20

The bright orange of fire blasted at the end of the tunnel. The Tremblers ambled towards it, leaving Ashton and I crumpled at the metal door. It clanged, the lock released, and the wheel spun in its center. Light from inside the facility stole across the filthy floor, silhouetting two large men.

Too weak to resist, I tried to bat the manacles away, but the metal clamped down on both wrists. The man hefted me over his shoulder and carried me down a concrete-lined corridor. The second man grabbed Ashton’s arm, dragging him behind us, oblivious to the trail of crimson he left. The metal door closed behind us, hissing with an air seal. I craned my neck, struggling to see where they were taking us. No doors or windows. We proceeded down at a steep angle and then I heard water—the splash of our steps as we waded through what appeared in the flickering bulbs of the corridor to be flooding. Worried for Ashton, I squinted in the wan illumination. Head lolling to the side, free arm dragging through the water, he did not stir.

We pushed through another door, this one higher off the ground like the hatches inside Wind Reaper vessels. I tried to call out to Ashton, but my strangled words came out in a gargle. The man holding me recoiled, tossing me off of his shoulder. I hit the solid ground with a splash, and all the breath whooshed out from me in a gasp.

“Put her in. Hurry.” The other man rushed over. They pushed me with their boots, sending pain through my ribs as they rolled me into a dark space.

“W-wait,” I stammered. My hands clung to the side trying to stop them. “Stop!”

My fingers flared with pain as a boot heel met my knuckles. I let go, screaming as a door shut, leaving me in complete black. Darkness pressed in on all sides. Disoriented, I blinked, widening my eyes, desperate for any shape or shadow. Arms flailing as much as possible with the shackles, my fingers found a smooth, solid wall. I was trapped in a space no bigger than a closet. “No, no, no. No, please!”

Mist erupted from the corners and engulfed me with a cold so deep it seared my lungs with a chemical taste. I slammed my fists against the wall of the chamber over and over, not caring that my bones shrieked in pain with every blow. I had to get out. I couldn’t breathe. Chest tight, pulse pounding in my brain, the panic tore out of me in a ragged scream. “Let me out of here!” My voice echoed back, deflected by the metal walls enclosing me. “Please…” Sobs tightened my throat. “I can’t…I can’t…”

Memories of the watery tank in Arecibo’s lab squeezed the air from me in gasps of fear. Death’s dark fingers wrapped around my mind, stealing all reason. Pain and terror flooded my thoughts. The shock treatments. Arecibo’s hollow gaze as he tortured me. My screams rising in bubbles.

Dread flared up my spine, and I pounded the wall again, tasting blood with my screams.

Mind shredded, soul trembling, I sank to my knees as the weight of darkness smothered my sobs. Alone and broken, I hugged myself, shaking. I couldn’t survive this again. I wasn’t strong enough.

Feeling for the wires that used to sedate me in my liquid prison, I found nothing embedded in my skin. I was not in a fluid. I was on my own two feet. Hands to my face I reassured myself there was no breathing mask. No tubes down my throat. “He is not here.” I told myself through whimpers. I was not in that nightmare. “Arecibo doesn’t have you again.”

A mechanical whir vibrated below my feet, and I stilled, barely able to control the shaking of my hands as I reached out, feeling for the vents in the floor. Another burst of frigid vapor rushed through my fingers. And then, a crack of light against the floor. I leaned in, desperate for its touch. The side of the chamber rose, sliding up, leaving only glass separating me from the bizarre scene.

Ashton struggled in the grip of the two men near a bank of levers. A woman yelled at him, her voice lost behind the clear barrier separating me from the room.

I banged on the glass, but they did not turn. I recognized her from the news bureau article in the journal Ashton had shown me. Professor Prudence Hunley brandished a cane at Ashton, and the men pulling on his arms dragged him back to an examination table.

“Help!” I coughed with the raw pain in my throat. “Please!”

