Alchemised - 65

Augustus 1787

H ELENA HAD RARELY VISITED THE W EST I SLAND even before the war, but she knew she needed to head south, and down to the lower levels of the island, to reach its small port.

It was dark and quiet; in the plaza, one might not even realise there was a war. The lifts would require fare and identification, assuming that they were even operational, but there were always stairways, some large and others designed for maintenance and service workers. They would be the most efficient. When she came across gates, the locks were usually simple enough for basic transmutational lock picking.

She was almost to the lowest levels before she saw anyone. She reached a gate, and just as she got it unlocked, two people came around the turn of the stairs, heading up. Helena tried to tuck herself against the wall and let them pass without drawing attention to herself, but when she risked a glance up, she gave a gasp of surprise.

It was Crowther. He met her eyes dully, no expression on his face, but he stopped in his tracks as the person beside him turned and looked at Helena.

Ivy gave a small smile. “You got out, too. I hoped you would.”

Helena stared at her in horror, looking again at Crowther, blank-faced and empty-eyed. He was dead.

“What did you do?” Helena’s voice shook.

The smile on Ivy’s face vanished. “The Necromancer has Sofia. He said he’d give her back to me if I gave him the Headquarters and Crowther. They wanted him alive, but they said it was all right if I had to kill him. So I did.”

Because Crowther was believed to be the one making the obsidian. Helena’s head swam.

“You’re the one who gave them all the information?” she said. “Who let them into Headquarters?”

It wasn’t Cetus. Here stood the real traitor.

“I had to,” Ivy said. “It’s the only way to get Sofia back.”

“Ivy, your sister’s dead.”

“No!” Ivy shook her head. “She’s alive. I’ve seen her, she knows me when I visit her. He’ll give her back to me when I bring him Crowther.”

“How could you?” was all Helena could say. “All those people—”

“They would have all died anyway,” Ivy said with a callous toss of her head. “This way, it was quick. I made sure the plan had them all die quick.” She shook her head. “I’m not a traitor. They were going to die no matter what.”

Ivy turned and continued, Crowther’s corpse behind her.

T HE W EST P ORT L AB WAS a huge, windowless building, originally built as an industrial shipping warehouse. Kaine had given the Eternal Flame an interior blueprint for the lab earlier that year, but there had never been any context to use the information.

There were only small pipes for airflow throughout the building, intended to ward off external pyromancy attacks. The ventilation was poor. Which was exactly what Helena needed.

There were a few smaller buildings scattered around it, and she eyed them warily as she passed.

As she stood studying the warehouse, a necrothrall approached her; her casual presence was enough to merit investigation, but a solitary, unarmed figure wasn’t cause for alarm. As it neared, Helena pressed her hand against her neck, clearing her head again, and then reached out and pulled the energy out of the necrothrall, as easily as plucking a piece of lint off a jacket.

The corpse sagged against her, the smell of rot closing in. She shoved her own resonance through the dead body, reanimating it again.

It wasn’t a very good corpse. It was in the early stages of bloat, the tissue and ligaments all damaged.

She was careful to use only a little energy.

Her new necrothrall turned and held the next necrothrall in place while she repeated the process until there were more than twenty greys gathered around her.

Her focus blurred as the edge of her consciousness fragmented into all the different shadowed minds, but it was only the edges this time; her mind remained her own.

“Find the openings,” she told them as she began activating and distributing her bombs.

The effect of the sedative was worse now with the necromancy. The focus required was exhausting. It was fortunate they were all intended to perform nearly identical tasks. She gritted her teeth as she began transmuting each bomb, performing the final step before sending the necrothralls away as quickly as possible.

It was a delicate balance between staying far enough away that she wouldn’t get caught in the blast zone, but near enough that the phosphorus wouldn’t ignite prematurely after the initial activation.

She watched them reach the warehouse and start climbing up the walls.

She started to back away, and her eyes went out of focus as she followed the greys, up, up. No pain centres to feel their fingers shredding.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus on their progress.

They reached the pipes and slits in the warehouse. A few were on the roof, pulling off the vent covers. Her heart pounded as one of the necrothralls with clearer vision held a sphere up to the pipe and confirmed that it would fit through.

In unison, the necrothralls pulled out the delicate pins that Shiseo had transmuted for her, then dropped the spheres down the pipes. Sending them into the reinforced, sealed-off warehouse.

