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"That creepy son of a bitch." Lucy pressed her fingers to her forehead. "He had her record me. He thought that was funny."
Tara, sitting across from her with the broken desk still in two pieces between them, sighed. "Doctor. What exactly are you planning to do with a human head?"
"Ah, that's right!" Lucy sat up straight.
Tara flinched.
"Vice Guildmaster Chu Xinghe collects human heads!" Lucy was already standing. "He likes to behead people. He must have some in storage."
Tara stared at her. "Your guild doctor wears an organic mask and is apparently immortal. Your Vice Guildmaster is a maniac who collects human heads." She paused. "What does your Guildmaster do? Collect human muscle fiber?"
Lucy's brow lifted slightly. "It's not far off."
"WHAT."
"Don't worry about it." Lucy was already at the door. "I'll go find the Vice Guildmaster."
"Should I come?"
Lucy considered this. "No. Stay here. If you see something you shouldn't, the Doctor will probably bill me for your therapy."
Tara sat back down.
In the corridor, Lucy passed two junior guild members who looked at the destroyed desk through the open door and then at her and then at the desk again and decided they had somewhere else to be. She let them go. She had bigger problems.
She took the lift and walked to Chu Xinghe's office, moving fast.
She had known Chu Xinghe for three years. His schedule, his communication style, the specific list of things that made him set his tea down before speaking. She had also, over the past several weeks, learned things that were not in his personnel file. The surgery. The transformation. The sword he carried and what it did.
The personnel file, she had concluded, was incomplete.
. . .
Chu Xinghe had been looking out the window with his tea for approximately eight minutes, which was, by recent standards, an unusually long stretch of quiet. The forty-fourth floor had been eventful since the Doctor arrived. Screaming at irregular intervals, the sparring room ceiling cracked, a newcomer with a titanium skull, a military general who had come and gone and left the walls slightly charred.
Eight minutes of tea and sky was genuinely restorative.
This is life, he thought. This is what peace feels like.
The door burst open.
"VICE GUILDMASTER!"
Chu Xinghe startled and inhaled tea. He coughed hard, pressing his handkerchief to his mouth, one hand gripping the windowsill while his composure temporarily went elsewhere.
Lucy stood in the doorway, completely out of breath.
"What's the hurry," he said, when he could.
"I need a human head."
Chu Xinghe stared at her.
"What are you talking about."
"Ahem." Lucy straightened her jacket. "I apologize for the entrance. It's like this." She explained: Tara Farin, the astronaut, the eyes, the clinic, the Doctor's note, and the item at the top of the material list.
Chu Xinghe listened. He set his tea down when she reached the part about the eyes growing in place of hair. He did not pick it back up.
"The Doctor needs a human head," he said, when she finished.
"And patches of human skin. Yes."
He was quiet for a moment. The decision was already made. He was choosing words.
Then he slammed his palm on the table.
"Why would you think I have a human head? What do you take me for, Lucy? I'm a Vice Guildmaster. I'm a normal human being."
Lucy looked at him with her eyes halfway closed.
"Vice Guildmaster."
"This is slander. This is a slander of my character and I want it on record."
"Do you have it or not."
Chu Xinghe's indignation held for approximately three more seconds.
"I don't have a human head," he said.
"Vice Guildmaster."
"I have humans."
He reached under the table and produced a box. Red, lacquered, with a pattern pressed into the lid that had not been designed to look decorative and did not entirely succeed at it. He set it on the table.
"This is all I have," he said.
Lucy looked at the box. She opened it.
"EGHKKKKKKKKK—"
She stepped back until her heels hit the wall.
Inside the box, heads looked up at her. Dozens, packed in neat rows, alive, eyes open, skin flushed. As the lid came off they became immediately aware of her presence.
"KILL ME."
"PLEASE. PLEASE KILL ME."
"YOU THERE. GIRL. HAVE MERCY. I BEG YOU."
"XINGHE YOU BASTARD I WILL HAUNT YOU FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE."
"I HAVE BEEN IN HERE FOR SIX WEEKS."
"KILL ME FIRST. KILL ME FIRST."
"PLEASE JUST LET ME DIE."
"XINGHE I SWEAR ON MY ANCESTORS."
Lucy had both hands clamped over her mouth.
"Those are human heads," she said, through her hands. "They are alive human heads. In a box."
"They are people," Chu Xinghe said, with complete composure. "Criminals. All of them."
He picked up the sword leaning against the table. White blade, gold pattern running its length, and engraved near the hilt in clean precise characters: Mercy.
"This sword severs the head of any living thing. After removal the body expires. The head continues." He set it across his lap. "It can also be used to save a terminally ill person, or to deliver punishment to those who deserve it." He looked at the box, from which the requests for death were still ongoing. "I have not killed them. That is the mercy."
"How is this mercy," Lucy said.
"They are still alive. Still aware. They can think and speak. I did not take their lives. That distinguishes me from them." He met her gaze calmly. "Execution would have been faster. This is more considered."
"THAT IS NOT THE POINT," one of the heads said.
"AGREED."
"KILL US AND TAKE THE MORAL VICTORY XINGHE."
"WE ARE IN A BOX."
"Six weeks," said the first head, quietly now, past the shouting. "Six weeks in a box."
Lucy looked at Chu Xinghe. Three years of morning greetings to the cleaning staff by name, birthdays remembered without prompting, the quiet way he handled situations that were difficult for everyone except him. The sparring room where the clone's head left its shoulders without visible mechanism. The box under the table.
Have your brain rotted, she thought. You call this mercy.
"Vice Guildmaster," she said. "I am a secretary."
"Yes."
"I deal with administrative tasks."
"Yes."
"Finding human heads is not an administrative task."
Chu Xinghe tilted his head slightly. He did not disagree.
"PLEASE SOMEONE KILL XINGHE FIRST," one of the heads said.
"AGREED."
"SECONDED."
"Take one," Chu Xinghe said, gesturing at the box. "For the Doctor."
Lucy looked at the box.
She looked at it for a long time.
"I went to university," she said, to no one in particular. "I studied very hard. I had goals."
She picked up the whole box.
"He can choose," she said, and walked out.
Behind her, the heads continued making their feelings known. Chu Xinghe picked up his tea and turned back to the window. The sky was still there. The quiet was approximately sixty percent intact.
It would have to do.