Rook

inward—they’re made of wood with windows.”
    “Wasn’t there furniture in there? A counter or something? Chairs?” asked the Scottish Pawn.
    “Yeah, but it looks as if it’s all been shoved out of the room or crushed against the walls by the expansion of the cube.”
    “Is the cube, I don’t know, doing anything?” asked Cyrus.
    “It’s pulsating gently.”
    “How big is it? I know it fills the room, but can we get measurements, please?” said the Scottish woman, who appeared to be Cyrus’s second-in-command.
    “It’s five meters by four meters,” said a little drone at a computer. “And two point five meters high.”
That’s a pretty big cube of flesh,
thought Myfanwy.
    “Pawn Motha is just arriving from Wells,” said the little computer nerd. “She’s equipped with magnetic resonance. We’re setting her up with some binoculars twenty meters from the police station. If you want to wait a moment, she’ll be able to give you some idea about what’s inside the cube.”
    “Pawn Carmine, you can see through walls but you can’t see through skin?” asked Cyrus.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Ingrid, I need to go to the loo,” said Myfanwy quietly. “Where is it?” They excused themselves and Myfanwy found herself in a cubicle smaller than an airplane toilet. It did have a connection to the intercom, however, so she was able to listen to the report of Pawn Motha with the MRI eyes.
    “Okay, I’m getting some interesting structures here. We’ve got some layers of extremely dense muscle on the outside, but it’s not uniform.”
    “What do you mean?” asked the Scot curtly.
    “Well, Pawn Watson, it’s a patchwork. I can see where different sheets of muscles have been fused together. The seams aren’t bulky, but they’re definitely welded together from separate sources.”
    “You say it’s dense?” asked Cyrus.
    “Yes—and a good half meter thick. I don’t know whether it could stop a bullet, but it could handle quite a bit of force without rupturing. I’m guessing that it’s been taken from a few sources and merged together. The strength of any section is going to depend on the sources.” Myfanwy frowned, tensed some muscles to stop any incriminating sound effects, and flicked the intercom button.
    “This is Rook Thomas. Cyrus, I would anticipate that some extreme muscle-strengthening agents could be present. We’ve seen them in effect before.” She was thinking of the alarming transformation of Van Syoc. “Please continue.” She clicked off the voice switch and listened to the commentary proceed.
    “I can see a couple of tattoos,” said Carmine. “There’s a little distortion on two of them, and one of them is really stretched out. I think it used to be an anchor.”
    “Check the police roster for former naval men” came Cyrus’s voice.
    What was that medicine?
Myfanwy wondered, still in the cubicle.
I don’t think I’ve drunk this much. There was the coffee I scraped off the desk, that amber liquid Ingrid poured for me, that goop they made me drink before they scanned my stomach in those delightful medical examinations, the water I had when I got in last night, and that weird layered drink…
She tallied beverages and then called to Ingrid through the door.
    “Yes, Rook Thomas?”
    “I’m going to need a bottle of water when I get out of here,” she said loudly before turning her attention back to Motha.
    “All righty, so beneath the muscle strata we have a cage of bones. It’s asymmetrical,” Motha reported. “There’s a pattern, but there are gaps. It’s really quite fascinating, like a mosaic.”
    “So it’s like armor?” Watson asked.
    “No, the structure probably does provide some armoring, but the flesh isn’t compacted within. It’s honeycombed. It has pockets of air and pockets of fluids, which are providing some internal support. It’s brilliant,” she said breathlessly.
    That’s centuries’ worth of Belgian alchemy for you,
thought Myfanwy, who was coming to the end of her bladder and wondering if herbrain had been drained. The headache was completely gone, and the fogginess felt like it had been peed out as well.
    “Anyway, if I’m right, the bones have been scattered around inside the mass,” said Motha. “I think they’ve been disassembled within the cube and redistributed.”
    “Organs?” asked Cyrus.
    “They’re in there, all right. Strung together and fluttering away. They’re packed in very efficiently, and cushioned by