back, crossed his arms over his chest. It began to roll under his weight, bringing him to the sensor.

The belt stopped, when it his ears just brushed the shutter. Lights shone on him, a computer processed their results.

The shutter opened. It had identified him as Crucis.

Both relieved and deeply disappointed, Valle allowed the belt to carry him past the thick exterior wall. The bright white space beyond it was narrow and shallow, only just large enough for him to pass through. Machines whirred, rows of lights passed over him, vents blew and sucked air. Automated diagnostics, presuming the prized assassin had just returned from an assignment. Valle held his breath. He could only hope no one would notice that Crucis's intake tube had come active. If so, they would report a bat in quite ill health, compared to how he had left.

After what seemed a long way under the blinding lights, the belt brought Valle out into a mercifully open space. He stayed still, looked the room over as carefully as he could without moving, swung off the belt and onto the floor as soon as he confirmed that it was empty.

It was some kind of medical lab, an operating room. Very different, though, from those that attended to civilians. Computer consoles lined one wall, racks and mounts the others. A reclined bed, over which hung a surgical robot like the one that had replaced Grid's old bionics, but heavier, and grim. Restraints, lasers, bone saws, needles.

Along one wall, limbs. Arms, legs, wings, hung by the clear plastic caps fit over the openings where they would attach to a trunk. Different feet, different hands.

This was where Crucis came when he arrived. Checked for damage or contamination, reconfigured for his next outing. Was he rendered into parts and stored away? Or restored to a default, and allowed to stalk the headquarters?

Valle had to turn away from the robot, and from his brother's spare parts. He rested against a bank of computers, ill.

Held by an arm above the slab, there hung a replacement visor. It stared, lifelessly, as though Crucis himself stood before his brother, unseeing. Valle couldn't look away from it for a long while.

The thing was dormant, when not plugged into the ports on either side of its owner's skull. Exposed circuitry behind the lenses would jab into Valle's eyes, if he dared try it on. Valle stared into its LCD screen for a long time, somehow sure that it was here to watch him. He unhooked it from the arm that held it and set it face down on a computer bank, before it could suddenly come to life and...greet him.