The Cipher Alchemist wasn’t home when Ed came calling shortly after his train arrived. His house was dark and silent, at least from the sidewalk, and it looked like his neighbors were out as well. Ed looked up and down the street for anyone who might be watching before he clapped and pressed his hands to the door, transmuting the wood out of his way. He supposed that if his life as a military consultant didn’t work out, he had pretty good grounding as a thief. Inside the house, Ed felt the small hairs on the back of his neck and along his arms stand on end. The sense of desperation and the pain of living things that had been twisted beyond what they were meant to be filled each room until it was almost a physical presence. He shook off the feeling and moved deeper into the house. The evidence of the Cipher Alchemist’s transgressions was all around him from half-drawn arrays on slips of paper that littered the floor to texts on animal biology opened to scientific drawings of bodies and handwritten notes scrawled in the margins. Ed half expected to turn a corner and find one of his creations sitting next to a chair, waiting for death. Instead, Ed found the door to the man’s workroom, closed and locked. “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” Ed spun, wondering how he hadn’t heard the Cipher Alchemist sneak up on him. “Mr. Benchly, the Cipher Alchemist?” “If you’ve come here looking for a commission, I’m sorry, but I stopped taking them years ago. And if you thought to endear yourself to me by breaking into my house, you’re sadly mistaken.” “I’m not here for a commission.” Ed frowned, wondering what kind of commissions he’d taken in the past. Benchly echoed his frown. “If you’re here to be tutored, I can tell you I don’t do that anymore, either. It was a fair bit of alchemy you used to get in the door, if a little basic. I’m sure you can find yourself a good teacher, but I am not he.” An unsettling light came into his eyes. “Who knows you’re here, boy?” “I, uh,” Ed looked down to the ground and shuffled his feet a little, trying to affect nervousness instead of rage. “I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here. They don’t understand.” “Of course they don’t, my boy.” Benchly crossed the space between them and placed a hand on Ed’s shoulder. “Maybe there is something I could have you help me with. Would you like to see my workroom?” Just the sensation of Benchly’s hand on him made his skin crawl, but Ed did his best to reign in his reactions and keep up a mild, interested expression. “Oh, yes. Very much.” “Very well. It’s through here.” Benchly drew out a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. Cages lined the walls to his workroom; most of them were empty, but all bore signs of use. He’d worked fast and messy, and none of his transformations were even close to perfect chimeras. They were pathetic things, all in pain, and Ed had never been happier that he left Al at home. “Now, don’t be alarmed by what you see inside. It’s simply the work of alchemists. You’d understand if you had a little more training. We work in the fields of the unknown. We are modern explorers into the mysteries of nature and the universe itself.” Benchly drew in a long breath, overwhelmed by his own explanation of his work. “We are gods made flesh and there is nothing that is beyond our purview.” Ed wasn’t sure what it was about the science of alchemy that drove men mad, but it seemed to happen more in his field than in, say, farming or accounting. Perhaps it was that alchemy looked so much like magic to the casual observer. To a town of the uneducated, an alchemist could seem like a savior, sent from a higher power instead of just a man with an innate understanding of the power of an array. Or maybe it was the curse of the alchemist. Maybe to spend so much of one’s life with the power of the earth itself running though one’s hands was to lose bits of self along the way until there was nothing but ego in the end. Whatever the cause, Ed was never surprised when he found alchemists who thought they were gods among men. What was surprising was that these people lived in neighborhoods, had families and relatively normal lives and no one seemed to notice or care about their slide into delusion. If just one person along the way had said something, Ed wouldn’t have to stand next to this guy in his workroom, pretending to be interested in his horrifying work. “It’s all very basic research at this point. I’m hoping to branch out into more interesting and applicable fields very soon.” Benchly’s hand on his arm had not yet moved and if anything had tightened, leaving Ed with no doubt about what direction Benchly was thinking of going in next. One of the few things Pershing hadn’t been able to tell Ed was whether Benchly’s chimera research had progressed to human transmutation and the only thing Ed was happy to see in this whole mess was