As the last of them dropped, Helena turned and started running.

There was an almost perfectly simultaneous muffled bang behind her as the initial blast went off. She looked back and saw tiny clouds of dust, some glittering, some white.

The world exploded.

The air was shattered with the violence of the blast, a wave that twisted the air as Helena ran, a searing heat that seemed to chase her down.

The fire was trying to swallow everything, cannibalising itself as it burned, raging and starved, dragging in the air to fuel itself until it created a tornado of wind. Every pyromancy sin Helena had ever warned Luc over, she’d committed.

Warehouses were designed for storage, not structural integrity. The blueprints had shown exactly where the few structural supports were located. The building collapsed in on itself and then blew apart with another sudden explosion. Whatever weapons Bennet had been developing, whatever dangerous, flammable, incendiary resources they had from their own bombs, the fire had found them.

The ground moved like liquid under her feet. The paving stones cracking open.

She was flung against one of the buildings.

Fire was still roaring when she blinked again. The sedative had absorbed the pain of the blow. She lay on the ground, trying to catch her breath, a pulsing throb that should be agony pressing against her skull.

Everything was on fire. She could feel the heat, could dimly make out more explosions. There was a sharp, painful ringing in her ears that muted all other sounds. She looked where the lab had been, but there was only rubble and flames.

Her legs wobbled, giving out when she tried to stand. She collapsed, gasping unsteadily. Her lungs were burning, but breathing made her head swim.

There might be nullium.

She pulled off her jacket and pressed it over her mouth and nose, trying to breathe slowly.

Get up. Run.

But she was so tired. Nothing felt real. It had to be a nightmare. All that time. All those years, everything she’d done, telling herself it would all be worth it in the end. All lies. She’d killed Luc. The first person she’d ever been meant to save, she’d stabbed through the heart.

She lay falling into her loss. Pinned by the weight of her grief. How could she get up now? How could she bear it?

Kaine.

Her eyes snapped open, and she clawed at her throat, trying to push back the sedation, fumes filling her lungs. She’d told him she’d be waiting for him.

If she didn’t go back, he’d return to find a mess of hastily assembled explosives and her scrawled note.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

She forced herself up. She wasn’t going to die. She wouldn’t leave him behind. She had to go back.

She managed a few steps before her legs gave out again. There were figures approaching through the smoke, but she couldn’t make her legs hold her.

She scrabbled in her pocket, finding the vial and syringe she’d put there. Last resort.

She pulled it out, hand shaking as she stabbed the needle into the vial and pulled up the plunger, filling it. She drew a deep breath and braced herself as she jabbed it straight into her heart and injected it.

The cocktail of stimulants had been formulated for Kaine. It hit like a shock wave, energy roaring through her body, ripping away any last remnants of the sedative and Kaine’s transmutation. Energy seemed to hum inside her veins. She could feel her mind sharpening, everything growing brighter, clearer.

She leapt to her feet and ran faster than she’d ever moved in her life. She could barely feel her body. She knew she needed to run.

Something tackled her to the ground. She twisted, going for her knives, but she felt fur. She grabbed hold of her attacker and shoved her resonance through, finding all those places where transmutation had stitched the creature together. She unravelled them.

The chimaera died instantly.

She scrambled up, whipping out an obsidian knife as necrothralls reached her. She tore through them, barely feeling their attempts to grab her. Her eyes were locked on the high towers of the island. She was going that way. She’d get back. She’d be there, waiting for Kaine.

She was not going to die.

There was no time to reanimate the necrothralls to fight for her. She destroyed everything in her path with savage efficiency. There was so much power exploding through her body, her heart threatened to tear in two if she didn’t keep moving. She fought free and bolted again. The blood was roaring in her ears. More figures emerged from the smoke. Helena stopped short in horror.

Among them stood Althorne.

She had no idea how they’d managed to reanimate him with the nullium contamination. They must have made a special effort for the general. Beside Althorne stood someone else, a young man with wheat-coloured hair and a square face.

Lancaster.

Crowther had said his prisoners had all died in the bombing. Clearly he’d been mistaken. She looked around, dreading who else might emerge from the smoke.

“Look at that, you were right,” Lancaster said to Althorne. “There is someone out here.”

“Take her,” rasped the lich. Althorne’s eyes squinted through the smoke towards her. “She may know who attacked the laboratory.”

