Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DARBY
Darby was swimming in a pool of heavy molasses.
Everything was heavy. Her muscles refused to move. Her tongue felt fuzzy, and a stale, sweet taste clung to the roof of her mouth. Her consciousness crawled forward at a sluggish pace, slowly reaching for the light from the dark depths of nothingness.
Her eyelids fluttered, letting in a flicker of dim light, and she gradually became aware of her surroundings.
There was a sharp, slightly sour scent in the air that made her nose burn, reminding her of the few trips she had made to the mortuary.
She was lying on something flat and hard, and as strength returned to her limbs, she realized that her arms wouldn’t move because they were secured at the wrists to whatever surface she was lying on.
The last moments before she lost consciousness returned to her, and Darby’s eyes flew open. She tried moving her legs but found them just as restricted as her arms. She lifted her head, craning her neck to get a look around the room.
Where am I?
The dark, windowless room was clearly some kind of laboratory or workshop.
Her feet pointed to the only door, which was slightly ajar and revealed a set of ascending stairs beyond.
A long table sat on one side of the room to her right, covered with different configurations of tubes and beakers, some bubbling over tiny flames.
Shelves with neat rows of books lined the wall with the door, and the other had an array of tools—hammers, turnscrews, long-handled tongs, and tweezers of various sizes were hung on tiny pegs.
But it was the assortment of saws and cleavers that made Darby’s heart rate double.
It looked as if a butcher and steam mechanic had pooled their resources, and the effect was rather unnerving.
Especially to someone bound to a table.
She turned to the other side and nearly lost the contents of her stomach.
A medical cot, similar to the ones they used at the hospital, was parked next to her, with a white sheet half slipping off a corpse that looked like it had been cobbled together from the pieces of several different bodies.
The sutures that connected all the pieces were neat and even, as though whoever had done such a horrific and nightmarish deed had taken great care and pride in their work.
But it was the face of the body next to her that did Darby in. She leaned to the side, retching onto the floor and sobbing at the sightless eyes of William, the soldier that they had unexpectedly lost a week before.
“Please don’t. I just cleaned the floors this morning.”
The shock of the familiar voice stopped her tears at once. Slowly, with wide eyes and short, shuddering breaths, Darby turned to the door.
Dr. Fransten stood just inside, wearing a long, white lab coat that bore the faint whispers of bloodstains on the cuffs and spattered on the lapels.
Wide goggles rested on the top of his head, unused for the moment, while he carefully shut and padlocked the door behind him.
He turned back to her, pulling on a pair of surgical gloves.
“I see you’ve become reacquainted with young Will. ”
“What have you done?” Her mind was reeling, trying and failing to reconcile the mentor that she knew and respected with the obviously crazed man before her.
He came around to the side of the cot, throwing the sheet to the floor and pushing it with his boot to mop up her mess. Darby quickly turned away, squeezing her eyes shut in an attempt to block the grotesque sight from embedding itself into her brain.
“Doesn’t it ever bother you, Shelton? That we have such power over death and yet none at all over life?” Fransten’s voice was calm and thoughtful, as if he were asking her a question about her schedule for the day, and not as though he were standing over a quilted corpse.
“We’re doctors; we save lives.” Darby’s voice wavered.
But he obviously didn’t try to save Will.
“That is merely sustaining life that has already been given.” Fransten’s voice was close, and Darby opened her eyes.
He was standing over her, looking down at her with a strange, unfamiliar light in his gaze that sent shivers down her spine.
“I’m talking about the ability to bring life to something lifeless; to animate that which is stagnant. ”
She shook her head slowly. “Only Deus can do that.”
“Until you came along.” He leaned down, invading her personal space. “How did you do it, Shelton?”
“I–I didn’t. I can’t.”
He slammed a fist down beside her head, causing her to flinch. “I saw what you did to that captain! Don’t lie to me!”
Frightened tears started leaking out of her eyes. “I’m not! Fitz was never dead.”
He ignored her, turning and slowly walking to his wall of tools.
“I have spent my lifetime in this profession, giving years of my service to a science that contents itself with always repairing, never creating. My questions and theories as a young man were met with criticism and warnings; no one was bold enough to question how far the sciences could go.” He picked up a heavy cleaver, running a thumb along one edge as he spoke.
“Until you, that is.” Seemingly satisfied, he picked up a second, smaller knife and turned back to her.
Darby bit back a sob as she struggled with the restraints on her wrists.
“I knew from the moment I first saw you on the Academy campus that you would be the one who changed it all. Such bright ideas! Such a single-minded focus on perfecting the art of medicine! I knew, if I could only get you frustrated enough, that you would push through barriers simply because you knew you could.”
She froze.
“Oh, yes. I knew.” Fransten returned to her side.
“I knew how stifling you felt it was to be relegated to filing reports. I knew how badly you burned for the chance to be able to prove yourself. I knew how much it pained you to feel that your talents and knowledge were being wasted day in and day out. And I knew,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “that when Captain Monstrego was carried in, his death would be the stimulus that started it all.”
“But he didn’t die,” she whimpered.
“Because of you! How did you do it, Shelton? I know you kept notes; I saw glimpses of them that day you brought me to see your captain. But when I went back for them later, they were gone.”
Thank Deus for Raven.
“That was you? You were the one who attacked me?”
