Silverbird, p.38
Silverbird, page 38
“I…” Wilheim and Beth paused then looked at each other for a moment.
“He’s not wrong.”
Storm who had been silently listening the entire time tilted her head and looked to Castor.
“Like a memory stick?”
“Exactly!”
“A memory stick that he knows the location of and only he can read…”
The thoughts buzzed around the room. Storm, still staring at the dice on the USB stick.
She reached over and examined it. It was only a simple hard plastic dice that was sky blue coloured, but she found herself staring at the arrangement of the numbers. It had twelve sides. The Type-Seven Avios had twelve bases to their DNA and had twelve different birds they were based off…
“I think Mr Merlo gave us exactly what we need to solve at least one bit of it.”
Gesturing for Wilheim to give her the pictures, she began searching through the photographs and videos until she stopped on one. She pointed to the blue blur in the foreground of the photograph, the one that appeared in the lopsided snapshot of Maille mid argument with Rex, stood in front of a wall covered with papers and a desk with a computer and camera.
“There.” Storm pointed. “The dice is in this one. I’ve watched a few of these videos and they never showed this wall in any of them. I think I see it.”
They zoomed in on the image. It looked like a strange spider diagram surrounding a table consisting of twelve boxes.
A
T
C
G
S
B
Z
P
V
J
K
X
Out of each box there was a sketch, branching ladders that connected to the letters. The sketches were hexagonal in nature, chains that were marked by the letters N, H, O and in some places, R. It looked similar to some of the picture notes that Kat and Comet had pulled out of the pile, but it was still barely legible.
“There you go. The twelve bases.”
“How-”
“I have spent the last few months deep diving into analysing everything for nothing.”
“Good to know that your obsessiveness has paid off.”
“But…what number is each letter?” Wilny asked. He leant in close. Storm’s skin prickled as she felt him musing, trying to borrow from the knowledge of others around him to help. “How do we read it?”
“Okay.” Kat nodded, hearing Wilny’s thoughts and bringing him over to their pile of papers. “This is going to take a while for different combinations, but let’s assume that A is number one, and Z is number twelve. Unless it’s the numbers in order of creation.”
“What if this dice is the arrangement?”
“It’s a good place to start, but it’s a little hard to see the structures.”
Through the static of her bioelectricity she heard the branching thoughts of Wilheim, Beth, Kat, and Raoul, connected through into the pool by Comet, spreading out from mind to mind amongst the Rogues.
‘Thymine and Cytosine are smallest and most common, along with Adenine and Guanine. We should start with them as one through to four.’
‘What if one is Uracil?’
‘What’s that?’
‘RNA.’
‘I think that one there is called Pyrimidine or something like that, I can’t read what it says though. I think it’s the K structure.’
‘Do the names matter?’
‘They help you understand the structure.’
The buzzing and tingling of musing grew. The pool of thoughts rippled as it washed over Castor and Amell. Their eyes glazed and they all went still, holding their breath as one group, a haze of thoughts and memories clouding their vision.
-The feeling of confusion and shared knowledge flowing through– sitting as a child in science class trying to colour code the structures- ‘They should be chains right?’ – Coloured chains twisting and spiralling, the frustration of trying to remember the right spellings for a biology exam – ‘Wait, what is this?’ – Henna and cumin, sharp and gritty on the skin – ‘What is going on?’
‘This is musing bro.’
‘Why is it so loud!’
The tempo of someone’s heartbeat forming a drumline for everyone to follow - ‘Keep on track.’ - Bitterness and a weight on the chest, holding the breath until it hurt just to focus – the scratch of pencils and crayons on paper – teeth too large for their jaws and arms too sensitive and in the wrong place. – ‘P connects to Z, maybe we call them five to eight.’ – whiskers feeling the shift of air as someone’s wings flutter and twitch – phantom pain in a limb that is no longer there –
‘I think we’re jumping ahead.’
‘Why?’
The drumline heartbeat too loud now, thunder in their ears but without noise – wings straining to fly and beat in time, clawing at the chest to release the tension – ‘This feels weird!’ – Colours sharp and vivid – ‘Castor, stop squirming.’
‘We actually need the damn thing first before we start all this!’
Sour apples, the smell of coffee and wax and tang of Beth’s anger forming a cloud of tawny-red – Violet, glossy and painfully covered in scars, cooling the tempers of everyone.
‘We need to go over this all together and slowly. They were redeveloped for the new system right? What they look like traditionally -naturally- might be wrong, will that change how to read it?’
‘What if we need RNA to read it instead? Oh fuck that would mean we’d need to know-’
“How are you all doing?” Storm asked loudly, snapping them out of the trance they had put themselves under.
As one the Rogues let out a breath, Castor flinching and scratching at his face to rub away whiskers that weren’t there. It was a reasonable response to experiencing musing for the first time, particularly when Comet was assisting in the broadcast. Senses got crossed and confused, and even those who were used to it like Wilny were patting around beside them for long Pard tails that didn’t exist or checking their limbs to see if they really were still bionic or not.
