26. Chapter 26
Chapter 26
E arly morning rain had left a pale wash over the streets of Paris. The black wrought iron balconies shone from moisture, and streaks of white, pink, and green reflected in the puddles between the cobblestones. The fiacre Will and Sylvia had hired to take them to Dr. Deniau’s residence crowded along wide, tree-lined avenues and skipped down smaller streets with mansard-roof buildings huddled close together. In the distance, a shadow of a tall spire rose into the pink morning mist. Will fixed his gaze on it, following it even through the movements of the fiacre.
“What is it?” Sylvia asked.
“They call it the Eiffel Tower. When I was here last year, they hadn’t finished building it yet. I never imagined it would be so tall.” Will spared his co-traveler a glance. “It’s magnificent, isn’t it?”
Sylvia leaned closer to the window. “Looks rather odd. What function does it serve? ”
“Decorative. And it’s proof of humanity’s achievements. I wish I could see it up close. It’s on Champs de Mars—where the majority of the Exposition Universelle is.”
“I’ve heard of that. They opened it just before Sir Richard and I left London.”
What a strange construct time is, especially when paired with destiny. Will had read about and seen pictures of Paris’ Universal Exposition—and wished, so many times, that he could’ve been here to see it, but he also wanted to be on Ralkin’s research team. He could hardly believe that was less than two months ago. Everything had been turned on its head since.
The fiacre stopped in front of a four-story building with a beige facade and blueish-green mansard roof, indistinguishable from the rest of the street. Will and Sylvia skipped through the drizzle to the front door.
Dr. Deniau’s appearance matched what Will had heard of her character. She was a statuesque woman in her fifties with brown hair tightly pulled back and a serious face on which even the little wrinkles around her eyes and mouth seemed to obey the wishes of their mistress: they only made Dr. Deniau look stricter and more elegant.
A round of greetings followed, with Sylvia bobbing out a perfectly accented “ Enchantée, Madame, ” and then Dr. Deniau got straight to business.
“I received a telegraph from your father,” she told Will. “I believe this is best to be conducted in my laboratory at the institute. If you are ready, we may go right now.”
Sylvia stood as straight as a rod, pressing her hands a bit too tight together. Will assumed he only felt a fraction of the fear she did—and if so, she carried herself remarkably well. “I would like, thank you.” She gave him a brief glance that seemed to, at the same time, reassure him she would be all right and plead for help.
Dr. Deniau’s lab, located on the second floor of a long, uniform building, was a surprisingly pleasant place with bright walls, tall windows, and a black-and-white tiled floor. It was filled with rows of metallic-topped tables, which, in turn, were filled with various beakers, tubes, flasks of colorful liquids, and medical contraptions.
“In here, if you will, Lady Ross.” Dr. Deniau opened one of the three doors on the far wall. Behind it was a small room with a half-lowered seat, a chair, and a table next to it. “I will conduct some basic examinations. Monsieur Marshall, if you won’t mind waiting outside?”
Will nodded and walked to the windows as Dr. Deniau closed the door behind her and Sylvia. On the street below, pairs and groups and the occasional lone traveler moved along through their casual, uneventful day, hidden behind small black umbrellas.
If only I could be one of them.
After half an hour, Dr. Deniau returned from the examination room. Although Will wasn’t sure her face knew a happy expression, this one looked more worried than before.
“Have you discovered anything?”
“Less than I’d like, which worries me.” The doctor brushed the creases on her white apron. “Lady Ross is physically fine. But in terms of our almonite problem, I suggest an additional examination procedure. I’d like to try X-radiation.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“The discovery of the technology is still a few years away.” The faintest bit of amusement crept into her eyes. “It’s one of the lucky discoveries we had made before the Watchers were shut down. Though, of course, I have to keep it secret until the right people receive the credit. With X-radiation, we can take images of the body—of the inside of the body. It’ll be a huge break in medicine once it’s discovered properly.”
X-radiation. Inside the body. Those two together sounded familiar. The television! He’d seen it mentioned once when he and Emily were watching TV. Only they’d called it X-rays. “Is that not dangerous? Radiation?”
“There have been a few minor accidents. Burns and such.” Dr. Deniau lifted a test tube of blood and inspected it toward the light. “But it will be a short exposure. No harm should come of it.”
“ Should does not sound well enough.”
“Monsieur Marshall.” The doctor faced him. “You came here so I could heal her. Then let me heal her.”
“I’ll do it,” Sylvia’s voice came from the doorway. She dragged a sleeve of her shirt back to the wrist. “The X-thing. I want to do it.”
“Lady Ross—” Will started.
“I need to do it.” She approached Dr. Deniau. “So, how does it go?”
Dr. Deniau looked at Will and acknowledged his compliance with a slight nod. She stepped to a single table at the corner. “We’ll use this one. Monsieur Marshall, can you bring me a Crookes tube—in the corner over there—and an induction coil? We’ll also need a photographic plate …”
Dr. Deniau took two pictures of Sylvia—one of her forearm with her hand and another of her head. Sylvia left to use the restroom while Dr. Deniau spread the films so she and Will could view the two photographs.
Dangerous or not, Will had to marvel at the technology. Instead of a standard photo of the hand, the black-and-white picture displayed, in eerie details, the fine bones of Sylvia’s fingers, spreading out like a fan from a cluster of bones in her wrist. The picture also captured the two bones of her forearm; all white, swimming in a greyish-white shadow of the arm .
