Canon in Crimson Read online

  “Indeed,” Alger said, his voice still light. “I believe you’re learning quite enough skills at the moment for your thieving career.”

  “But I’m supposed to be learning everything you can do,” I said. “You think I’m not up to it?”

  “Oh, on the contrary, I have no doubt that you are,” he said, holding up one graceful hand in a placating gesture. “In fact, that’s precisely the trouble. The moment you learn to fight effectively, you’ll find that violence is frequently the simplest path to any end. Fighting obviates other skills, at the expense of subtlety and long-term effectiveness. Learn to fight, my dear, and you’ll lose interest in learning virtually everything else.”

  “But you didn’t,” I said, still holding onto my white stone. “You’re great at fighting, but you still know how to do…everything else.”

  His eyes sparkled at that, and his mouth twitched.

  “Be that as it may,” he said, “years of experience have taught me that violence is always a method of last resort.”

  Years of experience, I thought, looking down at the board again while the radio began to croon the melancholy strains of “Till We Meet Again,” and my mood shifted to match the refrain. No matter how hard I worked, I was never going to catch up to those years—especially when I couldn’t even remember even one year of my own experience…whatever that might’ve been. The empty chasm of time before my first memories yawned in front of me for the first time in months, and I stared into it with a matching hole in my heart. And so, as always, I turned to the only person who seemed to be able to stitch it back together.

  “Alger?” I said, finally deciding to play my stone across from his again.

  “Yes?” He placed another in line right away, and I held mine, thinking.

  “I never told you my last name.”

  “That’s true,” he said conversationally.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder, you know, why?”

  I placed my stone, evening out the line. He continued the pattern without hesitating and shrugged.

  “I assumed you would tell me if and when you wanted me to know.”

  I held the next stone in my hand, watching him instead of the board again for a moment.

  “It’s not quite like that,” I said carefully.

  “No?”

  I shook my head, shifting in my chair again and suddenly feeling the long evening’s heat more acutely. Alger just waited patiently for me to explain.

  “Well, the thing is…I don’t know what my last name is,” I finally admitted, placing my stone in line, since I didn’t know what else to do. Alger held his, pausing for the first time and looking back at me.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t…remember.”

  “That’s an unusual thing to forget,” he said mildly, placing his stone in the same line. At this point, one of us would have to change course soon; we were running out of space on the board.

  “Well, it gets more unusual,” I told him. “I don’t remember…much of anything, actually. Up until about three months before I met you.” I clenched my stone in my sweating palm. “What—why do you think that would happen?”

  But he just shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know.” His brow furrowed as he thought for a moment. “What’s the first thing you do remember?”

  I shrank into my chair as if it could help me escape the memory: explosions, smoke, heat. My lungs and legs aching with the strain of sprinting. Screams of pain and terror.

  “A fire, I think,” I said quietly, my throat tightening. “I was running away from it. Someone said my name, I think. But before that…nothing. I don’t think anyone else got out, though.”

  At first, he didn’t say anything; he just looked at me as if he were trying to see through my eyes and into my head. I recognized the look on his face as the one he’d worn when we’d first met: serious as a heart attack, but softened by the rare touch of sincere sympathy. I waited, balancing on the edge of the chasm until he finally he spoke.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, reaching across the table to gently loosen my grip on the stone and kiss the little circular indentation it had left on my palm. “But whomever and whatever you might have lost, I must say, you seem to have turned out perfectly fine.”

  The heat of my anxiety melted into a blush as he let go of my hand, leaving my palm tingling. Suddenly, just as it had in the moment I’d first come face to face with him in the street, the empty, blank space in my past seemed much less important than the present—and the future. Whatever I’d left behind, whoever I might’ve turned out to be if I had my memories, none of that mattered as much as who and what I could be now. I might have lost a lot of time, but with Alger’s help and with his faith in me, surely I would catch up eventually. I just had to keep looking forward.

  “I know what you’re up to,” I finally told him, my voice escaping roughly from my aching throat. He raised an eyebrow and I smiled. “You’re being nice to make me feel better about how badly I’m losing this stupid game.”

  Alger grinned.

  “I’m offended that you would accuse me of such blatant misdirection,” he said. I pretended to glare at him and he laughed. “Regardless, we can continue this when you’ve had a bit more practice,” he said, standing up and walking over to the kitchen cabinets. “It’s almost time for the fireworks.”

  After some digging, he came back with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. I followed him out onto the balcony, where he handed me a couple of wax earplugs just in time for the fireworks to begin decorating the sky in the distance. I muted the crackling explosions and ducked under Alger’s arm to lean against him, and as we drank the champagne together, the last of my heartache eased away into the summer evening. The past was the past. This life, my new life—that was what mattered now, and no one was going to take it away from me.

  If only I’d known.

  Chapter 8—“Robots”

  The smell of coffee woke R7 from a heavy, dreamless sleep. She uncurled slowly, joints crackling, and squinted around the gloom of the evidence locker, where she’d made camp for the last couple of weeks. Following the wafting trail of the scent, she picked her way out of the room, only stubbing a toe and banging an elbow once or twice, and she padded, swearing under her breath, down the hall to the Agency’s kitchen.