“We’re okay, we were just thinking.” Beth said. She spoke slowly, trying to remember how to speak English when her mind was still buzzing in borrowed French from Raoul and the sensory colours and tastes of Amell.
“Well that was musing,” Wilheim snickered, turning to Castor who was still trying to recover. “How was it?”
Castor said nothing. He was watching everything with a borrowed Avio stare, where his gaze fell on Palmer who was busy copying out the letters in his own handwriting, practicing them over and over until it was neat and rainbow coloured.
“I have an idea.” Said Castor. “I don’t know if it’s mine or not, but I have an idea of what we can do.”
“Alright, break time everyone!” Swann called out. “It think Castor needs to run round the garden to shake off all’ve yours’ brains.”
The Rogues groaned. Uncoiling themselves from their seats and putting their work into neat piles, they stretched and shook themselves off. Palmer yipped and pulled at Castor, calling for Comet and Raoul to play with them in the garden. They welcomed the break and Swann even shooed Malana out to join them, promising to put her pictures safely away.
Storm smiled, rolling her shoulders and preening the arches of her wings of loose feathers. She was glad that the Rogues were all helping, even if they seemed to be meandering in their thoughts and theories.
“Hang on sweetie,” said Swann, “you’ve got a wee-little feather coming free there.”
She held still as Swann brushed his rough hands down the feathers along her spine, ignoring Amell who proudly smirked at her as he passed by to clean up the mugs and glasses they had all been using. After a few sharp little plucks of old worn feathers being removed, Swann stopped. He was staring in through the window at the other Rogues. Malana was showing off, leaping up and fluttering into a hover above Comet before landing on Castor’s shoulders. She jumped and darted away as Palmer knocked the human over trying to tag her in their chase around the garden.
A ghost of an emotion that Storm couldn’t quite pinpoint crossed his face.
“Storm. A question about your apprentice.”
“Yes?”
He hesitated. “What type of Avio is she?”
Storm frowned, about to say standard but she paused. There wasn’t really anything standard about Malana, not even what she had been based off. She recalled the ID tattooed onto the back of the little girl’s neck, now hidden by grown feathers and hair. Neo+:FalcoBiarm-ZenaiGrays. The basses were of a Lanner falcon and Socorro dove.
Storm frowned. “Why do you ask?”
Swann said nothing. His skin pulsed, iridescent blue spots moved over his cheekbones as he kept his grey eyes fixed on the Rogues on the other side of the window.
“Speaking as a parent of two wee-little naughty Avio girls,” he said in a low voice, “I would suggest you check her pockets.”
Before she could query him, her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Rex was trying to call her.
Her stomach flipped. She had expected him to turn up or to demand her presence, especially after getting punched, but she resented it.
“Should I face him?” She asked.
“Only if you want to sweetie.”
Wings rustling, Storm fixed her glare on the caller ID of her phone. Anger and frustration bubbled. They were close to finding out what had happened, what he had stolen and getting it all resolved, however…they still didn’t know the answer to the last major problem they had.
Where was it?
Swallowing down the venom and hatred, she picked her wingtips up off the floor, looking to Swann with steely determination.
“It’d be good to get information from the source, right?”
24
Kew Bridge, Richmond, London
“Storm. We need to talk.”
She knew that the moment that they had returned to London he would have wanted to interrogate her, and to do so, he had chosen an old hollowed out barge that floated alongside the riverbank as the meeting spot. Out of habit, she surveyed the area, watching for signs of a trap.
It was a quiet and pretty location. The barge rocked subtly from side to side in the pink evening light, close to a marina, closed for the evening where small pleasure craft were left covered up. Reeds rustled all around them, with sparrows chirping as they tried to settle down amongst the leaves. A pair of crows preened each other in the branches of a dead tree that hung over the water. The cold April air bit into Rex’s fingers as he rubbed them together and huffed on them to warm himself with big steamy clouds of breath. She was glad for the open air as it meant that taking off would be quick and easy, and kicking Rex overboard would be even easier.
Warning herself to restrain her hostilities, Storm’s gaze lingered on the missing fingers of his hand for a moment before she spoke.
“You want me to go into depth on my little reunion tour with Swann?”
“No.” Rex shook his head, though there was a venomous glint to his eye.
“So, what then? What do you want? Do you want me to go hunt down some prey for you, Rex?”
“No- I- I wanted to know if Maira had contacted you.”
“Maira?” She stopped her scowl. She hadn’t been expecting that. “No, why?”
“She’s gone missing.”
She scanned his face for signs of falseness. No. He was pale and anxious. One foot shaking rapidly from side to side as he stood. There were few things that rattled Rex, but anything involving his family, either with Imogen, Maira, or his sister, was always serious.
With a shake of his head, he looked up at her.
“Silver-Quill is looking for her with the rest of the Varren, but I wanted to know if she contacted you.”
“No, she’s said nothing to me. How long has she been gone?”
“I last saw her a week ago when I was there, but Silver-Quill said that she has been missing for the last three days since I left the US.”