“If I get her, can I have her?” Lancaster said, eyes lighting up, glancing at Helena again. It was clear he recognised her in some way.

“When the interrogators are done with her,” the lich said. “Hurry up.”

Helena watched as Lancaster advanced, switching out the obsidian blade for her long titanium dagger. If he was being sent while the lich hung back, that was probably a sign he was still an Aspirant.

But it also meant the lich was the one controlling all the necrothralls. She had to get rid of him or she’d end up being chased through the city. Lancaster first, though.

Her primary advantage in this was being wanted alive.

“Let me pass,” Helena said as Lancaster came closer and the lich began to disappear back into the smoke. She tried to keep an eye on him, track where he was going.

Lancaster shook his head. “Come on, don’t make this harder for yourself. You’re outnumbered. Drop the knife.”

The necrothralls had fanned out around her. They had long-range weapons. Helena’s eyes swept left and right, looking for an escape, trying to plot out what to do. Her blood was roaring in her ears, telling her to move, to attack, to run. She had to be smart.

She gripped the dagger a moment longer, feeling the texture, all the finely wrought details, swallowing hard as she let it slip from her fingers and clatter to the ground. She lowered her head and moved submissively forward as her fingers slipped down to grip the other.

She walked hesitantly towards Lancaster.

“Take her.”

The necrothralls stepped forward, lowering their weapons as one started to seize her arm.

Helena struck.

Her knife flashed, transmuting mid-motion until it was double its length. She cut off the hand, gutted the necrothrall, and buried a shortened blade into the skull of another.

She dodged a sword that sang as it sliced over her head and lodged in a necrothrall behind her. He screamed.

They weren’t all necrothralls, then. Well, that made them easier to kill. She wasn’t trying to win, this wasn’t a battle; she only wanted to escape. She kept herself aimed in the direction that the lich had disappeared.

You cannot die here.

Her left wrist was caught in a brutal grip. She twisted, wrenching to get free, hot white pain enveloping her shoulder as her arm rolled out of the socket. She whirled back, getting a hand on the attacker. She didn’t stop to think, she just ripped apart everything her resonance touched. There was an animalistic scream of agony as her wrist came free.

She dragged herself away, trying to pull her shoulder back into its socket. She could barely move her fingers, but she refused to stop.

Fast and clever, Kaine had said. That was what she needed to be to survive.

Lancaster swung into her path, a grin of triumph on his face, thinking her beaten. She slammed her dagger into his chest. He dropped like a stone.

She found her feet and ran straight into the smoke. She could see the city beyond, glittering with all its false promises.

The necrothralls were still in pursuit; she could hear them through the smoke. She was winded to the point that her vision was blurring. The combination of stimulants and sedatives was doing a remarkable job of keeping her from feeling how injured she currently was.

She saw a large figure in the smoke and went towards it. Althorne. She reached for her obsidian dagger, wishing her left arm worked. She keyed up her resonance until it sang around her in a torus as she rushed forward.

Through the smoke, something huge and heavy swung towards her. She barely dodged in time. It slammed into the ground.

The lich was fighting with a glaive, the way Lila did, but with far less speed and elegance. Helena had never fought a lich, but this one didn’t seem accustomed to the body. If she could hit it with the obsidian once, it would sever the reanimation in the body. If she stabbed close enough to the talisman, it would kill whoever he was.

“You’re quite the alchemist,” came Althorne’s voice. The glaive rushed past, so close its wind nearly sliced her cheek open. “What are you?”

Helena was too winded to reply. Her focus was on his weapon and getting past it. She could see Althorne clearly now. His face was grey, and he had a festering head wound. He was in armour, which made it harder to stab him.

When she finally got too close for his glaive, he backhanded her. She went flying but the obsidian caught his wrist, slicing the grey skin wide open. She hit the ground so hard, she couldn’t breathe. She forced her head up, gasping as she watched the reanimation unspool from Althorne’s corpse, like an infection moving up his arm.

She struggled to her feet. The necrothralls were still coming but slower. The lich didn’t fend her off as she closed in again.