  The results of this excursion were mixed. On the upside, her nose had told the truth, and there was coffee percolating on the stove. On the downside, there were also other people: G3, sitting at the metal folding table; Spence, the radio operator and the Agency’s top analyst (whose actual name, R7 had learned, was Florence Spencer), sitting across from him and poring over a notebook; and B4, the other agent she’d seen on her first, disastrous day at the office, holding two empty mugs.

  “R7. Good,” G3 said, when he saw her. “Come in.”

  R7 hesitated in the doorway, eyeing the three of them suspiciously.

  “What’s this about?”

  “I’m glad you took the training seriously, R7, but this isn’t an ambush,” said G3. “Just come in and sit down.”

  Still dubious, she pulled up a third chair, crowding the little room. B4 poured two cups of freshly made coffee and set one down in front of her on the table, keeping one for himself. She looked up as she wrapped her hands around the coffee mug and nodded at the other agent, a slight but tall dark-haired man with a friendly face, and he nodded back. Half a cup later, her hostility had died down to its usual low simmer, and she turned to G3 again with more curiosity than suspicion.

  “Okay,” she said, “let’s try again. What’s this about?”

  “It’s about the evidence you brought in from Union Square,” her partner replied. “Spence, report.”

  Spence nodded, her grey and brown curls bobbing.

  “Well, that red cloth you gave me hasn’t told us much, but I did find an unusual residue on it. I’m doing some tests to see what it might be, but—well, that wasn’t really my
priority,” she said apologetically.

  “Alright,” said R7, “so what was your priority?”

  “The antenna, of course,” said Spence, reaching down to pull the metal object out of a bag at her feet and setting it on the table carefully. “This was a fantastic find. It’s clearly a critical component of the robot.”

  “The what?” R7 asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Oh, right.” Spence pushed up her glasses and looked earnestly across the table at R7. “The mechanical man. Their invention has been theorized for some time, and robot is the most current term emerging in the literature.”

  “‘They,’” G3 repeated. “Are you saying there’s more than one of these things?”

  Spence shrugged.

  “Hard to say. If there’s one, there are bound to be more eventually. They probably take some time to build, though, which is likely why there haven’t been any attacks for a while. But anyway,” she went on, as R7 got up to refill her mug from the cooling percolator, “as I was saying, the antenna is key. If we can figure out how it works, that should give you a much better idea of how to take them down.”

  “Peachy,” said R7, trying not to drain the new mug all at once. “So how long before you can crack that?”

  “Oh, I don’t think I can,” said Spence, pushing up her glasses again in a nervous gesture. “It’s incredibly complex. It would take a specialist—a genius, really.”

  “Oh. That’s real useful,” R7 said as she threw herself back into her chair, earning a sidelong look from G3. “Have we got one of those in the evidence room?”

  “No,” said B4, abruptly reminding her that he was there, “but I did manage to track one down, on Spence’s recommendation.” R7 looked up at the third agent again to find him leaning against the counter, his friendly face sharpened slightly with a smirk. “He’s a professor at a local university,” he said. “An expert in the field named Percival Gregory who’s written a few papers on some fringe stuff like these ‘robots.’”

  “Swell,” R7 said, losing patience. “So does he know how the antenna works?”

  “That’s what you’re gonna tell us,” said B4.

  R7 narrowed her eyes and rounded on G3.

  “What now?”

  “We want you to talk to Professor Gregory,” G3 said. “Find out what he knows.”

  “Why me?” R7 said.

  “Your charming personality, obviously,” muttered B4. R7 didn’t even bother glaring at him.

  “B4 and I have other cases,” G3 told her implacably. “And you have the skill necessary to gain the professor’s trust.”

  R7’s throat tightened and the blood drained out of her face. She felt her expression go completely blank as the wall she kept in her mind came down, too late to protect her this time. Without saying anything, she pushed her chair back from the table and stalked out of the room.

  “Okay, what was that about?” she heard B4 asking. No one answered him, but a moment later, she heard the scrape of a chair as G3 stood up and followed her into the hallway.

  “R7,” he said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was enough to stop her.

  “I can’t do it,” she said, still facing away from him with her fists clenched. “I’m not making friends. That wasn’t part of our deal.”

  “Our deal was that I’d help you go after Draegan Levak, and you would become an agent,” said G3. “Agents can do more than fight, and so can you.”

  “But I don’t anymore,” R7 said softly. “I haven’t since—”

  She broke off and shook her head, swallowing. Gently but firmly, G3 turned her around by one shoulder and met her eyes.

  “You can’t run from your past forever,” he said. “You’re going to need every part of who you are to do what you set out to do.”

  R7 stood looking back at him for a long time, still reeling from the emotional sucker punch, before she turned away.

  “I’ll let you know what I find out,” she called over her shoulder as she left.

