49 Rhona
Rhona
Rhona instinctively put her fists up, ready to fight as Dr. Balet approached her, his back hunched and hair even more disheveled
than usual.
“You do not need to threaten violence, Sir Rhona. I am unwilling to fight,” he said, brushing past her and picking up a pair
of wire-rimmed glasses on the table beside her that Rhona hadn’t noticed.
“To think, the one night I forgot my glasses would be the one night someone finally broke into my laboratory,” he continued,
a smirk on his lips.
Rhona lowered her hands, putting herself between Dr. Balet and Jack. She didn’t believe him. Had he seen her come in here?
Had someone else?
“What is this place?” Rhona asked, her voice laced with fear that she could acutely hear. Internally, she kicked herself.
It was never beneficial to allow the people around you to know you were afraid of them.
“Great question. I love to teach.” Dr. Balet walked down the hallway and Rhona tentatively followed, passing a dozen more beds until they approached one alcove that wasn’t occupied by a gurney.
This alcove had walls lined with vials and syringes, and on the ground buckets of various ichors and liquids peppered the floor.
A notepad sat beside the vials, nearly incomprehensible notes scribbled on it.
“About a year ago, Lord General Kerrigan warned me of a terrible plague in Astra.” Dr. Balet held up a vial of the black ichor
Rhona had seen in the syringes. “He told me that this Rot was growing year by year. That he needed powerful soldiers to invade
Corisia and take it for Astra’s people in order to survive the spreading Rot.”
Rhona watched in silent horror, the damp chill seeping into her bones.
“I wondered to myself, how am I going to create powerful soldiers that are impossible to kill?” he continued, tapping on vials
as he monologued. “And I spent months at a loss, bringing prisoners in here only to kill them when I injected them with the
essence of an animal or another creature. I couldn’t figure out how to even keep my subjects alive long enough to make them
something more.” He smiled, crooked yellow teeth shining wetly in the dim light. “Until, one day, I took a look at one of
the rotten crops.”
“The one I—” Rhona started, feeling ill.
“No.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Long before that. I noticed that the crops were dead, yes, but still subsisting, this
black ichor attached to them and thriving.”
The rotten crops hadn’t been dead?
“I see you thinking, oh does that mean the crops were edible the whole time? No. They’re dead, but this Rot feeds on them, and it survives. It thrives.” Dr. Balet walked over to the gurney across from them, the scared brown eyes of a man whose mouth had been gagged looking
at them. In a split second it was over; before Rhona could even react, Dr. Balet had stabbed the syringe into the man’s neck
and injected the black ichor.
“Watch the Rot at work,” he said. “This will be good for you to understand.”
“Why would you do that?” Rhona asked, horrified.
“I am nearing perfection,” Dr. Balet said.
Rhona stared in horror as the man convulsed, the gurney shaking on the stone ground as he shook for nearly a minute straight
until Rhona watched his breathing stop. “You killed him!” she shouted.
“Shush, girl,” Dr. Balet snapped. “And watch.”
Rhona watched in horror as the unbreathing man’s eyes cracked open again, milky white this time, his chest still.
“You see?” Dr. Balet said, excited. “The Rot is now feeding on him and they are kept alive by each other. It is magical.”
Dr. Balet started walking back down the hallway. “I tested it on multiple different foods, then different animals. Then, I
had the animals fight. They were stronger, more limber, and stronger. They could die . . . but only when their brain was affected. The Rot keeps the brain alive to keep the body going, even
without breath or feeding. It’s miraculous. Then I tried it on a prisoner,” he continued. “It took me a while to perfect the
amount of Rot to inject, but once I had it figured out I felt comfortable sending my children out into the world. One to Corisia,
and one after Commander Hugo . . . but both were killed.”
“Commander Hugo killed one of these—” Rhona searched for a name, something other than monster.
“We’re calling them Soulless Knights, and you’re now one of only a few people who know the name of my children,” Dr. Balet
said, grinning madly.
“Why haven’t you notified the Iron Retinue of this? Why are you kidnapping people for this?”
