Ruby Ruins

by J M D Reid

  “I’ll go look through the house,” said Jolene. “Maybe he’s in the kitchen getting food.”

  Her footsteps pattered off as Ōbhin moved through the room, wondering if the old man had collapsed on the other side of the table or in the vault. His eyes scanned the floor. His brow furrowed as he realized something else was missing.

  “Where are the two patients?” he asked.

  “Don’t know,” Fingers said. “Never thought it’d be so drafty in here.”

  Cool air ruffled across Ōbhin’s face, teasing a few locks of his black hair. He glanced at the vault. Its rear wall had swung inward, revealing a staircase descending downward. Ōbhin swallowed at the dark gullet.

  “Did you know there was a basement?” Ōbhin asked.

  “No,” Fingers said. “He must be down there.”

  Those words animated Ōbhin. He pulled Avena from Fingers’s arms and rushed ahead without thought. Without even fear of descending into the black. He hadn’t allowed himself to be underground in two years. No dread of repeating his harrowing afternoon in the mines beneath Gunya would hold him back.

  His feet pounded down the stairs. They were wide, running straight to a floor two stories beneath. The stone walls and steps were cut from bedrock. A chill bled from them. His bare arms prickled with goose-pimples. The steady glow of diamond light spilled across the bottom landing.

  He reached the bottom and stepped through a doorway into a storeroom. Jars lined the shelves, sealed like fruit preserves. Many had topaz jewelchines inserted into their lids and were half-covered in wax.

  Their contents horrified Ōbhin.

  Organs.

  Lungs. Livers. Kidneys. Stomachs. Hearts. Brains. Eyes. Bits of flesh he didn’t know the name of. He held Avena tight to him as he stared at them. Each had a label on them written in the clear script of Dualayn. Names and dates.

  Some were almost a decade old.

  Fingers retched behind Ōbhin. Everywhere he looked in this terrible room were body parts taken from someone and stored in liquid. Some of the bottles bubbled, sapphires and topazes glowing in the brine. A lung in one seemed to contract and expand like it breathed, a yellow heliodor shining on its surface.

  One jar had its own shelf with nothing near it. It held a brain in amber brine wrinkled in the same manner as Avena’s. There were four topaz healers placed directly onto the surface, attached to it by wires of black. The forbidden metal.

  Black iron.

  Cursed iron.

  It was said to come from only a few spots in the world. Places of terrible destruction. Leftovers of the cataclysmic Shattering three thousand years or more ago. It was the only wire you could use with obsidian, or so it was said.

  Dualayn had used obsidian with this specimen. He could see the glass-like material thrust out of the wax-sealed lid of the jar. It was shaped into a thin spire as long as the span from Ōbhin’s outstretched thumb to his little finger. Inside the jar, a network of black wires descended from the bottom of the spire and thrust into the wrinkled crevasses of the brain.

  The name on the label froze Ōbhin’s heart: Avena, extracted the Forty-Third Day of Forgiveness, 755 EU.

  He glanced down at the girl he held limp in his arms. He remembered the surgery, the sight of her mind exposed. Wrinkled like the brain in the jar. Ōbhin shook his head. He couldn’t believe this. It made no sense. If her brain was in this jar, then how was she alive? How could she control her body?

  Fingers’s retching grew louder. Fury filled Ōbhin. He needed answers. He shifted Avena so he could seize the jar in a tight grip. Its heat bled through the leathers he wore. A small ruby jewelchine lay at the bottom, little bubbles rising from it. A sapphire lay next to it, both glowing as they did something to the liquid.

  The storeroom had a second doorway, the source of the diamond light. He carried Avena through it, his blood boiling. It opened into a room larger than Dualayn’s laboratory upstairs. There of the walls appeared directly cut out of the bedrock of the mansion was built upon. Only the lakeside wall was different. It appeared to be fused together into a smooth surface. Three tables covered in white cloth dominated the center, two holding bodies.

  Dualayn worked on one, his back to Ōbhin. The furious Qothian could see the man’s chest splayed open, ribs cracked back while Dualayn performed his grisly work. The second figure lay naked, a glowing healer resting on her stomach, reknitting a cut across her belly. Her breasts rose and fell with steady breaths.