“An unexpected development, but one I soon saw the wisdom of. My original plan had been to find your notes and present my findings to the Guilds of Medicine and Inventors, but I realized when I couldn’t find them that you would only continue to be an obstacle.
You had served your purpose, and it was time for me to move on. ”
The blood in Darby’s veins turned to ice.
“The cyanide was, admittedly, a decision made in a poor emotional state. A poisoning is too public and unexpected; your death needed to be a convincing tragedy—a young, brilliant mind taken from the world too soon, whose passion for life inspired my greatest work.”
“The explosion at the hospital?”
He shook his head sadly. “An unfortunate cost of scientific breakthrough. I needed your death to be convincing.”
“You’re going to kill me.” The words were barely a whisper, spoken as a statement that she understood the truth of the moment they left her lips.
Fransten tsked. “Such a crass, horrible way of saying things. Think of it as donating your life to science. Without your sacrifice, these barriers will never be broken.”
“But why wait? Why bring me here? Why not just leave me to die in the hospital?”
“Because,” Fransten said slowly, setting the blades down on the table beside her, “you’re going to do it one last time. On him.” He pointed to the corpse. “You’re going to animate him the same way you did Monstrego and you’re going to tell me exactly how you do it.”
Darby felt like she was talking to a wall. “It only worked because Fitz wasn’t dead. There was still enough life in him to make a connection with the magic.”
He’s truly crazy. He so fervently believes that this is possible that he won’t even listen when I tell him otherwise.
“So it’s life that you need? And what does that mean, medically?
Because Monstrego certainly wasn’t alive without your magic moving the blood and oxygen through his veins.
Is that what it takes?” Fransten’s methodical movements were in stark contrast to the wild, deranged light in his eyes.
He picked up his cleaver and swung it down at the corpse, cutting off a gray hand and tossing to the floor.
Darby closed her eyes and fought the urge to vomit.
“Oxygenated blood and magic to force it through the body? Very well, Shelton. Hold still.”
He picked up a rag, and the sickly sweet smell of chloroform hit her nose once again. She shook her head violently side to side, doing her best to avoid the fabric as Fransten covered her mouth and nose. “Stop! Dr. Fransten, please!”
The doctor roughly grabbed her chin. “I said, hold still.”
Her eyelids drooped as the chemical began taking effect, causing her vision to blur. A stream of tears leaked from her eyes and down the side of her face into her ear.
Deus, please.
The last thing she saw was Fransten, with his goggles pulled down over his eyes, pouring a stream of alcohol over the edge of his cleaver. “Don’t look so worried, Shelton. I’m a professional.”
She whimpered.
Fitz, where are you?
A deep, aching pain at the end of her left arm was the first sensation her mind registered as the anaesthetic wore off.
Darby reacted instinctively, attempting to coil into herself as she screamed.
Her arm slipped free of the restraint, though the action caused a searing agony as the skin of her wrist touched the leather cuffs.
She cried out again as her eyes blinked rapidly, as if clearing her eyes of tears would change the horrifying sight before her.
Her wrist ended in a stump, stitched neatly together with dark threads that screamed Fransten’s handiwork. Another scream tore itself from her throat, cut short by Fransten’s hand over her mouth.
“Stop that at once!” he hissed.
“Darby!”
Fitz’s voice was so far away that she wasn’t sure if she was just imagining it, wishing that he was there to save her. She called for him, anyway. “Fitz!”
Fransten grabbed her wrist, squeezing so tightly that she let out another tortured scream as she felt the stitches pull apart. He pulled her to the side, forcing her to look at his creation. Her own hand was sewn in place at the end of the corpse’s arm, the pink flesh stark against the gray.
“Do it! Use your magic. Your own blood still retains enough life to bring him back.”
“DARBY!”
Fitz’s voice was definitely closer now, somewhere just beyond the door. Darby’s head started to turn toward the sound, but Fransten gripped her chin in his hand and pulled it back.
“The door is six inches of solid wood. He won’t be breaking it down anytime soon; not before you die of blood loss, anyway. But use your magic, Shelton, and I can keep you alive long enough to say goodbye to your captain.”
The handle of the door jiggled, and a fist pounded against the wood. “Darby!” Fitz’s voice was frantic. “Are you in there?”
She jerked her face out of the doctor’s grip. “Fitz! Help me!”
“Do it, Shelton!” Fransten squeezed her arm again to punctuate his command.
Darby was hyper-ventilating, and she could feel her body going into shock.
The tears were flowing so thickly from her eyes that she could barely make out more than the blurry outline of Fransten’s face.
“I can’t. I told you that before—I can’t.
” A hysterical laugh escaped her as she recalled the accusation that Fitz had leveled at her early on in his recovery. “I’m not Deus.”
Her mind was too fractured and overwhelmed to even reach for magic to keep herself from bleeding out, let alone try to reanimate a corpse.
Fransten’s lips curled into an ugly snarl as he threw her arm down, eliciting another cry. “Then there’s truly no reason for me to keep you alive.”
He picked up the second knife, just as the door flew open with a splintering crash.
Fitz stood in the doorway, his large frame filling it entirely.
His metal hand was curled in a fist, still held at chest height from punching through the wood.
His eyes burned, dangerous and full of fury, and he growled at the doctor, who had frozen with his arm hovering in midair over Darby’s stomach.
“If you touch her again, Fransten, you die.”