Father had said Dr. Deniau tended to put science before human life. With science like this, Will could almost understand her.
“I’ve done a few of these over the years,” Deniau said. “Of my Watcher colleagues. We came to an interesting discovery: most of the almonite, once it’s mutated and adjusted to our body, is clustered in the brain.” She brought Will’s attention to the other photograph, where a white circle of the skull bordered a grainy, greyish-white mass in the middle. “These confirm my suspicions. The infection Lady Ross has gone through is not standard. Which also explains why she is such a valuable subject.”
Will decided to ignore the last sentence and focus on the important. “So what’s wrong with her?”
“Instead of brain cells, the almonite is clustered inside her bones. See this?” Deniau pointed to the bones in the photograph. “The little dark dots running down the ulna? And here, in the carpal bones. Those should not be there—it should be a clear, white mass. To have settled in the bones, the almonite must have gone through a different mutation.”
“Like the mutations that make a Leader?”
“No, an entirely new one. Which poses the question … if we can extract it, what new abilities can this almonite give us? Not to mention that for the first time in twenty years, we’d have active almonite to work with.”
And Ralkin and Ross already have it. A shiver ran down Will’s spine. It had been three weeks since they’d parted ways with Emily and James. Had they made any progress in the meantime? He’d have to send a message as soon as they got to the hotel today, and he’d have a temporary address.
“So? What is the news?” Sylvia strolled up to them, wringing her hands.
“If you wish to extricate the almonite, I have some ideas on the procedures,” Dr. Deniau said.
“Which one will cause the least pain?” Will asked .
“The one that will also take the longest. I would need to create a chemical mixture that would either expel or destroy the almonite in her body without destroying the healthy cells around it. But it could take months.”
Will caught Sylvia’s concerned gaze. I don’t know if we have this much time. The longer Sylvia had almonite in her body, the longer she was in danger. Unless the matter with Ross and Ralkin has already been resolved.
“Dr. Deniau, have you perhaps received any other messages from my father?” Will asked.
“None. Only the one announcing your arrival.”
So if it did happen, his father didn’t know yet—but that wasn’t likely. It probably meant there’d been no breakthroughs.
“What about the shorter one?” Sylvia asked. “The more painful way?”
“I would try to remove the almonite via a needle. Unlike with a few injections, needed for the first option, this would take several tries. A waste of time to do it by hand, but I have an apparatus I could, with Monsieur Marshall’s help, convert for our needs. If we get to work immediately, we can be done in a week.”
An apparatus to suck the almonite out of Sylvia’s body. That sounded like the device Emily had described in Ralkin’s lab.
“Can we give you the answer tomorrow?” At Sylvia’s surprised look, Will further explained, “I’d like to message my contacts in Boston first. See how they’re progressing. There might be no need for a rush procedure.”
“As you wish. I will prepare a plan for each. We meet again tomorrow,” Dr. Deniau said.
Sylvia, even though she said nothing, visibly relaxed her shoulders.
Their hotel in the Latin Quarter could be most favorably described as charming, and the label “hotel” itself was up for debate. There were no marble floors and gold-painted arches and flower-filled atriums; instead, Will and Sylvia were greeted by a rowdy entrance area that doubled as a lobby and a restaurant, with pictures of the city and revolutionary prints hanging skewed from the wood-paneled walls and a set of uneven wooden stairs leading to the half-open upper floor.
Will arranged for two rooms next to each other—like on the ship—and had a message sent to James. When he turned, he found Sylvia inspecting the room with a light, amused smile.
“It’s not like any of the hotels I’ve been to,” she half whispered, but she sounded more fascinated than complaining.
They settled in their respective rooms, and throughout the day, Will kept racing downstairs to check if any messages had arrived, always going down the stairs with a tight ball of expectation in his chest and returning with an exploded feeling of disappointment. The fifth time, late in the evening, the receptionist finally gave him a firm “ Il n'y en a pas, monsieur, ” accompanied by a look that implied just what would happen if Will asked him one more time.
Upstairs, Sylvia was outside her room, leaning on the balustrade providing a view of the common space below.
“The atmosphere is quite interesting,” she said. “It’s very …”
“Loud?”
“I don’t mind the music.” She shrugged.
Good, because that man on harmonica began one hour ago and so far shows no signs of stopping.
“I have a feeling I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.”
“It’ll all be well,” he said out of practice.
“Have you received any news?”
“No. Not yet. ”
Her shoulders tensed again. Specks of orange from a half-lit chandelier reflected in her eyes as she scanned the cheerful bunch of guests below. “Then tomorrow, I will ask Dr. Deniau to begin the extraction procedure.”
“We can wait another day.” Even as he spoke, his mind revolted against the words—was it not the point of all of this, of their rushed escape to France, to save Sylvia as soon as possible?
“I appreciate your concern, Mr. Marshall, but you know we cannot.” Her brave facade crackled slightly, and her voice broke at the last word. Will inspected their hands, clutching the railing. A few inches, and he could’ve covered hers. One step, and he’d have her in his arms. Only a few more steps to the bedroom—
Forcibly, he shook his thoughts away. The real distance, sadly, was much more than just a few inches.
He remembered the deep shadows in her eyes every time she’d spoken of her time in Boston, and one last time, he tried. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I must.” She gripped the railing tighter and looked longingly at the crowd below and a group of men laughing loud enough to overpower even the harmonica. “I want to be free.”