Chương 38: Chapter Thirty-Eight: In Which Alice Considers the Genre

Construct. If only she knew what that was. She had some ideas, but only mere ideas. While Alice had never enjoyed games much, even in the literary form, she had, however, enjoyed science fiction quite a bit. The issue here was that construct could stand for many things, especially since the Type was restricted. That could be anything, ranging from a soulless pre-programmed machine, to a human mind which required robotic parts.

Additionally, this brought into question things she had inferred about this world, like the genre of fantasy and magic that was involved, but here she was facing something closer to steampunk than generic wizards and she didn't know what to do with it. When she finished taking a sip, the smile she redirected her friend was much more forceful. Regardless of her theories, however right or wrong they were, there was one thing that Alice had learned for sure. Nell was not human.

Whatever that word actually meant in this world, she was not a person born the ordinary way at all. She was a made… being… a made thing, wearing a face and a voice that cautiously spoke of friendship, as it sat in her one chair, worrying over her the way an actual friend, an actual person would. Was Alice being specist now? Was it wrong to reduce Nell into some thing rather than some one? But how could she tell the difference?

How could she know whether Nell spoke of her own volition, her own thoughts and will, or if there was a script being fed to some… some doll, prepared for Alice to react in certain ways? Her fingers gripped the teacup rather tightly. Was it wrong to feel the sting of betrayal even though they had not been extremely close, and she could only claim the title of real friend for mere days rather than the months they had known each-other?

Alice did not know, in that moment, what to do with these feelings, with this information. She did not know what to do or what would be appropriate to say, so she did the only thing she'd ever been reliably good at doing when she was overwhelmed. She pushed it aside in the same corner of her mind where she kept everything else too dangerous to look at directly, and finished her tea. Hooray for repression, she thought and turned her gaze subtly to the other piece of information she had learned this time.

Eleanor The name sat there on the screen, both alarming and not. Whatever Nell was, she had a name. And it was quite a normal name, too. Nell, as well, was a pretty traditional nickname for Eleanor, so Alice couldn't feel quite as lied to about this, but she didn't know if this was far too overreaching and her mind immediately saw patterns where there perhaps were none.

Just like with every other name on the List, she always kept out an eye at the back of the mind for the Eleanors in her life, even when the rest of her was occupied with flowers or foraging or simply the business of staying alive. Ellen Marsh. Ruth Calder. Agnes Dowd. Harriet Fenn. Frances Cole. Five of the names were known by the police and some of them even released to the public. But the sixth? That one Rowe had never once said aloud in their meeting.

There was no reason for him to keep it separate at the time either. Not unless this name was special somehow. Not unless this name was not known to the police. Eleanor Mercer. The Inspector knew the names of found victims. Since then, Alice had always suspected that Eleanor Mercer was the only one still alive.

She kept the teacup at her lips a moment longer than a second sip required, and started patting her lower abdomen, hoping to use the small gestures to buy herself a few more seconds of thought that she badly needed. Period cramps had been an even better excuse in hindsight. The main issue with instantly thinking of patters in such a case was that it could all be just a coincidence. Eleanor was likely not an uncommon name in this city.

Culturally, she had found that the names here were much like old names of actual Victorian Britain. She'd have wagered there were dozens of Eleanors working stalls and scrubbing floors between here and the river. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. It's just a first name, she thought. She doesn't even have Mercer as a last name. By all likelihood, I am just grasping at straws at the one thing I find familiar. But why was her gut telling her otherwise?

Weren't the victims in murder mystery novels generally connected somehow? Alice Darling had been a victim and Nell, Eleanor, was supposedly her friend. It wasn't a completely stupid assumption but it treated the world like fiction tropes and there was also the little fact that this Eleanor could be making this whole friendship story up, and was merely a machine with memory manipulation powers. Later, she told herself, firmly. You cannot solve this tonight, and you cannot let her see you trying.

By the time she met Nell's gaze, Alice realized she had stayed silent for too long.

"You've gone quiet again," Nell observed, though it didn't sound unkind.