Blinking in the light, I took in the snaking lines of glass tubing, boiling liquids in myriad flasks atop burners, walls lined with every manner of tools both mechanical and surgical, and the metal tables draped with sheets. A laboratory. This was Hunley’s lair. My breath fogged the glass, and I wiped the forming frost from the surface, squinting to see.

“You do not understand what you’ve done,” Ashton mouthed, his face full of worry. “To imprison her like that, Hunley. She will react badly to the confinement…” I did not catch the rest as he turned, saw me, and froze.

Hunley followed his gaze and startled, her brows pulling down over dark eyes. Hands shaking, she signaled to her men, and they released Ashton.

He hobbled over, his leg bandaged, blood seeping through the bindings. Palms to the glass, he spoke, but the muffled words escaped me as I glanced over his shoulder at Hunley. Her hand slid to a dial and she licked her lips, watching us, seemingly debating. Her gaze went to an object on the table, and I gritted my teeth, realizing it was my baton.

Despite the cold rush of mist at my feet, I sank down, huddled as if folding into myself.

Ashton followed me to the floor, the meat of his fist banging on the glass. He turned and his muffled scream was unmistakable. “Let her out!” He faced me, his eyes tracing my form, anger lining his features.

Hands to my temples, I fought frantically to form a plan before she froze me completely. The mechanica in my hands sparked weakly, a flicker that warbled in the dark chamber. Deep moans bubbled from my throat. The forlorn emptiness of the Trembling Sickness seeped into my chest and squeezed my heart painfully. It slowed, the beats so far apart, my breath so shallow.

The poor half corpses in the tunnel flashed in my mind. Would they throw me out there with them? Would I freeze to the ground, my eyes staring out at the icy wasteland? I would die here if I did not think of something.

The mechanica whirred in my head. I was not the debutante needing to be rescued. I had lived through too much to be that girl anymore. I refused to fold in on myself and drift into oblivion. Not ever again. I had to save myself.

And then the rage churned. A slow boil of anger in my gut that took me over, steeled my nerves, sharpened my thoughts. The tone started in my head, dull at first. An echo that focused to a single painful high-pitched throbbing. The mechanica at my temples warmed, then burned with excruciating heat as all the power left me, and every fiber of my body gave what it had. The glass between me and Ashton vibrated ever so slightly.

“Wait…” He scrambled backward, his eyes wide as he mouthed something. “Charlotte, stop!”

Palms flat on the barrier, I cried out, the sound tearing across my mind as it had when I’d fought the Trembler Knights in Outer City. Beneath my hands, the glass shook, undulating with every pulse of the tone.

And then a voice echoed throughout the chamber, Hunley’s words scratchy through the speaker grate in the wall. “Look at me,” she demanded. “Blackburn, look up!”

The trance broken, I fell away from the glass, shivering uncontrollably as the strength in my legs gave way, completely spent. I locked gazes with her angry one.

Piercing, her eyes showed an obvious intelligence as well as barely concealed fear.

“Why are you doing this?” I managed.

“I would be a fool not to contain Arecibo’s Dark Wrath. That is what they call you, isn’t it? Your victims.” Her thin lips curled into a snarl, and she watched me intently through the glass like a repulsive specimen.

“N-not who I am.” My voice broke. “Not any m-more.” Shivers rattled along my entire body, and I tasted blood. My head jerked, banging painfully on the wall behind me.

“That is not what it looks like to me,” Hunley said evenly, the wisps of hair framing her heart-shaped face trembled, belying her outward show of calm.

My gaze dropped to her leg. She rubbed her outer thigh subconsciously and pain etched lines around her mouth.

I shifted, tried to sit up, and nodded at her injury. “I am sorry that I hurt you.”

She blinked, lips parting in surprise. She glanced at Ashton for a second before her scowl returned. “I am sure you would say anything to get me to release you.”

“Let her out,” Ashton’s voice sounded. He stood next to her, his anger palpable. “She is no danger.”

