ERUDITIO

LAURA

Laura looked down at the corpse with a frown. It was so burned it was barely recognizable as human. It was lying on an operating table, its limbs twisted and cracked from the heat, its skin nothing but a black sheet of charcoal, flakes of it already coming off. She saw something that had once been the skull; it looked like it had exploded, perhaps as the brain inside boiled.

“Clarke, what is this?”

The old doctor shook his head. He wore a white lab coat, large coke-bottle glasses that didn't actually do anything, and a stethoscope. He had a wild shock of pure white hair springing out of his head, only barely combed backwards, as if blown in a stiff wind. His skin was pale and wrinkled like old leather, and he walked with a limp.

All in all, he looked exactly like what you would expect the inventor of the toy maker to look like—which was the point. He wasn't really that old; he was fifty, and very fit for his age, but he altered himself to look older, mostly because he thought it was more “sciency.” His words.

“That,” he said with far too much drama, “is all that is left of Loga'ha'shanar of the Sky-Borne Lords. He was assassinated this morning, during the screamer attack.”

Laura took a deep breath, touching her necklace. No crying. No emotions. She felt her nose begin to run, the first sign of tears.

No. She sniffed. No crying, no emotions. Think through it logically.

“Wha—” She paused, took a breath, then continued. “What do you mean, assassinated?”

“Someone forgot to lock up one of the burners properly,” he said. “And it got out.” He shook his head again. That distinctive voice of his, like everything was the most interesting thing the world, was beginning to grate on her nerves. “But the thing is, it didn't act like a screamer. It walked out of the cage, closed the door behind it, then found the poor changeling and ashed him.”

Laura cursed. “The Composer can control screamers directly.”

“That's what I assumed. Hopefully he can only do one or two at a time, though. Otherwise we're in big trouble.”

“Did you examine the screamer?”

“Yes, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It's in solitary confinement for the moment. But that's not the biggest problem right now.”

Laura blinked, then nodded in understanding. “The Sky-Borne Lords.”

The changelings were a close-knit group, and very insular. As escaped slaves and experiments of the fey, they knew they needed to look out for each other, or no one would. They couldn't go back to their families; they were all mind-wiped when they were first captured, and the fey's illegal genetic modification made it impossible to even figure out for certain what they originally looked like.

“They want to take the fight to him,” she said. This was the reason the changelings survived after they escaped. They only had one rule when dealing with outsiders: Screw with one of us, you screw with all of us. And they didn't play fair.

“Yes, unfortunately,” Clarke said. “Of course, that's not a bad idea, but they're not going to do this the smart way. They'll run in, guns blazing, and kill anything that moves.”

Laura frowned, realizing the implications of that last statement. “Wait, they have a location?”

Clarke shrugged. “They have something. Apparently there's a hole in the culture territories, where no one has any men. They want to look into it.”

She bit her lip. “That seems too obvious. What did the Big Boss say?”

“The same.”

She brushed her hair back. Some of the changelings were with Necessarius, but most weren't. If they insisted on trying to avenge Loga, they'd start another war. They had done that more than once before, but starting one with the 'sarians was something different altogether. “If they go through with that...”

Clarke made a tutting noise. “Artemis is talking them down right now. Everything will be fine. Let's get back to the topic at hand.”

Laura sighed. He was always like this. He changed topics more than a schizophrenic. “What is the topic at hand?”

“The screamers,” he said. “The attack on Loga'ha'shanar proves that there are things we don't understand about them. They infect people and have powers, but what else?” He clicked his tongue. “Perhaps the Composer isn't a single person, but a mind that travels from one host to the next.”

Hm. That had some merit. “And the screamers are the potential hosts?”

He bobbed his head happily, cheered that she was keeping up. “Exactly, exactly.”

“And the singers are some sort of... radio tower. They spread his wavelength around more efficiently than the other types of infection.”

“Right, that's obvious.”

She scratched her head, frowning. “Well, the only confusing part is why a former screamer would retain powers, and be able to hear them.”

“Well, if the link is severed quickly enough, it isn't permanent,” Clarke said. That was their working theory on why Loga had been cured. “But the subject retains enough of a connection to keep the powers and can still 'hear' the hive mind, to a point.”

“At least now we have proof that former screamers can't be reinfected,” Laura said. “If they could, the Composer would have done that to Loga, rather than killing him.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Yes, unless he wants us to think that. After all, it would be disastrous if the Paladins were to be reinfected.”

It hadn't taken them long to realize that the only logical explanation for their powers was that the Paladins, like Loga, had once been screamers. His powers and sixth sense were exactly the same as theirs, so it was the only thing that made sense.

But who had cured them? It couldn't have been random luck. If they all had the same power, then perhaps. It would be somewhat believable that the singer who turned them accidentally walked off a ledge or something and died within minutes of them getting infected. But as far as they knew, each singer only gave one power. It would be ridiculously improbable for five singers to just randomly die after empowering them. That meant someone had done this to them intentionally.

Was it the Composer? Or was there someone else in the game?

