Chapter 17 #2
Her mind races as she runs, moving even faster than her body.
Lilianne can’t be the enemy. If she were, the lab’s defenses, whatever they are, wouldn’t be emulating her to get Smita close enough to attack.
Or maybe she is, and the lab just doesn’t realize that Smita’s had the time to put the pieces together. Or …
She could hang the rest of her life on “or.” If it distracts her too badly, if it slows her down, she could die on “or.” She shunts those thoughts to the side as fiercely as she can and keeps running, heart pounding hard, feet pounding harder.
She has no idea what the thing behind her is, whether she can outrun it, or whether she can hide.
She should have paid more attention when Kim burbled about the secrets of alchemy, when Dodger interrogated Kelpie about the horrors she’d been accessory to.
She wouldn’t be in this situation if she’d paid more attention.
Splashing drifts down the hall from up ahead.
Smita finds it in herself to run even faster, practically sprinting toward the first sound she’s heard since getting out of the shower.
The creature commented on her hiding her scent by bathing; maybe if there’s standing water and she wets herself down, she’ll be able to do it again.
This could all be over if she can reach the water.
Then she rounds a corner and finds herself facing a half-submerged lab, the floor sunken in comparison to everything else around it.
There’s no good reason for that design choice, but it doesn’t matter.
Pulling her purse off her shoulder, she throws it, complete with its precious cargo of biography and phone, into the dry part of the lab.
She doesn’t slow down, and less than a second after she makes her throw, she’s splashing into the water.
Lifting her arms out in front of herself, Smita takes a deep breath, and dives.
The water is cold enough to feel like a slap across her face when she hits the surface. She manages not to inhale, barely, and forces herself to stay submerged, waiting for the moment when something else will splash into the pool.
It doesn’t. Slowly, cautiously, she rises, until just the top half of her head is exposed.
She turns back toward the dry portion of the lab, opening her eyes.
The water clinging to her lashes casts the room in diamond glints, light bouncing off the water and making it difficult to see.
The creature is still there. It no longer looks remotely like Lilianne.
It barely looks bipedal. It’s bent near-double, sniffing at her purse with the focus of a hunting hound.
It starts to raise its head and look back toward the water, scanning for her.
Smita hastily ducks back under. The water stings her eyes.
She has no idea what it might be mixed with, and right now, she genuinely doesn’t care.
She can take as many showers as it takes to feel like she’s clean again.
And if whatever’s making her eyes burn melts her skin, well, she’ll deal with that when the time comes.
Anything short of death can be dealt with, here in the dark below the ground.
Something is moving in the water with her.
She feels the ripples created by its passage as they bounce against her, and all concern about the thing that chased her here vanishes, replaced by concern about being grabbed by a creature she can’t see.
Her heart is beating hard enough to hurt, and the water is cold enough that she’s already starting to freeze again.
She can feel it sinking into her tissues, insulating fat rapidly becoming a layer of coolant wrapped around her organs.
She surfaces again, scanning the water’s surface frantically for signs of where the motion might be coming from. The light from overhead is still glaringly bright, but somehow only penetrates a few inches into the water, leaving the depths unfathomable and far darker than they should be.
As she’s scanning, she finds Lilianne. The real Lilianne, she presumes, unless the lab has devoted the resources to making multiple decoys; this one is soaking wet, crouching atop a desk shoved against the far wall, only the top inch or so of it visible above the water.
Her hair hangs in her face in ropey coils, and her mascara has run down her cheeks like inky tears.
It would make sense for her to be crying; her left shoulder has been flayed open, muscle and tendons exposed.
And it looks like some of those cuts may go all the way down to the bone.
She’s holding herself so perfectly still that it makes sense Smita didn’t spot her before.
She must be freezing, and possibly going into shock from the blood loss, but she’s not moving.
Smita rises a little farther out of the water, straightening so she can take a step toward Lilianne. Lilianne’s eyes widen in sudden fear, and she sits back on her heels, waving frantically for Smita to stay where she is. Smita blinks.
The creature behind her is showing no signs of getting into the water, more interested in sniffing at Smita’s purse than in pursuing its prey.
It begins to occur to her that this might not be a good thing.
Based on Lilianne’s shoulder, whatever she’s in the water with is nasty enough that the creature may just not feel like fighting over her body.
Lilianne is still gesturing frantically.
They’re about ten feet apart. There’s a monster she can see behind her and one she can’t see somewhere in the water.
When in doubt, better to choose the danger that might not be as dangerous as your mind is making it out to be.
She sinks back down into the water and pushes off against the floor, swimming as slowly as she can toward the other woman, restricting herself to a breaststroke that will disturb the water as little as possible.
She feels the ripples pass again, so close that it’s like having a massive fish pass by barely outside of arm’s reach. She shudders and keeps swimming, moving slow, expecting to feel a clawed hand close around her throat or ankle at any moment.
The anticipated attack doesn’t come. She surfaces to breathe and sees the desk only a few feet away.
The water is deep enough for swimming, but shallow enough that she can stand up, and so she does, wading the rest of the way to her destination.
Lilianne watches her with wide eyes, clearly terrified, and when Smita begins to hoist herself up onto the desk’s top, Lilianne reaches out as if she’s going to push her away.
“No,” whispers Smita, more harshly than she intends to. She winces at the sound of her own voice.
On the other side of the lab—the other side of the water—the not-Lily’s head whips around, attention caught by the sudden noise.
Smita tenses, moving again to boost herself onto the desk. This time, Lilianne doesn’t move, just huddles where she is, as far away as the limited space allows.
It’s not until both her feet are out of the water and she’s able to cross her legs, settling into the dubious safety of the dry world, that she turns to Lilianne. The other woman is still watching her with terror in her eyes.
“I’m really me,” whispers Smita, making her voice as small as she possibly can. It still carries in the near-silence of the room, causing the thing that chased her here to look over again, lips pulling back from its lips as it hisses. “What is that thing?”
Lilianne worries her lip between her teeth.
“There are schools of alchemy,” she whispers back.
“Some of them focus more on creating life than they do on creating gold or medicines. We call it takwin—literally ‘creation.’ If someone was brewing homunculi down here, they could have been left behind when the alchemists fled. I’ve never heard of homunculi that could change shapes, but I’m not that advanced, not compared to someone who might be doing their work in a place like this. ”
The creature on the other side of the lab straightens, becoming more immediately bipedal as it does, and leans against a shelf as it shakes one long, spindly finger at the pair of them.
“Ah-ah-ah,” it says, and its voice remains a twisted parody of Lilianne’s.
“I let you get away from me, little thief, but I didn’t give you permission to hand someone else your homework.
If you want to know what I am, come over here and let me whisper in your ear.
” It runs a horribly elongated tongue along its serrated teeth, leering.
Smita catches her breath and shakes her head.
“No, I don’t think so,” she says, in a perfectly normal tone of voice.
The creature isn’t making any effort to be quiet, so why should she?
Anything that might be attracted by the sound of voices is already going to be attracted at this rate.
“I have some slivers of self-preservation remaining.”
“Little thief,” croons the creature. “Little liar. Little snack. I’ll swallow you whole.”
“Which is precisely why I’m remaining where I am.”
“I can enter the water if I want to.”
“Can you?” She cocks her head politely to the side. “I think I would like to see that.”
The creature begins pacing back and forth at the top of the steps leading down into the pool. “I think you wouldn’t. I would have your entrails for my own enrichment if you saw that.”
“And yet you’re not doing it. Why not?”
“Smita,” hisses Lilianne, grabbing her wrist to emphasize her point. “Maybe we don’t taunt the horrifying alchemical creation?”