  Ōbhin needed answers. Demanded answers. If he wasn’t holding something precious in his arms, something delicate and vulnerable, he would have already flown across the room in a rage. With care, he set Avena down on a chair by the doorway. It lay by a stretcher studded with heliodor jewelchines.

  He marched forward, jar in hand, and roared, “Dualayn, what is this?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dualayn gasped and whirled around, his round face bursting with surprise. He clutched a bloody hand to the heavy apron he wore, smearing crimson across the yellowing linen. His jowls shook as he let out an explosive breath.

  “Ōbhin, what are you doing down here?” he said, gathering himself. “I’m working. Did you not see the sign?”

  “Working?” demanded Ōbhin. He looked around the room. Several diamond jewelchines hanging from the ceiling spread an even light across the room. The walls were covered in diagrams drawn upon large sheets of parchment. They depicted human bodies splayed open in various ways, documenting muscles, bones, viscera. The one nearest Ōbhin’s right had the face of a man he recognized from the hospital.

  A patient who’d died a few weeks ago.

  “What are you doing here?” growled Ōbhin.

  “Research. To find new ways to save those who are badly sick or injured. You know that. I am trying to save this man’s life, but . . .” He shook his head. “I fear I won’t be successful. I do not quite understand what is wrong with him. I have been vivisecting him all day and can’t find the cause. I cannot apply the resonating topazes directly without locating what is killing him.” He glanced at the other patient. “Now, she’ll live. I found a large tumor in her stomach, removed it, and she is regenerating nicely.”

  “And what is this?” Ōbhin demanded, branding the jar holding Avena’s brain in the scholar’s face.

  “Gentle with that!” Dualayn gasped. “That’s her mind. If you dislodge those wires, her body will stop functioning.”

  *

  “Stop functioning!” roared a familiar voice.

  The dream of the cataclysmic destruction and alien creature ripping through a rent in reality faded from Avena. Her awareness sank into her body again. She flexed her hands and fluttered open her eyes. She moaned, feeling grounded in her flesh again. No fuzziness at her fingertips.

  “You mean she’ll die?” Ōbhin was snarling.

  She focused on him. His back was to her, the light of a diamond jewelchine falling across his shoulders. He held something in his hand, a jar with something black thrusting out the top. It was full of liquid. An amber light glowed inside of it.

  “Bastard,” another voice growled.

  She jumped to see Fingers standing beside her, wiping at his mouth. His face looked sick. “What he did to you . . . Pus-filled roach!”

  “Did something happen to Ōbhin?” she asked, bewildered.

  Then she noticed what was in the jar Ōbhin held. A human brain. Confusion rippled through her. She pushed herself up to her feet, feeling unsteady only for a moment. The last thing she remembered was trying to tell Ōbhin about her problem before she’d collapsed into his arms.

  “You took her mind out of her body!” growled Ōbhin. She realized he yelled at Dualayn. He wore a surgical apron, blood smeared across the front.

  “Yes, and you will harm her if you keep swinging her about,” Dualayn said, reaching out to take the jar with gentle hands.

  A sinking dread filled her as she struggled to decipher what was happening. Where she even was. It looked
like Dualayn’s lab, but it wasn’t. There was far too much space. More tables. The walls were covered in anatomical drawings. Then she noticed two patients he’d brought from the hospital were each on a table, the man’s chest spread open.

  Normally, that wouldn’t have disturbed her, but she wasn’t prepared to see a man's innards on display. She clamped a hand over her mouth, a sudden surge of bile in rising up in her throat. She turned away.

  “Dualayn,” she croaked when she had control over her rebellious stomach. “What is this place?”

  “You brought her down here?” Dualayn said in exasperation. “Child, it’s okay. I was just waiting for you to be ready to understand the full breadth of my work before sharing it with you.”

  “Like taking her brain out of her body and attaching it to obsidian jewelchines!” snarled Ōbhin.

