Hjarka frowns. “Yeek, that’s kind of harsh, isn’t it?”
Tonkee tenses at once, her eyes going wide with horror, and hurt. “You can’t keep me out. Nobody else in this rusting comm has a clue what—”
“Nobody else in this rusting comm,” Ykka says, and now the Strongbacks look at her uneasily, because she’s nearly shouting, “would set us all on fire for the chance to study people who’ve been gone since the world was young. Somehow I’m getting the impression that you would.”
“Supervised visits!” Tonkee blurts. She looks desperate now.
Ykka steps up to her, getting right in her face, and Tonkee goes silent at once. “I would rather understand nothing about this place,” Ykka says, brutally quiet and cold now, “than risk destroying it. Can you say the same?”
Tonkee stares back at her, trembling visibly and saying nothing. But the answer’s obvious, isn’t it? Tonkee’s like Hjarka. Both were raised Leadership, raised to put the needs of others first, and both chose a more selfish path. It’s not even a question.
Which is why later, in retrospect, you really aren’t surprised at what happens next.
Tonkee turns and lunges and the red warning flashes and then one of the iron bits is in her fist. She’s already turning away by the time you register her grab. Bolting for the stair door. Hjarka gasps; Ykka’s just standing there, a little startled and mostly resigned; the two Strongbacks stare in confusion and then belatedly start after Tonkee. But then an instant later Tonkee gasps and stumbles to a halt. One of the Strongbacks grabs her arm—but drops it immediately when Tonkee yells.
You’re moving before you think. Tonkee is yours somehow—like Hoa, like Lerna, like Alabaster, as if in the absence of your children you’re trying to adopt everybody who touches you emotionally for even an instant. You don’t even like Tonkee. Still, your belly clenches when you grab her wrist and see that blood streaks her hand. “What the—”
Tonkee looks at you: quick, animal panic. Then she jerks and cries out again, and you almost let go this time because something moves under your thumb.
“The rust?” Ykka blurts. Hjarka’s hand claps over Tonkee’s arm, too, helping, because Tonkee’s strong in her panic. You master your inexplicable, violent revulsion enough to instead move your thumb and hold Tonkee’s wrist so that you can get a good look at it. Yes. There’s something moving just under her skin. It jumps and jitters, but moves inexorably upward, following the path of a large vein there. It’s just large enough to be the iron fragment.
“Evil Earth,” Hjarka says, throwing a quick worried look at Tonkee’s face. You fight sudden hysterical laughter at the unintentional irony of Hjarka’s oath.
“I need a knife,” you say instead. Your voice sounds remarkably calm to your own ears. Ykka leans over, sees what you’ve seen, and breathes an oath.
“Oh, fuck, rust, shit,” Tonkee moans. “Get it out! Get it out and I’ll never come in here again.” It’s a lie, but maybe she means it for the moment.
“I can bite it out.” Hjarka looks up at you. Her sharpened teeth are small razors.
“No,” you say, certain it would just go into Hjarka and do the same thing. Tongues were harder to carve than arms.
Ykka barks, “Knife!” at the Strongbacks—the one with the wireglass knife. It’s sharp but small, meant more for cutting rope than as a weapon; unless you hit a vital area right off, you’d have to stab someone a million times to kill them with it. It’s all you’ve got. You keep hold of Tonkee’s wrist because she’s flailing and growling like an animal. Someone puts the knife in your hand, fumbling and blade-first. It feels like it takes a year to get it repositioned, but you keep your gaze on that jerking, moving lump in Tonkee’s brown flesh. Where the rust is it going? You’re too quietly horrified to speculate.
But before you can put the knife in place to carve the moving thing loose, it vanishes. Tonkee screams again, her voice breaking and horrible. It’s gone into the meat of her.
You slash once, opening a deep cut just above the elbow, which should be ahead of the thing. Tonkee groans. “Deeper! I can feel it.”
Deeper and you’ll hit bone, but you set your teeth and cut deeper. There’s blood everywhere. Ignoring Tonkee’s pants and hisses, you try to probe for the thing—even though privately you’re terrified you’ll find it and it’ll go into your flesh next.
“Arterial,” Tonkee pants. She’s shaking, keening through her teeth between every word. “Like a rusting highroad to—sessa-ah! Fuck!” She claps at the lower half of her bicep. It’s farther up her arm than you expected. Moving faster now that it’s reached the larger arteries.
Sessa. You stare at Tonkee for a moment, chilled by the realization that she was trying to say sessapinae. Ykka reaches over you and wraps a hand around Tonkee’s arm just below the deltoid, squeezing tight. She looks at you, but you know there’s only one thing left to do. You’re not going to be able to manage it with the tiny knife… but there are other weapons.
“Hold her arm out.” Without waiting to see whether Ykka and Hjarka comply, you grip Tonkee’s shoulder. It’s Alabaster’s trick that you’re thinking of—a tiny, fine-spun, localized torus like the ones he used to kill the boilbugs. This time you’ll use it to burrow through Tonkee’s arm and freeze the little iron shard. Hopefully. But as you extend your awareness and shut your eyes to concentrate, something shifts.
You’re deep in the heat of her, seeking the metallic lattice of the iron shard and trying to sess the difference between its structure and that of the iron in her blood, and then—yes. The silver glimmer of magic is there.
You weren’t expecting that, here amid the gelid bobble of her cells. Tonkee isn’t turning into stone like Alabaster, and you’ve never sessed magic in any other living creature. Yet here, here in Tonkee, there is something that gleams steadily, silverish and threadlike, coming up through her feet—from where? doesn’t matter—and ending at the iron shard. No wonder the thing can move so quickly, fueled as it is by something else. Using this power source, it stretches forth tendrils of its own to link into Tonkee’s flesh and drag itself along. This is why it hurts her—because every cell it touches shivers as if burned, and then dies. The tendrils get longer with every contact, too; the fucking thing is growing its way through her, feeding on her in some imperceptible way. A lead tendril feels its way along, orienting always toward Tonkee’s sessapinae, and you know instinctively that letting it get there will be Bad.
You try grabbing onto the root-thread, thinking maybe to stall it or starve it of strength, but
Oh
no
there is hate and
we all do what we have to do
there is anger and
ah; hello, little enemy
“Hey!” Hjarka’s voice in your ear, a shout. “Wake the fuck up!” You jerk out of the fog you weren’t aware of drifting into. Okay. You stay away from the root-tendril, lest you get another taste of whatever is driving the thing. That instant of contact was worth it, though, because now you know what to do.
You visualize scissors with edges of infinite fineness and blades of glimmering silver. Cut the lead. Cut the tendrils or they may grow again. Cut the contamination before it can set hooks any deeper in her. You’re thinking of Tonkee as you do this. Wanting to save her life. But Tonkee is not Tonkee to you right now; she is a collection of particles and substances. You make the cut.
This isn’t your fault. I know you won’t ever believe it, but… it isn’t.