Chapter 33 The Factory #2
I had taken her at first for a pile of old clothes, so rumpled and discarded and inhuman did she appear.
But no. It was a human body that had been so carelessly left there.
I saw, to my relief, that it was not Mairead, then scolded myself for my partiality.
This young lady was fair, with wide, staring blue eyes.
Even for a dead woman, her pallor was shocking.
After a moment to master my horror, I could see why.
One white, white arm was stretched out, forced into a kind of metal tube that led down into Pike’s machine.
A trickle of her blood ran down her arm, through the tube, dripping into a funnel.
Oh, no, no. It couldn’t be. It was.
Over my brain’s screams of horror, I began to pick out the different parts of Pike’s apparatus.
There was the lye mixer, and that lamp must be for the reduction in the third stage.
Pike had reverse engineered my entire process—except I had never worked with more than a few drops of blood at a time, had never, with the exception of Sir D’Arcy, produced serum in any great volume, and this machine was orders of magnitude bigger.
I had never taken more blood than would fit in a leech’s stomach, and Pike—
Pike was shaking the girl’s arm, tapping and flicking at it, like a man might tip his glass back to catch the last dregs of a drink.
After a moment he gave it up with a sigh.
“I told you,” he said. “I told you and told you, my good woman, not to take too much, did I not? This one has a truly remarkable ruby color at the moment. Quite delightful, and if you had not drained her so, we could have another batch of her in a fortnight.”
“Sorry, sir, I’m sure. ’Pon my honor, I took no more than the last time.”
The woman’s voice was placid and unshocked by the grisly scene. It was also familiar.
Not to worry, I shall soon find something very suitable.
This Miss Figg had certainly done.
Pike sighed and released the girl’s arm. “Never mind. Take more care next time. If you had a good layer, you would not wring her neck for Sunday dinner, would you?”
“S’pose not, sir.”
“Quite. There’s enough here for one more batch, at least. That will be all.”
Miss Figg bobbed a curtsy and withdrew. My mind was whirling.
I watched Pike titrate, and pour, and time the steps on his pocket watch.
He had deduced every part of my process, and seemed to have introduced a few new ones.
As the servant picked up the girl’s body and walked off with it, Pike poured off the fruits of his labors into a glass and raised it to the light, tilting it critically back and forth.
It was, as he said, a deep, rather pretty ruby red, and translucent, looking now more like a good claret than someone’s lifeblood.
As if it was claret indeed, he took a connoisseur’s sniff, but instead of savoring the contents, he tossed them back in one long gulp.
With a sigh and a shiver of satisfaction, he put his glass back on the table, straightened his cuffs, and said, “You can come out now, and stop skulking about in the shadows.”
Horror flooded me anew. How had he—
He nodded at the floor. “There is a puddle spreading from behind those boxes. Come, do you think me stupid? I suppose you thought it would go unseen in the dark, but my senses are quite keen, thanks to my little medicines. Come on, out with you.” I tensed to run—could I make it to the trapdoor again?
Perhaps I could lose him in the water—but before I could try, he shot forward with inhuman speed and seized my wrist. “Come, lad, stop struggling. The jig is up, so you may as well—” He pulled me fully into the pool of light and froze. “Mary?”
“Pike,” I gritted out.
He hissed a sigh between his teeth. “Oh, Mary. I had hoped to postpone this day as long as possible.”
“What day? Pike, what on earth is going on here?”
He laughed ruefully and smoothed a spike of damp hair back from my face. “Oh, surely you are cleverer than that, love. I know you recognize your own innovations when you see them.”
“All these women,” I said. “You brought them here for… for their blood?”
“Well, not just for that,” he said. “I really did need workers. This apparatus cost a pretty penny.”
“You’re draining them,” I said. “You’re killing them.”
“Not the latter. Not intentionally.” He sighed.
“I always knew you would find out in the end—you are too clever not to—but I hoped it would not be for some time, and not on a night like this. I suppose that dratted girl was too short. Her blood volume must be correspondingly lower.” He smiled the same sweet, gentlemanly smile I had grown used to these last weeks.
“I shall soon learn how to avoid such things. The road to progress is not without bumps, you know.”
So he intended to force more women to give up their blood—perhaps their lives.
A sour pain rose up in my stomach. Stupid, Mary!