  Chapter 9 —Show Me

  I lay still on the gurney and resisted the urge to open my eyes. It was quieter in the hospital than it had been the last time I was there, which made me even more anxious, and I wasn’t sure I even knew where in the building we were. But, I assumed, people who’ve recently been maimed in explosions don’t usually sit up or ask questions, so I just listened and waited, trusting that I was in good hands. After all, the rotation schedule indicated that this was the lightest shift, and the maps I’d found had been as detailed as it gets. All my work really had paid off. And maybe, just maybe, all that trouble he’d put me through had really been worth it.

  §

  I woke up with the feeling that I was alone in the house. The floorboards were a little too quiet, and the air wasn’t moving. So I dragged myself out of bed eventually, resigning myself to a long day of waiting around for Alger to show up and give me something to do. But when I opened my door, a piece of paper dislodged itself from the crack between the hinges and the wall and fluttered to the floor. When I picked it up, I discovered it was a note, which said:

  Victoria-

  We’re going to need a few things: sugar, a doctor’s coat and a stethoscope, a map of the sewer lines, tin foil, a rotation schedule for the northeast wing of St. Charles Hospital, a list of patients and their conditions from the psychiatric ward, blueprints of the building, and gunpowder. I’d very much appreciate it if you could take care of that for me by this evening.

  See you then,

  A

  I must have gone through it five times, poring over his neat lettering for clues. When I was sure I’d read it right, I still had a thousand questions. Did he really want me to go get all this stuff? Why was he letting me do this alone—wasn’t he worried about the men in suits anymore? What did we need all of it for? And how was I going to get it?

  Eventually, though, I decided that only the last question really mattered. Alger had been teaching me the tricks of the trade for nearly a year, I’d been working with the Gang for over half that time, and I’d barely done more than tag along on any real jobs. Finally, here was my chance to do more—to prove that I could use everything I’d learned and handle a job on my own. The “why” part could wait; I was going to get the job done.

  By the time I’d finished breakfast, I had my strategy in place: I’d go get everything that wasn’t at the hospital, bring it home, and then go to the hospital. With a bag to put things in. And then I’d come home again. Everything else, I’d figure out when I got there. And so—completely ignoring the first and fourth principles of “proper” thievery—I set out on my mission.

  §

  Our mission, I reminded myself, as Shifty pushed me around the corner on the gurney, depended on my being patient. He’d filled me in on the plan while he was doing my “blown up person” makeup, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the whole story. Either way, I was starting to think the part I did know about was going to go off without a hitch until I heard a voice.

  “Excuse me,” it said hesitantly. Young, male, and not particularly confident—not a tough guess that he was an orderly, not a doctor. “Um, emergency patients—I mean, this isn’t the—”

  “What’s your name, young man?” Shifty said.

  “Wilbur, sir,” he squeaked.

  “Well, Wilbur,” Shifty said, taking a step towards the voice, “this young woman has just been grievously injured in a boiler explosion, along with about fifty other people in her building who are on their way here at this very moment. Now, if you’d like to explain to her family and theirs that they couldn’t get medical attention in time to save their lives because you felt like having a chat with me, then be my guest. But if not, I suggest you let me do my job, and get back to yours.”

  Bullseye—I barely heard Wilbur eke out a “yes, sir!” as he scurried off to help with all of his imaginary incoming patients. We’d be long gone by the time he was wise to the game, and Shifty wouldn’t be a doctor anymore the minute he took off the coat a
nd stethoscope.

  §

  Coat, stethoscope, blueprints, rotation schedule, psych ward, my memory recited after I dropped off the sewer map and the rest of the shopping list at home and made my way to St. Charles hospital. I figured out right away that I couldn’t just walk around picking up the stuff I needed. Preparation was looking pretty good right about now. While I thought about Alger’s disguises and tried to figure out exactly how I could look like someone who had a reason to be there, at least I could use the skill I’d always had: being invisible. From a corner of the lobby, I watched everyone who walked through, looking for someone to become.

  At first, a patient seemed like the clear answer. They just opened the doors for patients, plus I wouldn’t really need a disguise. But then I couldn’t guarantee which wing I’d get, and people would herd me around. Scratch that. More people walked through, passing by me as if no one were there. What about a janitor? That was a possibility, but—no, none of them were women, and even they would be out of place in some areas I needed to go. Doctors—right out. Too male, too old, and too noticeable. But then someone who was none of those things brushed past, and I had it.

  Nurse. Bingo.

  Well, I hadn’t exactly prepared, but I could still get the timing right. So I waited until she was halfway across the lobby, and then I started to follow her. Moving silently, I evaded notice all the way through the double doors at the back and past the nurses’ station, and then I waited a little longer when the nurse went through a door labeled Ladies’ Locker Room, standing around a corner and counting to twenty. Hearing no more movement in the hall, I crept up and listened at the door. I heard a shower running, but no one else rustling around. Perfect. I slipped inside.

  Sure enough, it looked like the girl I’d been following was in the shower; her bag was now sitting open in front of a locker. The uniform she’d just been wearing was crumpled in the bag—too messy to wear without drawing attention to myself. And even if I could manage to clean it up quickly, I realized, it wouldn’t work; she was at least three inches shorter than me. Then again, most of them probably were, I thought, as I peered through the vents and found a folded, clean uniform a few rows down. I’d just have to make do with what I had, right?