Helena only had one fully functional hand, and she hardly managed to grip the obsidian in her left hand while her right ripped the armour out of the way. The lich noticed then, tried to grab at her, but she caught him by the throat and wrenched. Althorne’s oesophagus came out. He dropped. She swayed, shoving his armour out of the way, trying to feel for the talisman, to identify where to stab. Purple dead blood oozed from his throat, covering everything, the clothes and armour and the silver chain that hung around his neck. A pendant, coated in blood, had nearly tumbled into the gaping wound.

It was a dragon, with wings arched above it and its tail caught in its teeth.

She paused, staring. This was Atreus Ferron.

She tried to grip the dagger, but her left arm was numb. Was it better to kill him, or to give the talisman to Kaine and let him choose what to do?

No. She had to do this. Kaine shouldn’t have to kill his own father.

She reached out with her resonance again, trying to feel for the talisman.

Thwack!

Red exploded in her vision as something slammed across her skull. She toppled across Althorne’s corpse, and when she tried to get up, everything spun. She got halfway up and collapsed again.

Lancaster stumbled towards her, half his chest coated in blood. He was gripping the glaive. He’d used the pole section to crack Helena across the back of her head.

“I’m going to kill you,” she said, trying again to push herself up.

He gave a wheezing laugh. “Try.” He gestured at her. “Get her up.”

Two Aspirants pulled Helena off the ground, kicking the obsidian knife out of her hand. Her legs would barely hold her. Everything swayed, but the drug still screamed through her veins, and her resonance was razor-sharp. She didn’t fight, instead slumping against the more heavily armed of the two.

They were stupid to fall for the same trick twice.

She found a knife loose enough to slip from its sheath as they dragged her over to Lancaster. Standard-issue combat knife. She was very familiar with the model.

Lancaster was pale with blood loss, but he smiled and kept his distance, clearly preferring to risk his compatriots. “I’m going to have so much fun with you. Once I’m Undying, I’m going to have them keep you alive as they turn you inside out.”

She used the last of her strength to lunge at him.

She would have stabbed him straight through the heart, but he managed to dodge. It was a pity for him that she had such broad resonance. She rammed the knife through his armour as if it were paper. She transmuted it, twisting, mangling his lungs before her hand went for his throat.

Fingers clawed into her hair, wrenching her off before she blew his brains apart with her resonance. She clawed at everyone gripping her, her fingers sinking through flesh, tearing at anything she could grasp.

“Break her hand. Break her fucking hand!” Lancaster was screaming as he clutched at the knife buried in his chest, unable to pull it out without ripping out his own lungs.

A hand closed around her forearm, and there was a horrifying crunch as a boot came down on her right wrist.

She watched the heel grinding her wrist into the stones.

They let go and she lay there in the street. Lancaster had already collapsed.

She tried to push herself up with her dislocated arm.

Run, Helena. You have to run.

One of the Aspirants had only one hand left, but he pulled out his sword and brought the hilt down on her head.

H ELENA WOKE TO SCREAMING.

She was lying on something cold and hard, and when she tried to open her eyes, they were crusted shut. She lifted a hand to rub them, and white searing pain set her entire brain on fire. Her eyes tried to wrench open, but they still refused to part.

“It’s all right. Gentle. There’s blood in your lashes.” It was a familiar voice. She felt fingers rubbing along her eyes. “There.”

Helena peered out, vision swimming, and found Matron Pace staring down at her. Helena was lying with her head in Pace’s lap. It was still dark, the only illumination torchlight.

Her senses trickled back. She was in so much pain, but she could tell that she wasn’t even feeling all of it yet. She could smell blood. Dried blood and fresh.

There was screaming that kept going on and on.

And laughter, too.

She tried to sit, but Pace held her down.

“None of that. You’re badly injured,” she was saying. “I got your shoulder back in place, but they took your chest brace and your wrist is badly broken.”

“Where are we?” Helena managed to ask. Her eyes wouldn’t focus, but she recognised one of the healers as well as medics and orderlies. They were clustered around her.

Pace gave a strained smile. “At Headquarters. In the commons.”

Helena looked past Pace; there was something overhead. They were in a cage. A large kind used for animals. There were dozens of cages scattered around them.

“Let me up.” Helena struggled to sit up, her body beginning to scream in protest as the stimulants and sedative wore off. Without her chest brace, the strain bore down on her sternum as she peered past the bars. Looking for the source of the screaming.

Hanging by her wrists, Rhea was screaming. Titus stood beside her. He was covered in blood, and there were knives and sticks and spears sticking out of him. He pulled a knife from his leg and began slicing Rhea’s skin off with it.