“I will decide that, not you.” Hunley’s eyes narrowed at me, assessing.

“I came for your help. Not to hurt you,” I rasped.

“No, you came for one thing.” She pulled a syringe from her laboratory coat pocket and tapped it against the glass. The large vial held a simmering silver liquid. “And outside of The Order, I am the only one on this wretched continent who has it.”

“Solenium.” I coughed, the gurgling in my throat worse as I continued to breathe in the mist. “H-how…?” I shook my head, struggling to understand how she might have what I only just discovered a couple weeks ago. It was the formulation Riley and I recovered from the government labs before Union Security Soldiers burned them to the ground. It was Tesla’s notion that Solenium even existed. It was why I went to that lab in the first place, thinking it was a cure for the Trembling Sickness. Back when I thought I might be saved.

“Took me a while, but I figured out a way.” Hunley pushed the plunger, letting a minute, shining drop tremble at the tip of the needle before sending it sliding down the glass between us.

Of course. It may have seemed like only weeks ago in my mind, but it was much longer. From what I understood, there was precious little. The Order procured it for Arecibo via the mines they’d secretly run outside the government’s knowledge. How did Hunley come to have any at all…much less in the quantities the large vial held?

The flickering of the Solenium caught my eye. I did not remember it simmering before. As if unstable and ready to explode from the ampule.

“N-need it.” I nodded, panting back the anguish freezing every fiber of my body. “Ashton said you might know…know why I am dying.”

“I might.” She frowned. “You see, I was there when Arecibo used it to…build you.”

My fingers found the smooth disc on the back of my hand, assembled like some sort of weapon. I shook my head. Flesh and metal, both too cold to be human anymore. So weary, so weak, I let my eyelids close. The deep void of darkness pulled at my mind.

Hunley banged on the glass, and I jerked. Breaths came in shallow and then shallower gasps.

“Good scientists, Blackburn. Men and women, stolen from their families to work on you for Arecibo and The Order. To build the embodiment of destruction. And you served him well. You cut a swath of pain and fear across the domes for your master.” Her hand gripped the syringe with white-knuckled anger, and I feared she would crush it in her palm.

My gaze went to Ashton who would not look at me. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Do not do this. You do not understand, Pru.”

“Understand what, Wells?”

“I never…” Ashton let out a slow breath. “She does not know what you are talking about. She has no memory of what she did.”

Hunley’s gaze snapped to me, anger and confusion marring her features.

I tried to move, my arms collapsing beneath me. I slouched against the glass, the thick chemical mist filled my mouth and throat, but I had no strength to cough. The manacles jangled against the glass. I briefly thought about using them to break the barrier, but they were so heavy. And I was so tired.

“She doesn’t remember?” She turned and glared at him, shaking her head. “No! That is not acceptable. She cannot escape that way. She has to know what she’s done. She has to feel the…” Her voice broke. “She has to remember the pain she caused.” Hunley slammed her palm on the glass near my face. “You do not get to forget them!”

“Pru. Please,” Ashton said. “She will die in there.”

“A more merciful end than those who encountered her.” She shrugged his hand away, her lip trembling. “You said you would kill her. You said we could trust that you would stop her and Arecibo. That all you needed was our help to find her.”

“Don’t—” His gaze snapped to mine.

He looked for me not because he loved me, but to end me. A weak cry escaped my shivering lips.

“No, you,” she grabbed his shirt, tried to shake him with her small arms. “You were supposed to be one of the white knights, Ash. One of the honorable. One of the few left.”

Ashton put his hands on hers, staring down at her, his jaw working.

She yanked away, her lips turned down, eyes brimming.

“How could I be both noble and a murderer?”

“Because there was a greater good. A higher purpose, Wells.” She stood unsteadily, her frown full of bewilderment. “This is war, and you turned your back on the effort to overthrow The Order. For what?” She gestured toward me. “To safeguard the soul of death itself?”