that Benchly had, thus far, restricted himself to animal subjects. “There’s something I can do with all this?” Ed hoped there was the appropriate amount of awe in his voice, but also figured that Benchly was so taken with the idea of his next step in his research landing on his doorstep that Ed could have spit at his feet and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Benchly tugged at his shoulder and guided him to the corner of the workroom where an array had been carefully etched on the floor. “Just stand here and I’ll take care of the rest.” Ed could see where lines had been erased and re-worked to refine the pattern and where there were still mistakes and inconsistencies in the lines that would account for the pitiful nature of the creatures in Benchly’s cages. “I think this is far enough, thanks.” Ed shook off Benchly’s touch, not willing to progress any further with the charade. “I’m here on authority of the State to take you in to custody, Mr. Benchly. It’ll make my day go a lot better if you come with me quietly.” Benchly stared at him for a long moment, and Ed thought that maybe he hadn’t understood. Eventually, he nodded, his shoulders slumping. “My work isn’t done yet.” “Nor will it ever likely be. You knew what you were doing is wrong.” Ed clapped his hands and transmuted his arm into the short blade, just in case Benchly got any ideas, and pushed him towards the door. “Otherwise you would have been surprised at my presence.” “You don’t understand. No one understands. We could be doing so much good if we would just pursue this line of study. The idea that it’s taboo is a holdover from a darker time when we didn’t understand so many things. It’s a story we tell our children because we don’t know better.” Ed gave Benchly a push out of his door and towards the waiting car. Local police were waiting to take him into custody, just as Ed has asked when he arrived. “Tell it to someone who gives a shit.” He handed Benchly over to the waiting officer, signed off on the official forms and headed back to the house to try and sort out Benchly’s mess. The twelve hour train ride had not been enough time to review the facts of the case and finish his array. The basic pattern itself had taken months of work at the university and no matter how desperate the need, Ed was not able to complete the details by the time he had Benchly sorted out. He’d done his best, and his best was better than most people’s miraculous, but it still wasn’t enough. Even with Benchly’s notes, his imperfect transmutations and Ed’s mostly finished array, the first three chimeras ended up a pile of blood and meat. After the third failure, Ed made a mad dash for the door, just making it to the neat front lawn before losing everything he’d eaten all day on the freshly trimmed grass. The failures were too much like the thing he and Al had made in their basement, too much like Nina, and he couldn’t spend another second in that house. Benchly still had four other living chimeras that Ed would have to deal with, but he didn’t have to do it that day. He stood, wiped his mouth and started walking. The air was brisk and this side of chill, but it was clear and sunny and everything Ed needed to help clear his mind. Almost five miles from the town’s only inn, by the time he arrived from Benchly’s house, enough of the bitter taste of defeat had left his mouth and body that he could hold a civil conversation with the clerk. “Here you go. Take the stairs to the left, fourth door on the right.” A girl, probably a couple years younger than Al, handed him a key and pointed to the stairway. “Once you’re settled, there’s a phone at the end of the hall on the second floor.” She passed him a slip of paper. “You already have two messages.” Ed pocketed them with his thanks and trudged up the steps to his room. Although he hadn’t planned on spending the night here, it looked like Pershing wasn’t taking any chances in case Ed needed to touch base. The first message was from the General’s office asking for an update and an estimated time of return. The second note was more troubling. He wasn’t sure how Roy knew were to find him, though he’d lay good odds on it having something to do with Hughes, but just holding the paper made him feel calmer. Hearing Roy’s voice right now would be the best thing that happened to him all day, but if Roy was just going to pick a fight with him, well, that Ed could do without. It couldn’t hurt to call just to find out, though. Ed dumped his stuff in the room and then tracked down the phone at the end of the hall. A cushy chair and small desk gave the phone area a surprisingly comforting feel as Ed sank into the chair and put the call in to Pershing. During their conversation, he did his best to give Pershing the details he needed without bringing up too many that Ed wasn’t ready to deal with. He promis...
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