Then he put it in his mouth and ate it.

He was dead. He had to be dead, but the sight of it still left Helena horror-stricken.

And Rhea was not dead.

Beside her there were pieces of meat dangling from chains. Helena squinted in the low light.

Severed arms.

A torso.

Alister’s head.

Her throat contracted, and she rolled to her side and vomited so violently, there was tearing pain through her back as her body convulsed.

She looked up again as Pace used a scrap of fabric to wipe her mouth for her.

Helena turned away. “How long have they been—”

“It started at dusk,” Pace said, her voice wavering, “once they were sure that Headquarters was secured. They don’t have Luc, though, or Sebastian. There’s still hope.”

Helena’s throat tightened so much, she thought she’d choke. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Pace that Luc wasn’t coming, that he couldn’t.

She looked down at herself. She’d been stripped completely and put into a grey smock. Everything was gone: hairpins, ties, hospital call bracelet. The only thing that remained was Kaine’s ring, hovering in the corner of her vision even when she looked directly at it. It had worked; even resonance hadn’t found it in a strip search.

Now her left wrist bore a suppression shackle, like what had been locked around Lila’s wrists. Her right wrist was bare, apparently too swollen for the matching shackle to fit around.

Rhea’s screams were growing fainter.

There was a roar of excitement, and Helena looked up, terrified of what would come next.

A long, low motorcar was pulling in through the gates. Helena’s heart dropped as it stopped at the steps leading to the Tower. The door opened, and Luc stepped out, his expression hesitant, almost bashful, as if arriving late to a party.

A hush fell across the courtyard. Everyone stared in shock as he surveyed the scene around him.

“No …” Helena said at the same time as Pace.

Luc turned and gave a low, obsequious bow as someone else emerged from the back of the motorcar. The person was tall, dressed in intricately decorative robes and a cloak of blue and gold, with a crescent-shaped crown rising from his head. Morrough.

He walked in front of Luc, ascending the marble stairs, which ran red with blood. All the remains of the Eternal Flame’s military leaders were in pieces on the ground or dangling against the walls.

Morrough turned as Luc ascended behind him, revealing a masked face; the crescent, like an eclipsed sun, concealed the upper half. The little bit of skin that showed was a pale, lipless mouth.

Helena had never seen Morrough. There had been stories of his appearance at a few early battles, but he’d let the Undying fight his war.

So this was Cetus. The first Northern alchemist.

The silence remained as Luc followed him up the steps obediently, while Morrough surveyed his audience.

“Paladia has followed this family of false deities for too long,” Morrough said in a rasping voice that barely seemed like it could carry. “They showed you fire and gold, and you thought these paltry tricks divine.” The mouth twisted in derision. “I have conquered death. Immortality is my gift, and I do not hoard this secret knowledge but grant it to all who are worthy.”

There were loud cheers at this. But that was not the worst of it. As Morrough spoke, Luc sank to his knees as if he were one of those begging for immortality.

Helena watched Luc’s every movement, trying to make sense of what she saw.

Luc was dead, she knew he was dead. Morrough must have found and reanimated him, made him seem so lifelike in order to have the satisfaction of being his executioner.

As everyone watched, Luc leaned forward, pressing his head to the stones which were slick with blood; it stained his clothes, his skin, his hair. The blood of those who’d followed him and his family so faithfully.

“Do you beg for immortality?” Morrough asked.

Luc paused as though hesitating, as if ashamed, then he lifted his head, looking up at Morrough like a supplicant, blue eyes wide, and nodded.

“You are unworthy,” Morrough said, but he held out a long bony hand as if extending it to Luc. Then his wrist turned, palm faced down, above Luc’s head.

Even from the distance, Helena felt the resonance in the air, and Luc’s head slammed down into the marble, skull splitting, breaking apart like a cracked egg. His face caved in, and his body toppled over, brains smeared across the blood-soaked marble.

The air filled with screams of horror.

Morrough turned away from the body. “Store him. He will never burn.”

Then he entered the Alchemy Tower, the monument his brother had built to memorialise necromancy’s defeat.

T IME PASSED IN A HAZE. Those who hadn’t gone into the Tower with Morrough began sorting the remaining prisoners, dividing them up, marking the numbers on the shackles into files.