Stupid! Stupider than Newton drinking mercury, than Mr. Davy blowing himself up with chlorine—their hubris had harmed only them, at least. My arrogant certainty that Pike was under my control had killed at least one woman already, probably more, and who knew how far he would take it.
Oh, Georgiana, you did try to warn me, and I would not listen.
“Why?” I asked. “Why do this? You had everything. I gave you everything you needed.”
He scowled. “You mean you forced me to be what you needed.” His grip on my wrist tightened.
Under his unnatural strength, I feared the bones would break, but my heart was racing so fast I could scarcely feel the pain.
“My God, girl, you have no idea—” His free hand drifted to his ribs. “You were wrong, you know.”
“Wrong? About—”
“You said it would stop itching. It never has. Every thrice-damned second. And that is not the worst of it. Oh, Miss Mary. All these years, I have bowed and scraped to men a thousand times my inferiors. That hurt far worse than the hunger and the cold. All… all I wanted was to be free—to speak my mind without fear, to say the things I knew to be true without being called insolent or a liar. And then… then I had money, and position, and I ought to have been as free as any man—but instead I was more a slave than ever.” He shook my wrist. “ Your slave, my darling.”
“I was trying to help you,” I said, fighting to keep the tremor from my voice.
Lord, how had I forgotten how tall he was?
He had been so gentle these last few weeks that I had quite forgotten how much strength hid in his frame.
I was trying to dig my heels in, but without Pike paying my resistance the slightest mind, I was being inexorably drawn farther from my hiding place.
“I don’t understand,” I managed. “Harry’s ribs ought to have made you good. ”
He gave a tch of exasperation. “Good, asleep, is there a difference? I daresay they would have, had I not replaced one of them with a more suitable donation.” He patted his right chest. “A bit tricky to remove my own rib, but I managed. Being dead is actually superior in many ways.”
My throat seemed to close in horror. That strange unevenness of his rib cage. “We—you made us treat and reinsert your own rib?”
“Indeed. I had my right rib out the night after you asked me to obtain your cousin’s. There are some benefits to the half-dead state you’ve left me in. I hardly ever feel pain. A few minutes with a scalpel and a mirror and the thing was done.”
“But why?”
“Why do you think? Had I not replaced one, I am sure that your friend’s ribs would have dulled me into the sheep you wished for.
Indeed, it almost did. All that blue ,” he said.
“Bad enough when you were pouring it down my throat, but now it is inside me. Smothering all the vital parts of me. After the insertion I was as docile as a cow being led to the slaughter.” He made a sound of disgust. “I was happy , even.”
“But that’s good—”
“Is it?” He shook me a little. “Is that what you would like? To have your most vital parts excised, to be hollowed out like a rotten tree, filled with what proper society deems good and useful ?”
“Of course,” I blurted. “That’s what all this was for .”
His eyes widened. “What?”
My shock almost overcame my fear. Was my aim not obvious? Seeking words, I found none, but inevitably someone else’s rose to my lips. “Quindley says, ‘Ladies, make of yourselves empty vessels, to be filled with g-good precepts and useful h-habits—’”
“And blue serum, and pink, and a dash of orange?” He looked disgusted. “My God, girl, I thought you’d made a monster of me, but what you’ve done to yourself may be far worse.”
“It doesn’t matter. I never made it work on living people for more than a few minutes.”
“Ah. Just another area where my genius has outstripped yours.” He began tugging me forward again.
“Not only have I solved that little problem, but I have done so in a form that the market will actually take to. I shall introduce you to it presently. A pity, really—I had hoped to enjoy the full force of all your bad precepts and unuseful habits for at least a little while. But needs must. I hope you enjoy the blue more than I did.”
He was tugging me toward the apparatus again, despite my renewed struggles, when suddenly he changed his mind and pulled me toward the table where the dead girl had lain. “Then again, waste not, want not.”
I could keep a cool head no more. I screamed.
“ Quiet , girl. There is no one for miles around but our apothecary friend, and even if there were, what would you say to them?” He laughed a little as he shoved me back onto the table, locking one of my wrists in a cuff.
“You are here unchaperoned, in the small hours, dressed in trousers . Nothing I will do to you will be as damaging or permanent as the hurt you could do your own honor.”