Chapter Text
Agatha had always wanted to see Mechanicsburg. It sounded almost like a fey land, mad and enchanting, the origin of history’s greatest heroes and monsters alike, but Mechanicsburg was real. She’d thought, vaguely, of maybe going someday after she finished university, but Adam and Lilith hated Heterodyne stories for reasons that were never quite explained, so she never expected them to go with her. It would be her own adventure, her reward when she graduated.
She’d never expected them to tell her to leave her locket off, either. Lilith had always been very strict; Agatha was to leave it off while she slept during the weekends, but must be sure to wear it at all other times. (Adam had been equally certain, but more gentle in his insistence.) They had said, as long as Agatha could remember, that it was necessary for the science to work correctly. Agatha always had her worst headaches at the end of the week and felt best on Sundays, so she believed them. But she’d accepted that she would never know exactly what the locket did.
She noticed that Adam and Lilith were making preparations before her eighteenth birthday, but assumed they were for a party and tactfully ignored them, staying in her room or out of the house as much as possible when they seem to be busy. She might have been right; there was, indeed, a party on her birthday, with all her friends and three different cakes. Small cakes, only one of them larger than Agatha’s hand and that one barely so, but they were delicious, and plenty for the handful of friends Agatha had. Oana and her twin brother Matei were the last to leave, well into the night. Agatha had tried dating him, and Oana had laughed herself sick when they both tried to apologetically break up with the other two weeks before.
The next day there were still preparations. Agatha had thought they were cleanup from the party, and offered to help; Lilith sent her to the market to buy a list of food that didn’t spoil. Agatha knew exactly where to find everything on the list; Adam and Lilith often bought things like that for their friends, and while Lilith bought them most of the time, Agatha had gone before.
The next day Lilith woke Agatha before sunrise, and told her to pack quickly, and to bring her locket but not put it back on. They left as the sun and the city came awake, Adam and Lilith wrapped up in concealing layers and Agatha still fighting back yawns.
Most of Adam and Lilith’s friends were waiting for them outside the gates, and as soon as Lilith finished going through a checklist of supplies they began a trip through the Wastelands. A lot of it was on roads, but not all; sometimes they would all move off and walk parallel to the road when Sirius heard something or someone coming along the road until she said whoever it was had passed, and sometimes they took shortcuts through the fields or forests to another road. They camped at night, behind traps that Adam and Lilith taught everyone to make and keeping watch in shifts. Rogue clanks and constructs attacked often; the traps usually only served as warning. Almost everyone was injured but Agatha.
Agatha was burning; she’d gotten it out of Lilith that they were going to Mechanicsburg, but no one would say why, or why they were traveling in such a strange and dangerous way. Her hands itched and her mind raced; she took over building the traps around the camps, and built more, built them larger and stronger and better, twisted and balanced branches and roots and leaves to make them lethal. She kept working even as she walked, exhausted and twisting vines together in her hands, realizing she hadn't slept in—in—she didn't know, after the first few hours of the trip everything was a frantic, desperate blur.
She needed to do something—her hands were shaking, no, they only felt like they were; they were steadier than ever on the vines, sticks, bones she collected and worked together; when had she broken that rock so it was sharp enough to be a knife? She could see how it was done, the angles, the lines it fractured along, but when—
Her breath felt different too, it felt like her breath was racing like she’d just run all the way home and then back to class, but it wasn’t, instead it kept catching, hitching like she’d been startled, but nothing startled her, she didn’t jump, even when there was a sudden noise or animal leaping out she didn’t feel surprised, it felt like she’d known, like she’d already been moving before she heard or saw anything to react to. Her breath, when she listened, counted, searched, was calm and steady, only slightly deeper to accommodate the exercise of walking. Her pulse—no, her pulse was racing, heart hammering in her thumbs and throat just like it felt.
She dreamed, and the universe spun out below her in stars and circles, like a map, like a blueprint, like toys, and she reached—
No one seemed surprised.
Agatha stood in front of Lilith, able to feel her breath shaking, doubting it actually was. It felt like her eyes were wide; she didn’t know if they actually were. She was still twisting vines together in her hands; they’d be a tripwire, at the end of the day. “What’s happening to me?”
Lilith hesitated. “Well—I suppose you’re breaking through.”
“This is breakthrough?” Breakthrough was poorly described, in itself; its effects were recorded, its meaning, its causes were speculated about, but the actual experience was only recorded in terms of what the sparks did. The actual experience was terrifying. “I don’t want to hurt anyone! Why would you—why would you bring me here if you knew I was going to be dangerous? I should be in town, with guards, and Doctor Beetle, and—”
Lilith’s voice was calm as it cut Agatha off. “If you are going to destroy anything—and not all sparks do—you should be out here, with people who know how to get out of the way, and only trees to destroy. And we are going to Mechanicsburg.”
“Why?”
Lilith hesitated. Agatha could see it, the way her mouth opened, the way her eyes flicked aside and then stared at Agatha before she answered. “You’ll see once we get there.”
“No!” Agatha dropped the vines, grabbed Lilith’s shirt, pulled their faces close together. “No, you’re taking us all somewhere dangerous while I’m dangerous and putting everyone in danger, you are at least going to explain why, I—”
Lilith looked afraid.
“—no, I… I’m sorry….” Agatha let go, threw Lilith away, she didn’t know which, and ran.
“Agatha!” It was Lilith’s voice first, then others. Agatha ignored them, kept running. “Come back!”
They should have been able to catch her.
They didn’t.