“I mitigated the harm. I sabotaged missions and incapacitated the wretched knights that she commanded, but I was not leaving her there with him. She has given all she was over and over again for others. She deserved to be saved!”

“And look what saving your ‘beloved’ cost everyone else!” Her whole body quaked. “It cost all of us, even you, everything we’re fighting to do. How many of your loyal knights died trying to get you into Arecibo’s fortress?”

“Staying served us better, Prudence,” Ashton growled, taking her shoulders in his hands. “You know it did.”

“The Decatur,” I rasped, flinching as a memory flared out of a dark corner of my mind.

“What?” She rapped her cane against the glass wall. “Blackburn…”

Jaw grinding, I forced myself to look her in the eyes. The cane had jarred an image, her drawing the handle to reveal a dagger sparking with blue electricity. Her hair whipping in the winds of a storm as she screamed at me with anger and fear. A group of scientists huddled behind her on the deck of an aero ship, one bleeding. The image of my own hand, baton extended, tip crimson, burned across my vision. I blinked, suddenly sick to my stomach. Cold realization gripped my soul. I heaved, a sob stuck in my throat. “You were on The Decatur. You tried to save them…”

“You do not speak of them,” she snapped, her face contorting as she fought for control. “Not ever. You are an abomination. You do not deserve to be alive. I should…I should let your heart slow until it stops beating at all—”

“That is enough!” Ashton cut across her, his voice edged with steel.

She sucked in a ragged breath, the syringe in her hand trembling against the glass partition.

“No, she is r-right. I am a monster,” I whispered as I held her gaze. “What I’ve done. Who I’ve hurt. But I promise you…I’ll make right what I did.”

“You can never bring back those we lost,” she said, her voice shaking. “Can never erase what that madman has done.”

“I can stop h-him.” Pain knotted my middle, squeezing a moan from my lips. “I was built for destruction, you said that your…yourself.” I wheezed, the cold filling my lungs. “For once let this Dark Wrath go where it belongs.”

“She can help us, Pru. I have seen what she can do. She can control those Trembler Knights. The tide can turn for us.” Ashton slipped his hand over hers, moving her arm so that the syringe was between them. “But first you have to help her.”

“How can I trust her? After all she has done for The Order?”

“P-please…” Consciousness slipping, I let my head loll to the side, my face resting on the partition. So cold. It was so cold. I tried to flex my fingers, the crunch they made sent panic ripping through me, yet I could do nothing to help myself.

“Let her out.” Ashton strode to the bank of levers, searching. “She is fading. She’ll be no good to our mission dead.”

Hunley chewed her inner cheek, her body tense as Ashton held her gaze with his dark one. Finally, she nodded to the two men. They muscled him back over to an examining bed, his protests ringing through the speaker grate.

“You are making a grave mistake, Hunley,” he shouted. “Listen to me. We need her.”

My throat ached at his words. I was a weapon to him as well. A means to a victory he’d always sworn to exact against The Order. He was no different than those he fought. No different than Arecibo. No, he was worse. He’d made me love him.

“Don’t look at him. Look at me.” Hunley slapped the glass again. “How can I trust you, Blackburn? Convince me.”

“Look what Arecibo did to me,” I gasped, desperate for air not laced with the noxious chemicals. The cold was unnatural and bone deep—even the outside storm could not mimic it. I pulled at the mechanica on my hand, despite the numb and cold, a twinge of pain sparked along the bones. It flickered, the wires misfired, but it would not budge. What he had done to me was permanent. I was forever changed into a nightmare. Fingers covered in dark crimson, I held them between us. “How can I not want him dead?”

Hunley pursed her thin lips, thinking. A play of emotions crossed her features, and she seemed to struggle with her decision. Her gaze went to my bloody hand, and she rubbed her eyes under her spectacles with a sigh. After a moment, she strode to the panel and released a lever.

