Moe Eisen didn’t pause at the bedroom door. Whatever was going on with Bernard’s

grandmother, it was worse than what he had expected to find. The tearing sound told

him that the body wouldn’t be in one piece when this was over.

Screaming filled the room as he ran. He couldn’t tell if it was him, or the dead

grandmother coming back to life.

Something wrapped around his neck. He could feel his skin burning. He reached up

and tried to pull the choking thing away. Something bad had seized Bernard’s

grandmother. And it had seized him too.

“That’s not right,” said Bernard from the door. “What have you done with Grandma?”

Eisen waved for him to clear the room. He didn’t want the boy hurt. The whole point

of trying to find a cure was so he could live the rest of his life as normal as possible.

The gears on Bernard’s skin spun as some alchemical process started working. He

raised both hands. Streams of smoking liquid flew by the alchemist and struck the

source of the tentacle around his neck.

Screaming erupted from the bedroom. Eisen flew through the air. He hit a chair and

knocked it over. He rolled across the floor to put more distance between himself and

the thing that used to be a grandmother.

“Bernard!,” shouted Eisen. He picked himself up. He couldn’t let anything else

happen to the boy. It was his responsibility.

“Don’t worry, Pa,” said Bernard. He stepped forward, spraying acid in the bedroom

as he went. “This will take care of a solid monster.”

Eisen waved his hand in front of his face. The smell of the acid working didn’t go

well with the odor that had already pervaded the room. He shouldn’t have gone into

the bedroom, but something had to be done to air the place out.

Bernard paused at the threshold of the bedroom. He stopped spraying acid. He started

shaking as he silently cried about what had happened to him.

Eisen cursed himself for making the boy use up some of his remaining time in a

rescue.

The alchemist walked over to the bedroom and looked inside. He shook his head at

the damage done.

Acid had reduced the bed and body on it into a slurry. Parts of the beast writhed on

the floor. The smell had started to approach weapon status. Something had to be done

about this before it became something worse.

“I still have some of the acid power left, Pa,” said Bernard.

“I have to open the window to let the smell out,” said Eisen. “If you could melt the

pieces that are flopping around without dumping too much on the floor, I think that

will be a big help.”

“Be careful, Pa,” said Bernard. “Those things might be contagious.”

“You have to be more careful,” said Eisen. “You could send the whole room down

to the apartment below. Try to keep things contained.”

“I can be careful,” said Bernard. He sprayed the closest tentacle piece with his acid

and it melted under the liquid.

Eisen made his way across the room, avoiding the acid and tentacles. He tried to open

the window. He grimaced when it wouldn’t move. He picked up an end table and

knocked the glass out with it. That small amount of damage was nothing compared

to what the boy had done with his alchemy.

The smell drifted out the window. Eisen touched Bernard on the shoulder and

gestured for him to fall back. The acid would cut through the floor, or not. There was

nothing he could do about that now. He imagined the landlord would be upset, but he

didn’t care.

“I think we have done enough damage, Bernard,” said Eisen. “Get your things so we

can go.”

Bernard headed for his small cubby off the main room. He found a bag. He stuffed

it with his clothes and a ragged stuffed rabbit. He threw the bag over his shoulder and

came back to the door.

“Do you have everything you want?,” asked Eisen. “You might not be able to come

back.”

Bernard looked around. He picked up two pictures from a table beside a big chair that

must have been his grandmother’s. He put the frames in the bag with his clothes and

rabbit.

“Let’s go to the Baldwin embassy and see if they can help you,” said Eisen.

“That would be swell, Pa,” said Bernard. He looked down at his hands and the gears

moving across his skin.

The two of them walked out of the apartment. The crowd had backed up from the

sounds of distress that had come from inside, but approached the door when they saw

the survivors.

“It’ll take a while for the smell to die down,” said Eisen. “I think we’ve done for the

thing wearing the dead body. Pack everything up and send it down to my shop. Don’t

go inside there until the smell dies down. You could die from the chemicals we used

to kill the thing.”

Eisen led the way down the hall. If the Baldwins could help, he could move on to

thinking of ways of dealing with the Sharriff. The man wouldn’t take his refusal to

work lightly.

“The acid power is wearing off,” said Bernard. “It will be a while before I can use it

again.”

“If your grandmother had gone to a doctor, we might not have had to use that,

Bernard,” said Eisen. “That thing must have been growing in her for a while.”

“Didn’t like them, Pa,” said Bernard. “Preferred to wait things out.”

“You can’t wait on everything,” said Eisen. “Sometimes you have to do to make

things go.”

“Old people, Pa,” said Bernard.

Eisen frowned, then shook his head at the statement.

“We’ll go over to the Baldwins from here, then once we know what they can do, we’ll

try to think of our next move,” said Eisen.

“Hungry,” said Bernard. “I haven’t eaten in a while.”

“We’ll stop at that fish place before we cross into Midtown,” promised Eisen.

“Thanks, Pa,” said Bernard. “I guess I’ll never come back here.”

