Chapter 17
Aggression
Smita runs and keeps on running until she hits her first dead end.
It’s a featureless white wall, identical to all the other walls she’s seen, except that this one has no doors or corridors attached.
It’s like a maze down here, everything so close to the same that she can get turned around while she’s standing still, or as good as: she wishes now that she’d thought to mark her trail as she fled, to leave something behind for her to follow.
But maybe even that wouldn’t have helped.
She’s been carrying her wet clothes this whole time, and they’re still dripping, despite the towel she’s wrapped around them.
There should be drops of water on the floor to mark where she’s been, and there aren’t.
It’s like the tile has been drinking everything she offers it.
It’s like the lab doesn’t want her to know where she is, or how to go back in the right direction.
Smita stops and just stares at the wall for a moment, trying to understand how this can be happening. Then she turns.
“I am a woman of science,” she mutters. “I am fully capable of getting myself out of here without any help or guidance. If anyone can get out of here, it’s me.” She begins marching back the way she came, letting the fingertips of her free hand trail against the nearest wall.
She’s no Ariadne, to weave a ball of thread capable of unraveling a labyrinth, no Theseus fated to defeat the minotaur, but she’s clever and determined and she’s survived worse than this.
She’s survived the Erin she still sees in her dreams, with the burning hand of a murdered man in one hand and a naked knife in the other.
She’s survived the end of time itself. She can do this.
So she walks briskly. She doesn’t run, she doesn’t hesitate, and she doesn’t look back. Looking back is how it ends for so many of the girls in movies that look far too much like her current situation. She’s not going to be one of them. She’s going to make it out of here.
She walks until her feet hurt, until the cold of the tile has chased away the last of the warmth the shower left in her toes, until she wants to scream from the unending monotony of it all.
She walks until there’s nothing left in the world but walking, and when she stumbles, toes numb from the distance they’ve consumed, she catches herself against the wall and looks to the nearest door.
About half the rooms she’s seen so far had some sort of seating inside, and right now, that’s what she needs more than almost anything. Something to drink would also be nice, but she doesn’t trust anything she might find down here.
Pushing herself away from the wall, she takes an unsteady step toward the door, then another, until it’s right there in front of her, until the knob is in her hand and she’s turning it to the right, the door swinging open as she pushes it inward, revealing another small, private lab.
There’s a large armchair, upholstered in plush brown leather, and a large desk.
Flicking the lights on, she steps fully inside and moves to sit, not really looking at anything beyond the chair. Nothing matters yet, nothing but that.
Sinking down into the soft embrace of buttery leather, Smita sighs, then turns her attention to the nearest bookshelf.
It’s covered in volumes she’s never seen before, and she spares a fleeting thought for Roger’s library at home.
He’d be thrilled if she could bring these all back for him, and she probably wouldn’t see him for a week or more.
“Judy would be furious,” she says, chuckling dryly, and reaches for the first book whose title is written in English.
It’s a biography of Asphodel Baker, one of the only times she’s seen the woman’s name written out in full.
Normally she’s credited as “A. Deborah Baker,” the name she used when she wrote the Up-and-Under books.
That’s the version of the old alchemist the world remembers.
That’s not the one Smita finds as she opens the book and begins flipping idly through its contents, only skimming at first, then reading more and more closely.
It’s a biography, yes, but it’s a biography of Asphodel as alchemist, not Asphodel as author.
This is the woman that only the Alchemical Congress knew—and even they, not particularly well, given the number of times she’s credited with a discovery on one page, only to have that same discovery minimized and downplayed on the next, like nothing she’s ever done could truly matter enough to be worth remembering for longer than a footnote.
The book is thick. There’s no way she can stay awake long enough to read it all, even if it was safe to try.
Lilianne has abandoned her: at this point, there’s no other conclusion she can reach.
She’s been wandering through this massive underground complex long enough that she should have run into the alchemist by now, if she were still here. This was all a trap.
It feels paranoid to think that way, but why else would Lilianne have “just happened” to wander by their house as Smita was stepping out of the yard?
She couldn’t possibly have predicted when Smita was going to go for milk.
She must have been watching, which meant she must have known where the house was.
No one knows where the house is unless they’ve been invited—and Lilianne has never been invited.
No, this was all too easy, right up until it became impossibly hard.
She closes the book, then tucks it into her purse before withdrawing her phone and checking the time.
It’s almost four o’clock in the morning.
Erin will notice that she’s gone soon enough, and once Erin notices, this will all be over.
The living incarnation of Order will track her down more quickly than anyone else in the world could hope to manage, and all Smita has to do is stay alive until then.
She’s tempted to stay exactly where she is, to relax into the leather chair and keep reading about the atrocities Asphodel committed and participated in in the name of her beloved alchemy: according to the book, she revealed her personal maid as a Lunar to an older alchemist before she turned ten, allowing the girl to be cut up for parts.
And she was in her teens when she lured a potential incarnate Winter to her yard and sacrificed him in the same way.
The book’s author presents these events like they were positive things, like any young alchemist should be proud to emulate her by doing the same.
Like once someone was an incarnate of the universe, they didn’t get the rights afforded to a human anymore …
not even the right to stay alive. Smita’s known for years that her beloved childhood author was an alchemist before she was anything else, but this is the first time she’s really had to face the things Asphodel did in her pursuit of power. She was a monster.
All alchemists are monsters. She was a fool to think that Lilianne might be different just because she’s funny and awkward and kind. None of those things would stop her from cutting the people Smita loved into pieces if she thought that it could advance her art.
She probably hadn’t been hoping for Smita when she started watching the house.
She’d probably been hoping for a piece of the Doctrine, either incarnate or potential.
Smita spares a moment to consider how that would have gone for a self-taught alchemist without anyone to back her up, then lets the image go. It isn’t going to help her now.
With regret, she levers herself out of the chair and slings her purse back over her shoulder, turning toward the door.
Erin will come for her, but that doesn’t mean she can sit around like some damsel in distress.
Who knows what secrets and horrors the alchemists may have hidden here?
She needs to learn what she can while she has the opportunity.
The halls seem, if possible, even longer and emptier than before, and the tile is even colder, almost freezing under her bare feet. Smita shivers and fights the urge to go back into the safe little room with its nice leather chair and carpeted floor. She can do this.
She can. She starts walking, not heading anywhere in particular, and only screams a little when Lilianne steps around a corner and into view. Pressing a hand to her chest to keep her hammering heart inside, she catches herself against the wall and wheezes.
“Don’t do that,” she says.
“Do that,” echoes Lilianne, and … is something wrong with her voice? It’s only two syllables, but something about them is discordant enough to send a shiver along her spine. Lilianne’s Alabama accent is gone, replaced by a harsh, almost-metallic scrape.
“Lily…?” She doesn’t have to force her fear. It just comes out, whether she wants it to or not.
And Lilianne smiles.
And that is definitely not Lilianne, because the smile keeps going, extending out and out and out until it reaches just behind her ears. Her lips part, and her mouth is a forest of teeth, sharp as razors and serrated like a shark’s, clean and white and terrible.
She takes a step forward and Smita takes a step back, away from her.
“Naughty little thief,” says the non-Lilianne.
“Taking things that aren’t yours. Might have let you go if you hadn’t done that—only no, wait, wouldn’t have, because you already stole our water, used our soap.
Covered your scent for long enough to make it less fun to follow you through our halls.
Shouldn’t have done that, either. You’ve made so many terrible choices, little thief. Make one more. Choose not to run.”
Smita doesn’t need to be told twice. She spins on her heel and bolts down the hall, running as fast as she can to put some distance between herself and the imposter.