Now that the “festivities” had come to an end, additional cars were arriving. The more decorated members of the Undying, in their black uniforms. Others who appeared to be government officials. The Guild Assembly. Governor Greenfinch.

Most were entering the Alchemy Tower, which had been rinsed of all the blood.

The door of the cage Helena was in screamed open, and guards began pulling the prisoners out, shoving them towards various areas.

“Careful!” Pace snapped as Helena was seized by the arm and dragged to her feet. “Her wrist is broken. She needs medical care. These are smart, capable women. You should—”

The guard sneered at Pace. “We’ve got plenty of prisoners of all sorts.” He looked Helena over. “She’ll go in the cull group, same as you, crone.”

He ignored Pace’s attempts to reason with him, not for herself but for Helena, trying to convince him of her exceptional abilities, as he copied the number on Helena’s shackle onto a list along with Pace’s. They were pushed towards another cage and grabbed by another guard, who shoved them carelessly inside.

Pace tried to resist, still protesting, and she tripped, falling too fast for Helena to react. Her head struck one of the iron bars with a sharp crack, and she didn’t move.

Helena’s left hand was shaking as she braced herself against the bars, using her body to cover Pace as more prisoners were shoved into the cull cage, searching desperately for a pulse. Everyone shoved inside was either badly injured or extremely old. The cadet guarding the war room was slumped beside her, deathly pale, his bowels oozing through his fingers as he tried to hold them in.

She couldn’t help him.

She slumped down next to Pace, lifting her head onto her lap, hoping she was dead, that she wouldn’t witness whatever happened next.

A shadow fell over her.

She looked up, heart in her throat, and then froze at the sight of Mandl.

“My, my,” Mandl said, her wide mouth splitting into a smile, “I thought I recognised that hair of yours.”

Helena was too exhausted to feel anything at the sight of her.

Mandl gestured with a quick flick of her wrist. “Take her out.”

The guards who’d shoved Pace glanced over. “This is the cull cage.”

Mandl turned on him. “I don’t care what ‘cage’ it is, get her out.”

Helena was dragged out, her hand bumping roughly against other bodies. She bit back a moan of pain, and her shoulder was nearly wrenched from its socket again.

“It really is you.” Mandl appraised her as Helena was dropped at her feet. “You certainly put up a fight. Were you afraid I’d find you?”

Helena had scarcely thought of Mandl since she’d finished interrogating her.

“I hoped I would.” Mandl’s breath rushed across Helena’s. She smelled sharp and acrid, like formaldehyde. “I’m going to make sure Bennet gets you for one of his special projects.”

The guard cleared his throat.

“What now?” She turned on him sharply.

“They’re saying Bennet’s gone.”

“What?”

The guard lowered his voice. “Rumour is that Hevgoss was responsible. Bombings are—their sort of thing. No one’s saying much, though. Stroud took a batch earlier and had to bring them all back. Says the whole lab’s gone. Bennet and all the rest. But word’s not supposed to get out among the—” He gestured around the commons.

A glimmer of triumph sparked in Helena’s chest. Bennet was gone; he would never hurt Kaine or anyone else ever again.

Mandl stood, stunned. “But then what about the stasis warehouse. Will it be decommissioned?”

Before the guard could reply, she answered herself. “Of course not. The Undying will still need pristine bodies in reserve. Even without Bennet.”

She looked down at Helena again, who tried not to look as if she was listening.

“Well, if he’s gone, that means that I’m responsible for the selection process.” She leaned forward and grabbed Helena by the back of the arm. “I think I’ll have you as my first pick.”

Mandl’s resonance stabbed through Helena’s hand. Her nerves were suddenly on fire, being torn apart. Agony shot up her shoulder, through her body, and into her brain as if a splintering spike were being driven into her.

Her muscles began spasming as she screamed.

“Oh dear,” Mandl said with false concern, still holding Helena fast. “That wasn’t what I meant to do. I was trying to do this.” She grabbed Helena by the back of the neck.

Renewed pain burst through her, shooting down her spine and along every nerve ending. Building and building until Helena’s heart threatened to explode. She’d break all her own bones if it would let her escape. She’d chew her limbs off.

She could feel her mind scrabbling to break free from the agony. Just break. Just break.

“I’m not fragile. I am not going to break. Please believe that about me.”