"Second time tonight. Should I be worried, or is this simply what an evening with you looks like these days?"

"I'm being a terrible host," Alice said, deflecting, and smiled wearily.

"Be honest with me: are you well?" Nell asked.

"Just tired," Alice said, which was at least partially true by now.

"It's been a long few days."

"You say such things, but I can believe you only so many times, Alice," Nell said. She didn't push it, further, not quite, but there was a patience to her expression that suggested she was getting weary herself too.

"You're allowed to just say what's actually wrong, you know. I did come all this way." An idea crossed Alice's mind. She had tried honesty when Nell first came and while vulnerability felt awful, it both deepened bonds and distracted quite well. After all, whoever and whatever Nell was, what was presented to Alice was a small, sharp woman who had gone looking for her, worried over a missed pitch day.

A woman who had just described a close friendship with a version of Alice that no longer existed, with more honesty than Alice had offered almost anyone since she'd arrived in this body. The Alice that wouldn't have known about Nell's race or name or the [Mental Skill Resistance] being triggered would have wanted to open up to that woman.

"I'm frightened," she confessed and acting was much easier when the emotions were still there.

"There have been rumours that someone survived meeting the East-End Ripper… and I cannot stop thinking about it. Of who might be out there. Of going outside and not knowing which face in a crowd might actually be looking for me." Something in Nell's expression softened all at once, the careful watchfulness giving way to something plainer and more immediate.

"Oh, Alice…" Alice could feel her eyes grow glassy from unshed tears just from remembering the state she had been before Nell had knocked on her door.

"I haven't said that out loud before," she said.

"Not even to myself, not properly."

"That's not nothing to be frightened of," Nell said.

"Anyone would be terrified."

"I keep telling myself it's irrational. That the odds of him finding me, out of everyone in this city, are small enough not to be worth the fear." Alice played with her cup slowly, anxiously. In fact the odds felt pretty damn high to her, but she had to go with the flow.

"It doesn't seem to help."

"Fear is rarely reasonable," Nell said and then was quiet for a moment, before adding: "For what it's worth, there's a constable that walks this street most evenings now. Another who follows you at the pitch. I've seen him twice this week alone, slow-walking past the girls, as if planning to buy something, but always lingering near you." Alice sat up slightly. This was news to her.

"You've seen him," she said.

"How do you know he's not simply passing through?"

"Same man, different clothes. Same hour, near enough. Always looks bored out of his mind, but clocks every doorway you go through." Nell said it plainly, but that kind of detail generally came from someone who had extensive experience with detecting tails. Alice had a skill called [Spot Tail] and she had barely seen it activate in all these weeks. She thought for a moment. Should she risk it and go braver with her questioning?

"That's rather a lot of noticing," Alice said, keeping her tone light, "for someone who claims not to pay much attention to constables." Nell's mouth curved, just slightly.

"I notice what's worth noticing."

"And you're certain it's the same man? Or that it even is a constable?"

"He's got a way of favouring his left knee going down the step by the chandler's. Old injury, I'd guess, never healed proper." Nell said it without hesitation. It was almost strange how quickly she could go from comforting friend to frightfully sharp observer.

"There's a chain at his waistcoat that catches the light wrong for a watch-chain, it sits too low, the way a whistle sits when a man's used to needing it fast. And there's a weight to his left coat pocket that swings wrong when he walks, doesn't move like coin or a pipe. I've seen enough men carrying things to know the shape of a pistol when someone's trying to hide one. He keeps touching it, too," she said, extremely confident in her observations.

"Plain clothes don't change your habits. You can dress a constable as a costermonger, but you can't teach him to be one." Alice sat with that for a moment, genuinely startled despite herself. It was, without question, the kind of detail a trained investigator might notice and remember. The sort of pattern-recognition she'd spent the past few months trying and mostly failing to cultivate in herself, not the sort a match-seller ought to have simply absorbed in passing between customers.

Was Nell even trying to hide anymore? Or did she know Alice had learned something between the visit at the kitchen and her latest sip?