Page 29 of Middlegame

What follows would be comic, were it not so dreadfully serious. The first alchemist pulls something from inside his coat, a vial filled with a terrible smoke that writhes like a living thing. He throws it, but somehow the boy is no longer there, somehow the boy has stepped to the side and the vial is in his hand, ready to fling back at its maker with a terrible swiftness. The vial breaks when it strikes the man’s chest, and the smoke is loose, the smoke is devouring the flesh from his bones as he screams and screams and—

The second alchemist looks in horror at his compatriot, who has fallen to his knees, hands clawing at his diminishing face. It is a pause that lasts only a few seconds. A few seconds is long enough. Darren is upon him, a knife suddenly in his hand, and the alchemist’s throat is an open book, spread wide, spilling its contents onto the ground.

Reed has not moved. Master Daniels has not moved.

Darren pivots, launching himself at Master Daniels with knife held high, ready to end this. The old man produces a handful of dust from his pocket and flings it at the boy, catching him in the eyes. Darren cries out, falls back, collapses. He does not rise again.

“You shame me,” says Master Daniels, turning back to Reed.

But Reed is gone.

There is time only for realization and resignation before the spike of hardened silver is shoved through the old man’s heart from behind, before his wizened body goes limp and he falls, silent, to join the others. Reed alone remains standing, panting slightly, blood on his hands.

There is something like regret in his eyes as he looks at Darren. This was not intended. Apologies will have to be made to Leigh, excuses given to his counterpart. Still. The girl was ready for better things, and the boy was only ever made to be a killer.

“There are more in your order who are loyal to me than you could ever know,” he tells the corpse of the man who would deny him his birthright. “The plane that would have carried you home will crash. Such a mystery. Such a shame. They’ll never know where your body fell, and you will be forgotten.”

There is no greater curse he can utter. Satisfied, he turns and walks to the shed which offers access to his domain. He enters, and descends.

The air is cooler beneath the ground, scented with cleaning products in place of corn. Reed relaxes. This is his Kingdom, this underground warren of labs and cells and strange alchemic altars. Here, he has already won.

“Well?” Leigh demands, emerging from a darkened doorway like a bad dream. “Is it done? I need Darren. Erin’s having some sort of attack, and only he can calm her down.”

Years of practice enable him to look at her without flinching. It’s best never to show fear when dealing with someone like Leigh. She can sense it. She does not forgive it. She would consume him if she thought she could, a snake swallowing the sun. She is his own private Fenris, ready to bring about the end of the world, and he loves and fears her in equal measure.

He could never have come this far without her, and they both know it. Asphodel gave him the education and the map to follow, but he lacks the raw power of someone like Leigh Barrow, who was assembled to channel the strength of a star.

She looks at him and stills, face clouding over like the sky before a storm. “Where is he?”

“He was an excellent piece of work,” he says. “You should be proud.”

Her face darkens further. “You broke him,” she accuses.

“He killed two apprentices nearing their mastery before Daniels took him down, and even in dying, he provided me with the opening I needed. Truly an impressive showing.”

Leigh hesitates, anger over the misuse of her property warring with her pride. Finally, she scowls and says, “There’s been a development with your cuckoos. Two sets on the same day. If that’s not synergy, I don’t know what is.”

Reed’s heart leaps. For the cuckoos to show progress on this day, when a barrier to his progress has fallen before him . . . “Which ones?”

“The middle pair, Seth and Beth; the youngest, Roger and Dodger.” Her nose wrinkles as she says their names. Leigh has her idiosyncrasies: her hatred of the rhyming names assigned to the cuckoo children is the least of them.

“What happened to the middle subjects?”

“There was an accident.” Her voice remains level, but her eyes are filled with silent fury. “Beth—the control—convinced her family to take a vacation to Disney World. It was a ruse, of course.”

“Of course,” agrees Reed. They were the Earth and Air children. Beth had been placed with a family in Saskatchewan; Seth had been placed with a family in Key West. If she’d convinced her adoptive parents to take her to Florida, it was because the two somehow made contact. They were trying to come together.

“It looks like it really was an accident. Her father was driving the rental car, he was overly tired from the flight, and he lost control of the vehicle. They spun out and smashed up not half a mile from the Happiest Place on Earth.” Leigh smiles, a bitter grimace of an expression that shares as much with joy as it does with cold and righteous fury. “Beth was killed on impact. Seth had an aneurism in the middle of a presentation to his school’s academic review board. They were accusing the poor kid of plagiarism. He was dead before he hit the floor.”

“And the bodies?” The question is sharp enough that even Leigh notices, and calms herself.

“Already on their way here,” she says, a bit more softly. “The girl is pretty messed up, but we should be able to get a decent amount of tissue for analysis. The boy is basically intact, except for the bleed in his brain. At least now we know for sure that if you kill half a pair, you stand a good chance of killing the other half. That’ll make things a lot easier on our snipers in a few years.” She pauses before adding, “Erin’s current condition makes more sense now. She wasn’t as tightly linked to her counterpart. She’ll likely survive.”

“You said there was news about the youngest pair as well.”

“Roger Middleton and Dodger Cheswich. Yes. They’ve restored contact.”

Silence falls. It’s not the soft, pleasant silence that stretches between friends, or even the wire-tight silence that stretches between enemies. This is a silence with teeth and claws, ready to strike and destroy its prey. This silence hurts.