She’d promised. Her body was seizing, but eventually it stopped. She was dropped heavily to the ground. Her muscles kept twitching. Mandl knelt, reaching towards her again, and Helena cowered away.

Mandl’s wide mouth stretched across her face. “See how quickly you can learn to be afraid?”

She took Helena’s right hand, resetting and healing the broken bones. She would indeed have been an exceptional healer if she hadn’t been a psychopath.

Then something cold pressed against Helena’s newly healed wrist, clicking as it was locked in place.

She stared at it dazedly, struggling to breathe. It was another cuff. The number was different. She couldn’t quite make it out.

Mandl stood, brushing herself off. “Put her in the transport lorry.”

As Helena was being dragged up off the ground, a young man stepped forward, stammering.

“Wait. That—that one, we got her. She’s supposed to be interrogated. I think. Pretty sure someone said something about that.”

Mandl gave a slow reptilian blink. “She was in the cull cage.”

He flushed and scratched his head. “We had orders.”

“Whose orders?”

“Um, it was one of the dead ones. I don’t remember. He told Lancaster something about it.”

“And Lancaster is?”

“Well, he’s in surgery.”

Mandl’s lips pursed, and she looked as if she were about to eat the Aspirant. “So you want me to do what? Put her back into the cull cage? Do you have jurisdiction to take her?”

He stammered and backed away. “I just—it’s what I heard. Maybe someone else would know.”

Helena wasn’t sure if she’d just been saved or damned. Interrogation was what Atreus had wanted. To find the bomber. She struggled to think. Her body kept spasming. All the drugs in it had her mind spinning as they faded away.

Several liches came over and dragged Helena and several other prisoners towards a lorry, shoving them into the back.

Interrogation would be dangerous. If anyone realised she was the bomber, they’d want to know how. Why.

She knew all too well now the dangers of interrogation. There were points where the mind broke, where pain became all there was. The Undying would hurt her in whatever ways were necessary to get the answers out.

Kaine said animancy was special. Rare. If Bennet was dead, Kaine and Morrough might be the only ones left with the ability, which meant they might bring him in and torture her in front of him or make him torture her.

If Morrough interrogated her personally, he’d find Kaine in her thoughts and memories. No amount of evasion could hide him; he was the fabric of her thoughts. Her every action tied to him.

Even if her death was quick, Kaine’s punishment for his betrayal would be eternal. Or else they’d use her, just as they had his mother.

It would be everything he’d feared.

If they found him in her memory.

If.

She had to push him away, like she had pushed away the memory of—

Soren.

She would redirect her thoughts, transmute her memories until her mind stopped running to him. She couldn’t confess to something she didn’t remember.

She pressed her hands against her temples, wincing as she moved her right hand. The bones were repaired, but the tissue damage and bruising remained. The nullium in the manacles hummed, blurring her resonance, but suppression like that was imperfect.

She still had her resonance, though it wasn’t as powerful. But she didn’t need power; she needed precision and patience. She closed her eyes, using that feeble strain of resonance on her own consciousness. After spending so much time navigating the minds of others, it was easy to manipulate her own mind—no reaction, no resistance.

The last two years of her life, she pushed down beneath the surface as if to drown them. There was no other way. Kaine was almost everything now.

Without him, there was just emptiness. Her routines. Hours and days in the hospital that bled together, years of an unending nightmare.

Alone. Everyone dead. Because they always died. She tried to save them, but in the end, they always died. Her life was a graveyard.

Where there was space she couldn’t reconcile, she filled it with Luc. Not his death, not Luc from the war; the Luc she’d promised to save.

The version of him he’d tried to be. The Luc who’d always believed in her.

It was the way he deserved to be remembered.

She was lost in her own mind when the lorry pulled into a warehouse. An old slaughterhouse with meat hooks overhead and metal tables everywhere, and a cement floor that could be easily sprayed down to wash away the blood. The other prisoners began to panic, jostling her from her thoughts.

“They’re not going to kill us yet,” Helena said, her voice raw. “They’re putting us in stasis. To keep us fresh.”

They were pulled out, one by one, and injected with something.

The process was horrifyingly well synchronised. Rote. As the prisoners went limp, they were hoisted onto long tables, side by side. A guard went down the line stripping their clothes off.

A few tried to fight. One boy got kicked in the gut for his efforts before the needle went into his neck. He called out for his mother, for Sol, for Luc.