“Lord General Kerrigan and I wish to perfect my work before we announce it to the greater Iron Retinue, but I have found a
solution that will allow us to move forward now. I think it is time,” he said, his hand to his chin.
“Why is that?” Rhona asked. She felt sick. Everything about this was . . . wrong.
“The war with Corisia is beginning imminently. We will need to secure the country as soon as possible, as this Rot is spreading.
I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“I know of the crops . . .”
“There is more,” Dr. Balet said before waving his hand. “But that is none the matter right now.”
They approached Jack’s gurney again, fear in his dead eyes as he looked at Dr. Balet. Rhona knew that look. She looked at
her parents that way . . . she looked at Lord General Kerrigan that way.
“How do you test their durability?” Rhona choked out, hating that she needed to ask but compelled to know exactly what Dr.
Balet was doing down here.
“I will harm them to see how long they survive,” Dr. Balet said without hesitation or remorse. “They do not feel the same
way we do, so it is fine.”
It didn’t look fine; the fear in Jack’s clouded eyes told her it wasn’t fine.
Rhona turned, backing toward the spiral staircase; she needed to get out of here. She needed to tell everyone else. They needed
to stop this. No undefeatable army was worth this; surely Lord General Kerrigan would see.
“I appreciate the lesson, Dr. Balet,” Rhona said. “I have an early-morning shift I must be ready for, but I was so curious
about this space. I’m glad you stumbled upon me down here.”
Something dark flashed over Dr. Balet’s grotesque features.
“You must not tell anyone anything about this, Sir Rhona,” Dr. Balet said. “This is the Iron Empire’s largest secret, and
it cannot be shared.”
“I completely understand,” Rhona said, left foot on the first of the spiraling steps.
Dr. Balet looked up at her.
“You are loyal, aren’t you?” he asked. “You are smart too.”
“I am,” she answered.
“Good,” Dr. Balet said, a smile growing on his face as he placed his glasses on the table next to him. He didn’t need them.
“Do not worry, you are not on my list to join the Soulless Knights.”
She hadn’t asked. Rhona knew it instantly, down in the deepest recesses of her gut, that he was lying to her. Why would he
bring it up if she wasn’t on some sort of list in his twisted head?
“I’m sure I will fight next to one of your —” she gulped “—children, in Corisia.”
“I’m sure you will,” the doctor said as she headed up the stairs, slowly at first and ending in a sprint, needing to get out
of that cursed space as soon as she could. The Rot, or whatever he called it . . . it felt wrong.
Rhona knew she should go to bed, that she shouldn’t bring more attention to what she’d been doing. Routine was the best way
to make sure that no one in the Iron Retinue caught on to her work with Maeve, or her breaking into Dr. Balet’s prison. But
she couldn’t; she needed to walk and clear her head. The images of those poor people strapped to gurneys and maimed, moaning
in pain or saying nothing at all, played in Rhona’s mind on loop. Over and over again, the images always flashing back to
Jack.
Commander Bartholomew had lied to her face about Jack leaving the capital, and she had known that something hadn’t added up.
What if she’d acted earlier? Found the place before he’d been injected? Would she have been able to get him out safely? Would
he have even trusted her enough to listen to her? They’d been selling it to soldiers as a promotion . . . anyone in the Iron
Retinue would have fought for a promotion and taken one in an instant, without question.
Rhona would have taken a promotion too, even earlier today if it had been offered to her.
How many soldiers had the lord general and commanders welcomed to their deaths as a part of this project?
With so many regiments and knights and missions, it was impossible to say.
Rhona thought that the lord general was meant to protect the Iron Empire and his soldiers under him, but he wasn’t protecting anyone.
Rhona felt lightheaded as she snapped out of her own thoughts and found herself at Lady Maeve’s door for the second time that day.
Rhona knocked gently on the door as her thoughts spiraled. Soulless Knights? Using the Rot that rotted the crops? It all seemed
too decisively evil, and Rhona simply didn’t know how to process it. This was not the Iron Empire she thought she knew.