Chapter #71A Perfect Disguise by: Seuzz   "Look, I'm willing to try this out on myself," you announce. "I would've already, except I need somebody to run the operating table while I'm on it. Come on."
Jonathan lurches to his feet and follows you out the library. "Okay, you're the boss," he says in a tight voice. "Whose essentia are you going to give yourself? Rick's? Aparjita's?"
"I've got Lucy Vredenburg's essentia up in the workroom, if you think it's too dangerous to try with one of the other's." You jostle hard into Jonathan as you make a last-minute dive at the stairs. "We'll use hers."
"How did you get Lucy's?"
"She was under Blackwell's mask, remember? I got her out of that golem stuff, then took her apart. I figured she might be useful eventually, so I saved her stuff."
Jonathan says nothing until you're in the workroom, when he pushes you aside to jam his hand into a separate box. "Let's use Jonathan's essentia," he says. "And we'll use it on me."
"I'm willing to be the guinea pig, Joe!"
"Let me be the guinea pig," he says firmly. "Just make a back up copy of me in case something goes wrong. Nothing has so far," he adds under his breath.
You're inclined to argue, but he looks ready to argue too, so you relent. Besides, he's right: If you do make a backup of him, it will be easy to restore him if something goes pear-shaped.
* * * * *
You gather up all the necessary materials and take them down to the living room, which with its operating table has become more of a workroom than the actual upstairs workroom. Joe undresses and lays out on the table. His expression is grim and his cheeks pale.
You start by removing his imago, both that of Jonathan and of Joe himself, into separate masks. Then you remove his anima and his essentia. The latter you copy into two bottles, so that you'll have a back up of it, and you also copy his anima and imago into back up masks. If you wanted to, you could now make an identical twin of the face-shifting colleague you've been arguing with.
After Joe has been completely disassembled, you push the golem aside so that you can carve your newest sigil onto the table. It takes the form of a wheel that intersects the large essentia sigil, and many of its elements mirror the last sigil that you added to the table—the one that lets you wrap a golem in a skin that can absorb more than one imago.
After you've finished the sigil—and carefully checked it over—you activate it with a candle while holding your breath: a pattern of rainbow colors run and melt over the golem. That is to be expected. Now the real test: You send one of Joe's own bottles of essentia arcing onto the golem, then repeat it with one of Jonathan's bottles.
At least the golem doesn't melt.
It's quick work returning Joe the rest of what he had—anima and two sets of imago. In the future you won't have to remove any of these elements if giving him more essentia, though, and you won't have to remove anything if giving him another face.
Joe, when he raises his head again, asks if you're ready to start.
* * * * *
"It feels like an earthquake every time I switch back and forth," he says. He's dressed again and sitting with you in the dusky library. His color is chalky, but he insists it's just nerves as he switches between his two essentia. He twitches every time he swabs his chest with an open palm in the prescribed gesture.
"But you can feel the difference between them?" you ask.
"I can feel the change," Joe says. "And yeah, it really does feel different." His brow furrows and a haunted light comes into his eyes as he swabs his chest again. "When I switch into Jonathan, it's like part of me gets amputated." He holds out his empty palm, and the ridges in his forehead deepen. His lips work. But nothing happens, not until he rubs his chest again. Relief shows on his forehead as two lights—one a large, golden orb and the other a hard, sharp diamond—materialize over his palm. " He raises his fists over his head.
"I suppose you'll want us to wait a couple of days before we let me and Frank get the same operation," you say. "In case you melt into a puddle of goo."
"I don't think that'll happen. But yeah, let's wait. There's a couple of things I should try out first."
"Like what?"
He chews his lip before answering.
"Well, first," he says, "it occurs to me that this gives me a perfect disguise. Hang on." He springs to his feet and flees the room. He is gone several minutes, and he's shifted into Jonathan's form when he falls back into the chair opposite you. He has a little disk in his hand—the one you've seen him use when testing people for essentia. He plays with it awhile, biting on the tip of his tongue as he tries maneuvering a little ball of quicksilver over its surface. "Do me a favor and go sit in another room," he says after a minute of this. "You're interfering with it, you damn Stellae."
So you're kneeling over your operating table in the living room, looking for places to add sigils, when he saunters back in a few minutes later. "Confirmation," he says he tosses his detector at you. "I'm invisible."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that there's nothing special about Jonathan's essentia. When I'm running my own, that thing spins around and points straight at me. When I'm running his, it just wanders around uselessly." He flops onto the sofa with the kind of lazy grin that Jonathan wears when he's feeling especially pleased with myself. He runs his hand through his silky blonde hair.
"Like this, I'm all Jonathan Straussler," he says, "and nothing but Jonathan Straussler. I am exactly what the guy was before we laid hands on him, and no one could prove otherwise without taking me apart to find the secret bits you gave me. Mind, brain, memories, skills, personality, prodigies—or lack of them. In essentia, too.
"Well, okay, there's one difference," he adds. "It's not his anima, it's Will Prescott's running things. Will Prescott with some of Joe Durras stitched onto it." He smiles smugly, as though he'd been the one to design and execute that operation. "But no one can get inside to find that." He lets out a satisfied sigh. "Nothing the Stellae could look for could they find!"
"Were you worried?"
"Sure! Stellae are good at finding other Stellae. Except for the Sulvans, for some reason. Frank and I haven't been saying anything, but we have been worried that Charles or someone might still be able to sniff us out, even under a mask. But this way, with no masks, and no essentia, if I don't want to flash it around—" He drums his chest. "I'm just plain old, ordinary Jonathan Straussler." His eyes crinkle with delight.
That sounds good. It sounds better when he continues.
"And second thing I want to test out," he says, "is how many golems I can control with two set ups."
"You think you can do more than ten?"
"I can do fifteen, if your theory's right," he says. "Mind you, I'm betting it won't be fifteen at once. If I can't sense my own essentia while I'm running Jonathan's, I bet my golems won't either, and vice versa when I'm running my own. So I'll be able to run ten golems when I'm running my own essentia and five when I'm running Jonathan's. But I won't be able to run all of them at the same time." He shrugs. "Not that I'll probably have to."
"And if that works," you say, "if we gave you a third essentia, then you could control twenty golems. With a fourth, you'd have twenty-five—"
"Is there any limit to how much essentia you could give me?" Jonathan asks. His eyes are bright.
"None that I know of. It's just a matter of adding sigils to that 'skin' I put under you."
He lets out a low whistle. "That's a big-ass army we could have."
"How many golems do you need to run this guy's house?"
He thinks and ticks off his fingers. "Mom. The Beast. Arturo. Egeman and the security guys."
"How many is that?"
"Four total. Dad's a billionaire," he snorts when you look at him askance. "Mrs. Szymanski, probably. That's eight."
"Okay, with Jonathan's essentia you can run five—"
"Four," he corrects you. "I need to keep one of them inside me."
"Well, let's keep Joe's essentia back. We'll give you a third set, and you can use that set and Jonathan's to run the house."
"We can use one of the guys we take at the house," he says. "Jonathan's essentia and The Beast's, maybe."
It sounds like a plan, and Jonathan returns home. Tomorrow, after school he will bring out a work truck big enough to transport your operating table to the Strausslers, where you will turn eight people into golems.
But what will you do with yourself out there? Possibly you can hide out in Jonathan's wing of the house without a disguise. But it sounds like there are plenty of faces to hide under at the Strausslers. He also has friends you could turn yourself into.
And you'll have to find a place for Frank—assuming you can rescue him from Will Prescott's house.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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