  Avena’s head whipped around to Dualayn. She focused on the jar. On the brain. She found herself crossing the distance without thought as she stared at it. A human mind, the brain stem disconnected from the spine. No eyes attached or auditory nerves. It was suspended in some brine with a ruby and sapphire jewelchine to maintain the environment. It was an idea Dualayn had told her about once, a way to remove an organ and revitalize it before returning it to the body.

  But if the body needed that organ to live . . .

  She touched her head. “That can’t be my brain.”

  “Yes, child, it is,” Dualayn said, a smile crossing his lips. “Remarkable, yes? You think your thoughts are happening in your head, but they are actually occurring right here in the jar. That’s the seat of your identity. Where your soul resides.”

  Black iron wires drilled down into her brain, penetrating her wrinkled gray matter. The topaz healers were equally connected, keeping her mind alive. She squeezed tighter at her head, her stomach churning.

  “Then what . . . How is it . . .?” She struggled to speak. “How can my body work without my mind? How am I talking?”

  “You have an exquisite device inside your skull. Before I broke off my partnership with my colleague in Democh, he sent me two of his prototypes. His obsidian minds. They are amazing devices. They can control a human body just as well as a regular mind, only these ones can receive signals. He wants to use them to control his soldiers like automatons, but you . . .” Dualayn smiled. “You are being controlled by your own brain. See?” He touched the spire thrusting out the jar’s top. “Here is the antenna. It’s wired to your mind. It sends your thoughts and commands to your body through the immaterial in the same way that the eight Harmonic Tones resonate through the world and power jewelchines. Your body responds in a similar, though more complex, fashion.”

  “But . . . you healed my brain,” she said. “Why did you take it out of my head?”

  “I saw him using topazes to heal the wound to your brain,” Ōbhin said.

  “But it wasn’t enough, right?” she demanded, staring at Dualayn. “Right, Father? You had to remove my brain to heal me?”

  She stared at him, the man who’d taken her in at fifteen and given her a job. The man whose son she would have married if tragedy hadn’t befallen Chames. She studied with him. Worked at his side. He taught her how to treat the sick and build jewelchines. She’d investigated the Recorder with him. He had to have an explanation. A logical reason.

  “Please, Father,” she said, her words rough. She felt on the verge of falling apart. Her eyes implored him.

  “Child,” Dualayn said, “this was the perfect opportunity to test everything. I had already removed the top of your skull. Once your brain was healed, I took advantage of this fortuitous event and replaced your brain with the obsidian mind. I didn’t know that there would be any deleterious side-effects. I had been meaning to ask you if everything felt the same, but I fear I’d gotten distracted.”

  A cold fury ignited in Avena, a blizzard howling through her soul. She felt the emptiness widening to engulf her in a cocoon of safety. She could withdraw, flee this betrayal, but she refused. She wouldn’t be helpless. She embraced the pain as she snatched her brain from him. She held the seat of her awareness cradled to her breast as she glared at Dualayn with loathing. An odious, pain-filled rage swelled in her.

  “She’s passing out, you gloveless snake!” Ōbhin snarled. His black-gloved hands seized Dualayn’s bloody apron. Ōbhin thrust the rotund man back into the table, bending him half over the man with the splayed-open chest. “She went limp, like she’d passed out, but her eyes stayed open. Sightless.”

  “I feel like this isn’t my body!” Avena snarled. She held up the jar with her mind, the warmth from the ruby bleeding through the glass. “Because this is my body. You put me in a jar! You ripped me from my flesh and stuck obsidian in its place. I feel strange all the time. I thought I was weak because I didn’t heal properly. But, no! You butchered me, you feckless bastard!”

  “Now, Avena,” Dualayn said, his voice tight now. Sweat beaded his brow. “You must understand that I had tested this all before. Yours isn’t the first brain I’ve removed, just the first I successfully hooked up to the antenna. I was certain you would be fine. In fact, you are. Mostly.”

  “Mostly!” Ōbhin growled through clenched teeth. His jaw tightened, fury on his face.

  “You’re a pus-filled roach, Dualayn,” Fingers growled. “How could you do this to her? She sees you as a father! You were supposed to cure her!”

  The horror swirled through her more and more. “Fix me! Put me back! I want my mind back in my skull.”