The woman—Mandl, her mind belatedly supplied—stood observing, and when Helena was pulled out, she waved her towards the far end of the warehouse. “Put her over there. I’ll deal with her personally.”

A needle sank into the side of Helena’s neck. It was thick, the dose of paralytic unnecessarily large.

Her muscles went numb, but not her sensory nerves. She could feel things, just not move.

Mandl’s face appeared above her, a satisfied smile on her lips, eyes skimming from head to toe. “You think you know what’s about to happen to you, don’t you?”

Helena lay there as Mandl pulled her hair out of the way and placed something adhesive at the base of her neck, over her spine.

“This is to keep your muscles in order.”

An electric pulse caused Helena’s body to seize, muscles contracting and releasing several times.

Mandl’s fingers trailed across Helena’s cold skin, seeming to tremble with excitement. Needles with tubes sank into her arms.

“Pity about Bennet,” Mandl said. “I always found his ideas inspirational. If he got you, he’d keep you alive for ages if I asked. Interrogations are so quick, and you’ll be completely spoiled after that.”

She placed a mask over Helena’s face that stretched from above her eyebrows all the way down over her chin. There was some kind of adhesive that sealed it against her skin. It was transparent enough that Helena could just barely see through it and watch as Mandl picked up a large syringe with a pale-blue liquid inside. “This would put you in a nice little coma. Bennet said it’s like making meat tender by keeping the pigs calm before slaughter.”

She squeezed the plunger. Helena heard it spatter onto the floor.

Then there was the sound of paper tearing as Mandl ripped a form off a clipboard, crumpling it. For a moment she could make out the number at the top, 19819.

Without that form, there would be no record that Helena was there. She’d vanish. A clerical error.

Mandl combed her fingers through Helena’s hair. “While you’re waiting, I want you to think about all the things I’m going to do to you when I come back.”

Mandl turned away. “All done here. Put her under with the rest.”

Helena was lifted onto a cart that went rattling across the floor into a second room. It was bitterly cold. Helena could see the rows of sectioned tanks from the corner of her eyes. The photographs from the raid flashed in her memory, all the bodies floating inside them. All dead.

The guards, wearing large rubber gloves to their shoulders, lifted one prisoner after another and slid them into the tanks, hooking the tubes and wires into a row of machines that ran along the far end.

Helena’s heart was pounding harder and harder as she was picked up and the cold fluid closed around her.

She couldn’t move. She was trapped inside her own body, like a cage sealing her within her mind. The cold seeped into her, slowing her heart, dropping her metabolism. It felt like forever and like no time at all before the light vanished, too.

Helena was left in darkness and silence.

Her heart was pounding in unadulterated terror. The lid was inches from her face, but she couldn’t see it. Freedom so close but utterly beyond reach.

She tried to breathe slowly but couldn’t. She started panting, heat and steam filling the mask over her face.

She tried to scream, but all that came out was a weak uneven whimper. Her body grew colder and colder, and her lungs spasmed as her panic used up the limited oxygen coming through the mask. Her chest began aching and burning for air. She kept trying to breathe, but there was nothing to breathe.

She was relieved when she passed out. It was better than being awake.

Something burning hot jolted her back to consciousness.

She’d forgotten where she was and panicked as it all rushed back. The tiny, enclosed space beneath the surface, in the dark. Not enough air, and she couldn’t move.

The burning came again, cutting her panic short as she tried to place where the sensation was coming from. She knew that feeling.

Her hand. Her left hand was burning. The ring. Her heart stalled.

Kaine. He’d come back and found her gone. She’d told him she’d be waiting, and she wasn’t there. The ring burned again and again and again.

He was looking for her. He’d come for her.

He always did.

But she could not think about it.

She had to forget. If she remembered and was interrogated, Kaine could not be found.

She couldn’t think about him. Trapped, frozen, without use of her hands, she could only draw her resonance inwards. She was used to pushing it out for combat. Now it was like a net she closed around her own mind.

She could feel the faint texture in her mind of her manipulations, altering her thoughts, bending them around all the things she must not think about. She followed the new paths, over and over, wearing new grooves into place, teaching her mind to settle there and look no further. She counted. She made routines. She tried not to remember.

If Kaine found her, he’d understand.

She could wait.

Hold on. You promised you wouldn’t break.