Immediately Storm checked her phone, dialling the Preternatural. The call bounced. Either Maira’s phone was off, or the battery was dead.
Rex sat down on the edge of the barge, clutching his hands together.
“They’ve gotten her again. I just know it.”
“Maira will be fine, she-”
Rex snarled under his breath, leaping up before she could finish talking, kicking a nearby bucket over the side of the barge and into the water. The flock of sparrows and crows were startled into the air from the reeds and the sound seemed to echo around them in the quiet as they fluttered away with panicked chirps. Holding her ground, Storm stared him down and opened out her wings wide.
“If that’s all you wanted to ask me and if you’re going to smash stuff, I’m just going to excuse myself until you can act like a grown adult again.”
“Wait! Storm!”
“No. I don’t think I will.” She hopped up onto the side of the barge, maintaining her balance as Rex reached up to her to stop her. “Historically, Rex, whenever something does go wrong, I’m the first person you blame.”
“I’m not blaming you on this! I just needed to know if you’d heard from Maira at all!”
“I haven’t and that’s the truth. Now is there anything else you want to blame me for?” She slow blinked at him with a lazy flick of her translucent third eyelid.
Of course it wouldn’t have been the only thing. He wouldn’t have her come out to an isolated spot just to ask her something he could have easily done through a phone call. He hesitated, fingers curling up and shoving down deep into his pockets.
“Storm. Please. We need to call a truce between us both.” He pleaded after taking a moment to level his voice. “We’re meant to be on the same side here, I don’t want to have everyone we’re trying to help turn against me and my men.”
“Maybe if you didn’t act like a bunch of fucking violent maniacs, us Synths would want to stick by you.”
“I am trying to help you all!”
“By killing half the people we know when you bulldoze your way through the most recent facility? By blaming us for your fuck ups? Maybe this is why Maira has gone missing. Maybe she’s trying to run away from you.”
Rex reeled back. Storm cocked her head to one side, watching him. Wings and shoulders hunched, she stayed ready to bolt. It seemed as though the thought hadn’t even occurred to him that maybe it was he who was the problem. A weariness crossed his features, aging him and draining the colour from his face.
“I’m sorry.” His voice wavered and he sat down with his head in his hands. “We can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep fighting with you. Ever since I lost Isla-” he choked, tears springing to his eyes with such suddenness at the mere mention of her name, that it took even Rex by surprise.
“I know…these last few years,” he said slowly, forcing down the waver in his voice. “I know I’ve been a bastard to everyone, and you in particular. And I never meant to let it all go like this. But it has to stop.”
“Then you need to make it stop, Rex. I’m not the one in charge of an army here. Yeah, the other Synths listen to me, but I don’t command them, and we’re fucking tired of you acting like you’re in charge of us and dragging us into bullshit all the time.”
“I never wanted this! All I wanted was to stop them from tearing the world apart and reducing you all slaves and weapons and products they can tear apart for profit!”
He kept his head low, shoulders trembling in restrained anger. It sounded like excuses. She was tired of excuses. She wanted answers. Folding her wings back down, Storm tapped her taloned toes against the ledge of the barge to get his attention.
“Is that all this was about?”
“It was more than that.”
“Was it? Was it really? Tell me then, what was the true reason for all of this. We already know half the story. What’s your half Rex?” She bared her fangs as she snarled down at him. “Why do you believe that you’re the hero we need? Why should we ever work with you again?”
Rex hesitated, beginning to get up and pace the floor of the barge, trying to avoid her gaze. It was always hard to tell if he was lying or not when she couldn’t see his face, but after a moment to compose himself he turned back to face her.
“I don’t know what Swann has told you, but we were scared, Storm. Hasekura was closing in on us, we couldn’t trust Delta or Core. We couldn’t trust Samodiva or Mira. We’d done well on your designs, but we couldn’t trust ARCDA at the time to keep it within the company. The moment Daniels found out that you lot could take down armed and armoured soldiers on your own with nothing but claws, that was it. You were all going to be his private security team. You in particular, since Swann was his favourite, and you showed a lot of promise.”
She scrunched her face up. It felt like a shallow excuse. Blaming her for their own designs.
“You don’t believe me. That’s fine.”
“I don’t.” She snapped. “Was it really that you just did a damn good job at making us that you changed your mind and got worried for our safety or was it more to do with the twelve-base genetics system you’d made and nearly getting killed over it. You know. The one you worked on with Mikele Merlo.”
“Mikele?”
“Yes. We found him. We found his body at Mullardoch in that tunnel beneath where Swann’s house used to be.”
Rex’s face paled. Springing the information on him was risky, but the reaction gave him away. A mixture of mortified regret, resentment, and bewilderment. His grey eyes flicked back and forth as he tried to construct a scenario to lie, but as he stopped and settled his glare on Storm, she knew that she had him cornered however she reminded herself to be cautious. Rex wasn’t dumb; she couldn’t give away her entire hand and let him know what she had already found out, she needed to get him to give her what was missing before he shut down or started to construct a lie.