The partition rose, and I spilled out onto the floor. The air of the laboratory hit me like a hot cloud. My legs and arms were leaden. She walked over, tentatively holding her cane like a sword out in front of her, and prodded my shoulder with the end. I looked up, exasperated. What did she expect me to do? Bite? Then I caught sight of the blue tinge to my skin and realized, yes, she might be worried I would do just that. “I—I am no danger,” I managed, trying to push myself up on shaking arms to a sitting position.

“The mist will wear off,” she said as she eased down on one knee next to me. “It affects the nerves.” She nodded to the man standing guard over Ashton. “It is Kirkland’s design.”

I glanced over her shoulder. Though brawny, Kirkland had an uncertain air to him. Clearly, not a trained guard. Odds were the other man was not a soldier either. Beyond them, a hallway led to what could be an escape route. I eyed Ashton, taking in the pale of his pallor. He had stood, fought them off before. Perhaps—

“Stop your tactical calculations, Blackburn,” Hunley said and tapped the mechanica on the back of my hand. “Without another infusion you’re rather like a ragdoll.”

“Please do not put me back in the box,” I whispered, my throat raw. A tremor shook me, and I groaned. “I–I cannot…”

“It would be safer if I did.” She studied me, her gaze going to the mechanica at my temples. Chestnut hair tied up in a knot atop her head, and stray strands that caught in her glasses. Finally, she stood with great difficulty, wincing as she placed weight on her right leg. “But I suppose you are manageable in this condition.” To the man standing by the bank of controls, she motioned with her cane. “Put her on a table, will you, Gustav? I want to take a closer look.”

“Leave her alone,” Ashton said from his gurney. “She’s been through enough.”

“And if you want her to make it any further, you’ll quiet down,” Hunley shot back. “Settle yourself, or I will have you strapped down.”

Ashton’s jaw ground, but he dropped back onto the pillow, his eyes sunken with pain. “The last two years are mostly gone. Arecibo took all but brief glimpses from her. You know what he is capable of, Pru. You saw what he did.”

“I said, hold your tongue, Wells,” Hunley snapped, but her expression softened for a moment before suspicion resettled on her features.

I could do nothing as the scientist called Gustav hefted me with no more regard than a sack of rice. Hanging over his back, his muscled shoulder dug into my middle. I groaned. He pulled away and plopped me unceremoniously on an examination table, his gaze wary as he released my wrists from the manacles. The bright lights overhead pierced my eyes, and I squinted, suddenly unable to stop my racing heart. Panic overwhelmed me, and I clutched the sides of the gurney, desperate to keep a scream from escaping my lips. I had to run, to save myself from unseen dread. Mouth dry, I licked my lips, trying to calm my shallow panting.

Hunley’s face appeared above me, a physician’s head mirror strapped to her forehead. Arecibo’s sadistic smile as I lay helpless flashed in my head, and I flinched at her touch. She pulled away reflexively, her eyes wary.

Despite logic telling me I was not about to be terribly hurt, my body would not listen. I struggled to keep a hold of myself, knowing I could not let Hunley feel threatened if I wanted to stay out of that icy prison. “What are you doing?” I panted, desperate for the tangle of nerves twisting my stomach to loosen.

“I do not intend to hurt you if you remain calm,” Hunley said evenly, her eye framed in the reflective circle. She tapped the mechanica at my temple with a metal instrument. “Do these usually get so hot?”

Chest tight, I fought for breath. “I-I can’t remember.”

She tilted her head, prodding the devices embedded in the back of my hand. Picking my arm up, she peered at my fingertips, pinching them and then releasing, watching. My head lolled to the side, and I caught Ashton looking over. He nodded, and I tried to smile. I had hurt this woman and now, at her mercy, I could only trust that he knew what he was doing. That his judgment of her character surpassed my own.

“You said her mind is wiped?” Hunley asked over me. “You are certain?”