“That apartment was ruined,” said Eisen. “I don’t think it would have been safe for

you.”

“It’s the only place I know,” said Bernard. “I’m losing everything, piece by piece.”

“We’ll get you fixed up, and then we’ll find a place,” said Eisen. “I know you

wouldn’t want to stay with me, so we’ll look around and find someone who can take

you in. Don’t you have any other family other than your grandmother?”

“I don’t think so,” said Bernard. “No one ever visited Grandma, except some priest

from the Willows.”

“I noticed he wasn’t with the crowd when we went to talk to your grandmother,” said

Eisen. “We could have used someone with a connection to make things easier on your

grandmother and us.”

“I don’t think he’s a real priest,” said Bernard. “He just likes to wear the robe.”

“Then he is asking for trouble neither one of us want to get mixed up in,” said Eisen.

“There’s the train station. Let’s ride up to where we want to go, then eat, and then see

if we can talk to the Baldwins.”

“That sounds easy enough,” said Bernard. “Do you think they can fix me?”

“The Green Lights have a reputation for doing magical things,” said Eisen. “They’re

the only magicians I know with a good reputation, and a history of altruism. Our only

other choices are to look for someone in the South Side, or try to get the Sharriff to

help us with whatever magic he can do.”

“I doubt the Sharriff can fix this,” said Bernard. He gestured at the spinning gears on

his body.

“Even if he could fix it, I doubt he would without some kind of constraint put in

place,” said Eisen.

Bernard nodded in agreement.

The only reasons the Sharriff would fix his condition was to show he had the power,

hoped to get something out of it, or as a partial means of creating leverage. He

wouldn’t do it out of the kindness of his heart. There wasn’t any money in that.

Bernard wondered if he should break away for a few minutes and show the Sharriff

how he felt about things.

He didn’t know if his new powers could do anything against the magician. He wanted

to find out.

“Don’t even think about it,” said Eisen. “Leave Sharriff to his enemies. We don’t

know if using your abilities is speeding up your deterioration. You could create an

alchemical lashing that would take out more than the one man you want.”

“How much more?,” asked Bernard.

“Enough to take out chunks of the city,” said Eisen. “Let’s get this cure if we can, and

then we’ll need to get you a home life away from this.”

“I don’t think there is one of those, Pa,” said Bernard.

“I am going to do the best I can to try,” said Eisen.

They walked into the train station. The alchemist noted that tracks on the North Side

had been shut down. That didn’t concern him. They weren’t going that far. He found

the track he wanted and led the way across the station.

“We have a few minutes,” said Eisen. “As soon as the train comes in, we’ll be

heading to Midtown without all this walking.”

“I don’t think the Green Lights can help me,” said Bernard. He sat on the platform

and looked at his hands. “I don’t think anybody can.”

“We have to try,” said Eisen. “Giving up is for the weak. We can beat this. If we

couldn’t, I wouldn’t even try.”

“You wouldn’t even try?,” asked Bernard. He looked up from his hands.

“I wouldn’t,” said Eisen. “I have been looking for new compounds for years. I have

found some too. I wouldn’t waste my time on something I was sure would fail. I

would look for other things to do.”

“I’m not sure I want to hear that right now,” said Bernard.

“Bernard,” said Eisen. “There have been times when I had to do things I thought were

necessary. It didn’t make them right. This is both necessary and right. Giving up is

not the way forward.”

“I guess I can understand that,” said Bernard. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“Sometimes that’s way it is,” said Eisen. “Here comes the train. We have a few

minutes of riding ahead of us which I am glad to have, and then we’re walking

again.”

“You’re getting too old to do all this walking around,” said Bernard. He smiled.

“Maybe you should hire one of those wheeled beds for old people.”

“I am not old,” said Eisen. “I am seasoned.”

“Seasoned?,” said Bernard. He got to his feet to watch the train pull into the station.

“Like fine wine,” said Eisen.

“Like vinegar,” said Bernard.

“I don’t remember asking your opinion of my good health,” said Eisen.

The train rolled to a stop in front of the two. The doors slid open. The crowd onboard

started making their way home. Eisen and Bernard waited until they had a cleared

path before stepping onboard.

“You don’t have to ask,” said Bernard. “I’m willing to give it to you.”

“Thank you for that,” said Eisen.

He walked down the aisle and settled in a window seat. He looked out as the train

started moving again. The trains had changed the city some, but it still felt like a

frontier monster town to him.

He supposed it always would.

Bernard settled in a seat on the other side of the aisle. People who noticed the moving

gears changed seats to make a distance between them and the boy. He looked like he

was going to cry.

Eisen moved to sit in the seat next to him. He didn’t need a window that badly.

“People are scared of me now,” said Bernard.

“They think you’re a Fae, or Alvas,” said Eisen. “That’s because they’re idiots.”

He said it loud enough that the people around them were insulted and had to think

about taking on an old man, and a young boy monster.

Eisen glared at them with a coldness in his eye.