Last to Rise(13)

She sat down in the chair behind her desk, hard enough I thought the legs might snap, a hand over her mouth as the man on the floor looked up, still with a faint look of surprise. By the time I got to her, he’d keeled over and stopped breathing, and the pool of blood had reached Lise’s feet. She stared down at it like she couldn’t work out what it was.



“Rojan, I – I —” Normally all poise and technical know-how, Lise was reduced to a stammer. Shock, most certainly, and I couldn’t say I’d be any better if I’d just stabbed a man with a screwdriver. Especially not at just-turned-sixteen. I definitely wouldn’t have pulled myself together as quickly as Lise did.



“He said Perak sent him,” she said. Without saying anything about it, we held hands. Hers was cold, with a faint tremor, but her voice was steady enough once she got going, started to think in that logical way that always left me floored. “The orders even had Perak’s seal on, look. Only… only Perak never sends for me. He comes here – I think he likes it in here with all the machines. Better than cardinals, he says. More reliable, less likely to argue. Even if he did want me to go to Top of the World, he wouldn’t order me. And he needs me here now, more than ever, so I knew something was odd. But when I said something, and one of the guards went to take a look at the orders, he, he – I don’t know, it’s a blur really. But he took out the guards and said I was going with him whether I liked it or not. He grabbed me and that’s when the gyroscope broke. I just meant to keep him away from me. I didn’t mean to kill him.”



I pulled her in and gave her a hug, and she let me for once, even hugged me back. Not for long, but it was enough to know this had scared her, badly. Scared me pretty bad too.



First things first. I made sure the door was bolted and secure – since the last time someone had tried for the lab, I’d made sure there was extra security, and so had Perak, though we’d had to be subtle because Lise wasn’t keen on being mollycoddled as she called it. Then I checked the guards – both out cold, who knew how. Finally, the body. He didn’t have anything on him that was any use for working out who he was, but it didn’t take much to guess, at least broadly.



“One of the cardinals’ men, isn’t he?” Lise said. “I thought it was you they were after, to give to the Storad. Or the machines, you know, try to sabotage them like they did before.”



“It’s not just the Storad who’re after me. Or you. The Mishans are quite keen on acquiring us both, so I hear.” I sat back and thought for a minute. “All right. A cardinal’s man, probably, or perhaps working for the Mishans. Hard to say, or if it’s a cardinal which one. I could find out, but dead bodies are hard. So we concentrate on what we do know. We need you here, no doubt about it. Without you doing your thing, we’re screwed. Without me, there’s only going to be so much Glow to go around. We can’t just go and hide. Well, I can in the ’Pit for a while tomorrow, but not forever. What’s the most secure room in this place?”



Lise indicated a door in the far corner, which as far as I knew was always kept locked. “In there, only —”



“Only nothing. Firstly, you’re going to go in there and stay in there until I can get some better guards. Keep working, because we need you to do that. But I can make you less… findable, at least for now. And you can play with chemicals to your heart’s content. Make this place a death trap for whoever you don’t want in here, and that’s anyone you don’t know, OK?”



She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. That donkey line of hers, the stubborn crease in her forehead, was good for more than just thwarting her brothers. “OK. What are you going to do?”



I sat back. What could I do about cardinals? Or Mishans even? Not much, or not right away. I wasn’t going to say that. “First, I’m going to change your face, just a bit. Make you less of a target. Then I’m going to let Perak know. If he warns the cardinals off, perhaps… I don’t know. We’ll think of something. It’s just for long enough, right? Just until we finish this thing. To do that, we need you now more than anyone – we can’t do this without you.”



I thought she was going to say something else for a moment – “Are you sure we can finish this?”, perhaps. She had that kind of look on her face, but not for long.



“All right. Will it hurt?”



“Not you,” I said, and wished I hadn’t when she flinched at the reminder of where all the juice was coming from. “Not much, no. No more pain than my hand is giving me anyway. How many warts do you want?”