Game. Huh. As good an analogy as any. Somebody was playing a game with the city, with rules no one else understood. Otherwise, they would have just hijacked a zeppelin or something with a megaphone and blasted the song to the entire city at once.

“Hopefully that's not the case,” Laura said. “I don't want to think too long on the implications of that.”

“Well, if we could find a way to cut you off from the hive mind completely...”

She raised an eyebrow. He had a look on his face that she didn't quite like. “If you're trying to convince me to let you perform brain surgery on me or my friends...”

“My mother says just whacking him is easier than trying to talk to him,” a female voice cut in from behind me.

Laura turned to see a pretty young girl, about her own age, with long crimson hair tied into a single braid that went down to her waist. The color clashed a little with her pale skin, but she was slightly darker than when Laura had seen her last. Curious. She was also wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and jeans, which was also odd. She normally preferred short sleeves.

She glared at Clarke with her red eyes—to the best of Laura's knowledge, the only toy she had. “I'm just here for my allowance. But I'd be happy to whack him for you.”

The doctor clapped his hands, grinning. “Robyn Joan! Good to see you! It's been too long. How's your mother? She hasn't returned my calls.”

His daughter sighed. “No, dad, you haven't returned her calls.”

He frowned. “You sure?”

“Yes. MC? Can you back me up here?”

“She's got you there, Isaac,” MC's voice said from one of the speakers in the wall. “You haven't replied in months. I think you said you were busy with that heart thing, but I'm not sure. I have it on record somewhere...”

Clarke brushed his hair back. “Mary Christina, couldn't you be on my side just once?”

“Nope.”

Laura smiled a little at their antics. It helped keep her mind off the twisted pile of charcoal that used to be someone she had promised to protect. “How've you been, Robyn?”

She smiled back. “I'm all right. I haven't seen you since...” She frowned, searching her memory.

“Since you visited North Outer last year,” Laura reminded her. “You still dating that Frank guy?”

Clarke looked up. “Dating who in the what now?”

Robyn glared at her. “Thanks for that. And no, I'm not. That didn't last long.”

“Why didn't you tell me about this?” Clarke demanded, seemingly actually angry for once. “I could have—”

“Thrown your weight around and caused more problems than you solved,” Robyn interrupted. “That's why I never tell you anything.”

Laura had met Robyn when they were kids. Her parents—or more specifically, her mother, since her father never left the lab—lived in NHQ, so they went to school together. She had a crush on Derek ever since he saved her from a stone-slasher gargant when they were kids, but she ignored it pretty well. After Laura left the district, Robyn was her main source of information on what was going on in the area.

A lab tech ran into the room, throwing open the double doors with a crash, but skidded to a stop when she saw Robyn. “Doctor! Ah, if this is a bad time...”

Clarke grinned a little sadly. “No, no, my daughter should spend time catching up with her friends anyway. This is about the heart, correct?”

The tech nodded. “Yes, it has begun to beat, but it's erratic—”

He silenced her with a wave of his hand. “Show me.” As he was leaving, he turned back. “Laura, we can discuss more theories later. And Robyn Joan, I'll have your allowance after I'm done with this.” Then he was gone, the doors swinging a few times before stopping.

Robyn sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Which means I'm going to get the money sometime next week. Oh well,” she shrugged. “I didn't really need it right away anyway.”

“You should be nicer to your father,” Laura said. “He means well. He just...”

“Gets caught up in things,” she finished in a flat tone. “I know. That's what my mom has been saying for years.” She shook her head. “She knew what she was getting into when she married him, so she can live with it. I need someone a little bit more on top of things. Someone who remembers what year it is without having to look at a calendar.”

Laura chuckled. “Oh, c'mon, he's not that bad.”

Robyn just raised an eyebrow. “You only see him here at the lab, so you wouldn't know.” She shrugged again. “I'm really not in the mood to argue about this. I'll talk to you more later, okay?” She left again before Laura could stop her.

Laura sighed. Robyn was a wonderful girl, she was just closed off. She and Derek were a lot alike, but he was more popular due to his hero complex. Saving lives earned you lots of friends. She had much the same complex, but she didn't have the right instincts to rush into danger.

But there was something off about her today...

“MC?” Laura asked, still trying to puzzle it out.

Her voice replied quickly. “Yeah, what's up?”

“Has Robyn been doing any missions lately?”

“Uh... yeah. Mostly just a few lost-and-found ones, a couple of fetch quests. That kind of thing. Why?”

Laura frowned. “So she hasn't been fighting.”

“Not if we're going by her missions. Besides, it's Robyn.”

Laura touched her necklace, thinking. It didn't make any sense. Robyn had always been non-violent to a fault. She got queasy at the merest sight of blood or death.

Well, Laura had nothing else to stick around for, so she grabbed her bag and headed for the doors. Clarke would call her when he had time.

“Laura?” MC said before she could leave. “Why are you wondering about Robyn's quest log?”

She shook her head. It had a simple explanation, she was sure, but she didn't know what it was. “She wasn't upset by the corpse.”

Things were changing in the city. In a thousand big ways, and a million tiny ones.

She just wished she knew how everything was going to turn out.