  “That wouldn’t be advisable,” said Dualayn. “Most die. The one time I succeeded, well, she hasn’t been the same. Confused. Forget what year it is.”

  “Who do you . . . Kaylin?” asked Avena in dawning dread. “You’re speaking of Kaylin? When she was saddened with grief for Dyain, what, did you remove her mind? Did you kill him, too?”

  “I don’t kill anyone!” Dualayn protested. “I try to save. It requires pushing the boundaries of flesh, to try new things. I had to be shown this, too. Sometimes . . .” He shuddered. “Regrettably, it doesn’t always work, but you . . . Look at you. You’re talking. You’re thinking. You have all your memories. So you get a little woozy at times.”

  “Woozy! I passed out in the street for hours! I was robbed. Could have been killed! Raped! I was helpless because you removed my brain!”

  “I am sorry about that,” Dualayn said. “With any new procedure, there are bound to be some kinks to be solved. But we can do experiments. Refine the antenna to produce a clearer signal. That must be what is causing the blackouts. Your signal strength wavered. You weren’t getting enough information to your body. You shut down to your most base operation level. Breathing. Heartbeat. Digestion. I tried to match the Recorder’s depiction of the antenna, to shape it perfectly, but I must be off in some way. Please, please, let me think, Ōbhin.”

  Ōbhin released Dualayn with a sneer and backed off. Avena shifted the jar in her hands, staring at it in horror. The wires were burrowed into her mind. She struggled to feel them worming through her thoughts. They were conduits to the Black.

  Is the Black infecting my dreams? she wondered. No, no, it’s more like I’m living one person’s memories. One woman with white hair like . . . Raya? The White Lady has naturally white hair.

  “You have thought of something,” Dualayn said, his hand reaching out to her.

  Revulsion roiled through her stomach. She backed away, twisting her body to shield her mind from his touch. A fury greater than any she’d ever felt towards her mother seized her. At least her mother had the excuse of madness; melancholy had broken her mind.

  Dualayn was just . . . just . . . evil.

  “Don’t you ever lay a hand on me again!”

  “But, child,” Dualayn said, pain in his eyes. “Don’t you see what this means? I’ll be able to fix my wife.” He reached for her again. “We can solve your fainting proble—”

  Her hand flew without thought. She slapped him so hard his head snapped back. Her han
dprint blazed across his cheek. She wished she’d worn her earthen gauntlet so the blow would have broken his neck.

  “Do not talk to me like you didn’t violate me to my core! You stripped me from my body and then expect me to be grateful?”

  “Child,” Dualayn said, staring at her with betrayal on his face.

  It infuriated her more. He looked at her like he loved her. She’d thought he did. How could he love her and do this to her?

  “You don’t understand. Your mind will never die. Your thoughts shall outlive your body. I have made you into something beautiful. Something wonderful. Why don’t you understand, child?”

  A steely rasp echoed through the lab. Ōbhin drew his sword.

  *

  The blade hummed to life in Ōbhin’s grip as he raised the vibrating edge towards Dualayn’s throat. The man flinched back from the resonance blade. He backed into the table, trapped. He arched his head back, leaning over the patient to keep the sword from finding his flesh.

  “Fix her,” Ōbhin said, his voice colder than the glacier topping Mount Purity. “Put her brain back into her body.”

  “I told you, I can’t.” He stared down at the blade. Sweat poured off his brow. “Please, Ōbhin, you don’t want to do anything rash. I have made breakthroughs. I will save so many lives. Please, don’t kill me.”

  “Fix. Her.”

  “The risks and complications of restoring her brain are too great,” he said, his voice shrill. “Reconnecting the nerves is delicate. They have to be aligned just right. At the moment, the obsidian mind in her head is interfacing perfectly. She has full control.”

  “No, she doesn’t! She can’t trust her own body because of you. She could pass out at any moment. It could get her killed!”

  Avena nodded, her face fierce. The fire he thought had snuffed out blazed inside of her. The woman who’d marched with him into the house in the Greenlet, who’d stood by his side to face the mob, and who’d helped him defeat Ust stood before him. He’d been wrong about who would destroy her. Whose hands were truly stained Black?