“Yes.” Ashton broke our gaze and addressed her. “Arecibo began to implement some sort of shock therapy right before I left.”

She nodded, her gaze knowing. “I warned him that might be a side effect.”

“You knew about it?” Ashton struggled to a sitting position.

Kirkland moved to stop him, but Hunley stayed him with a gesture. “I was aware of plans to do something to that effect and advised against it.”

“What did he take?” I asked. “What do I not remember?”

“Your dark deeds,” Hunley said.

“How could you help him turn me into…” my voice cracked. “How could you do that?”

“Charlie,” Ashton said, catching my gaze. “Charlie, before, when it all started, you were dying. I only wanted to help you survive the Trembling Sickness. That is all I had wanted. For you to live.” He swallowed, shaking his head as he pled with his gaze. “Believe me, I had no idea what Arecibo would do.”

“What did we do for h-him?” I asked, writhing as the tremors twisted my gut. “Tell me what everyone else seems to know.”

Pity and mistrust played across Hunley’s face like one would stare at some rabid creature worthy of nothing more than a bullet.

I squeezed my eyes shut trying to remember why I had done what I did to her and what could possibly be the reason for it. My voice quavered with anger and confusion. “Y-you all want me to pay for it, suffer for it, but will not tell me anything!”

Kirkland cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable as he inspected his shoes.

Gustav crossed his arms and glared at me.

Hunley looked to Ashton, who nodded reluctantly.

“Infrasonic waves,” Hunley said to me.

I blinked, unsure of what she was saying. Mind fuzzy, I merely stared.

“They are ultra-low frequency sounds that I believed preceded the movement of our earth right before it shifted. I proved that animals can not only detect these waves…they can be controlled by them.”

“What?”

“It is why I was taken by Arecibo; my studies on animal reactions to infrasonic waves right before tremors and quakes.” Touching the devices at my temples, she frowned, guilt etched under her dark eyes. “I made these for you. Assisted in the surgery to imbed them.”

Throat aching, I turned and closed my eyes, unable to keep the pain from showing.

“At first, I did not know what my research would be used for,” she said quickly. “I was just happy that a female scientist with an unproven theory would get such generous funding. But then, I was taken to his…lair…I guess you might call it. Held captive and made to create what would eventually become this device.” She shifted on her feet next to me. “I had a hand in what was done to you too, it seems. You deserve to know that.” Her gaze snapped to Ashton. “You need to tell her, Wells. Everything.”

“It will destroy her.” He reached out with his hand but could not reach.

“I think that we have all done that to her already,” Hunley intoned. To me, she said, “I will give you a fourth of a dose. Enough to let you recover. That is all I can do in good conscience. There are people here whom I care about. People I am not willing to risk to you again.”

I nodded, my chest tight with guilt I felt but could not name.

She turned me on my side, brushed my hair aside and found the device at the top of my spine.

“Look at me, Charlie,” Ashton said, his eyes filling. “Focus on my voice.”

“Why do you look so—”

I screamed, writhing as pain, ferocious and ragged, tore through my mind. Metal clanged as the table quaked under my convulsing body. Sharp power shredded through my nerves, stabbing my muscles with spasms, and wrenched my bones until I thought they might break. I could not breathe or think. I could only shake with the torrent of building strength. I jerked upright with a gasp, the rails of the bed bending in my iron grip. Heart racing, mind firing at breakneck speed, I took in the startled faces of Hunley, Kirkland, and Gustav, and leapt from the bed. Grabbing my baton, it ratcheted out with a fluid motion. Silver energy flashed from the mechanica in my hand and sizzled down the shaft.

“Wait!” Gustav shouted, moving too late.

I already had my hand around Hunley’s throat.

Kirkland followed, struggling with the revolver tangled in his belt.

I swiped at them, missing deliberately, but making my point.

Ashton, struggled to his feet, still too far to do anything.

Pulling Hunley close, I whispered inches from her terrified face. “I will need the rest of that.”