I got a pit in my stomach thinking about Tony and the other workers around the city who would do whatever they were told once they drank from the water fountains. And when the serum wore off in the evenings, they would not remember anything odd about their long day of hard labor.
I buttoned Nurse Babbage’s long coat over my clothing and replaced my boots with hers. I fastened her belt at my waist, pinned the crisp hat onto my head, and lastly, pulled the goggles over my head.
“I’m ready.” Smoothing my hair back, I lowered the goggles over my eyes.
Mr. Gentry clapped his hands. “You look perfect, you do. They’ll never know.”
One step at a time, I repeated to myself.
I removed Nurse Babbage’s keys from her belt and opened the door. The hall was clear. I stepped out. With only night-lights to guide me, I proceeded slowly toward the door at the far end of the hall, almost holding my breath the whole way.
My hands trembled as I fit the key into the lock of my mother’s room.
There was a lantern inside the door. I raised the wick just enough to see her. She was still sleeping on the mattress on the floor. The walls were covered with thick cotton batting, just as I’d seen when I looked through Sally’s eye. Heart bursting with emotions, I knelt by her side. It seemed like an eternity since I’d resolved to get her out of the Tombs. Now that the moment was here, I almost couldn’t move, with the weight of it. My vision blurred as tears filled my eyes. I pushed the goggles up so I wouldn’t scare her.
Gently, I placed my hand on her arm. “Mother, it’s me, Avery.”
She would not wake up.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The Darkness Inside
Mr. Gentry had given me smelling salts in anticipation of my mother being unresponsive. My hand shook as I uncorked the small red bottle and waved it under her nose. Her nostrils twitched. I gave it another pass, closer this time. She lifted her hand and rubbed her nose, then opened her eyes a slit. I could tell she was still far away.
“Mother, it’s Avery. Can you hear me?” I rubbed her arm.
She nodded groggily as I helped her to her feet.
“I’m going to walk you down the hall. Don’t say a word.” Confusion swept over her face, but she let me lead her to the door. I lowered the goggles.
The hallway seemed twice as long now. I had my hand on Mr. Gentry’s doorknob when I saw a guard in uniform and mask approaching. I kept my eyes on the floor, silently willing him to pass me by.
Instead, he stopped. “Nurse, do you need assistance?”
“No, thank you. I’m fine.”
Through the dark lenses, he studied my face, then gave a careful look to my ill-fitting outfit. “May I ask why you are bringing her in there?” His head tipped toward Mr. Gentry’s conservatory—but as he spoke, the door flew open. My mother and I fell aside in a heap as Indigo burst out. I scrambled inside, dragging my mother behind me. Mr. Gentry pushed the door shut. Indigo had his arm around the neck of the guard, and he shoved him into the atrium, slamming the door behind him. Pulling off the guard’s mask, Indigo clamped his hand over the guard’s mouth.
The guard struggled to push Indigo away, but Indigo never broke his steady gaze. The guard stilled. Slowly, Indigo removed his hand from the man’s mouth. The guard walked over to the wall and stood placidly, as if awaiting instruction.
“Why did you do that?” I hissed.
“I had to. I heard him question you. He would’ve sounded an alarm.” Indigo folded his arms over his chest.
“Oh dear. Oh deary me.” Mr. Gentry shrunk behind some bushes. “This just won’t do. I knew this was a mistake, it was.” He stared at Indigo as if he had horns.
“Trust me, these guards are highly suspicious. He would not have let her go.” Indigo paced back and forth. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t remember a thing. He won’t give you away, Mr. Gentry.”
“Well, it’s done now.” My mother tried to push herself up.
Swiftly, Indigo lifted her and carried her to the pile of burlap sacks we’d laid out deep inside the greenhouse. I covered her with a blanket. Her eyes were half closed and she still hadn’t spoken. Mr. Gentry bustled over, then lifted her eyelids and felt her pulse. Overwhelmed, I sank to the floor, clutching her hand. “Will she be all right? What’s wrong with her?”
“Yes, yes, I believe so. I’m not a doctor, mind you, but I’ve seen the effects of plenty of vile substances, I have. She has good color.”
We had to hope she revived soon. While Indigo kept a lookout, I untied my mother’s hospital gown, then covered her up with blankets and slid it out from under her. She was so frail.
Next, I nervously escorted Nurse Babbage, in my mother’s hospital gown, to the padded cell. The gown was considerably shorter and tighter on her large frame than on my mother’s. It gave me a strange feeling, to control another human being, an unpleasant fluttering in my stomach. How vulnerable and defenseless this serum makes people.
In my mother’s cell, I removed the hospital gown from Nurse Babbage, hoping she wasn’t too cold in her undergarments. I tucked her into bed and covered her up to her neck. Then I took out the syringe Mr. Gentry had given me and tapped the needle. Fluid spurted out. I squeezed the nurse’s arm until her vein swelled beneath her skin. Just in case she could hear me, I whispered, “Nurse Babbage, this is a harmless sleeping draught. Please don’t be afraid. When it wears off, you’ll be fine and won’t remember how you got here or what happened to you this night.”
I punctured her skin and pumped the liquid in. Then I locked the door and left.
By the time I returned to the conservatory, my heart was racing. Now wearing the black pants and shirt of the crow-guard, Indigo led the real guard, in union suit and socks, toward the air shaft. Seeing him control someone with only his mind also unnerved me. It was difficult to comprehend.
Mr. Gentry ran off to make himself some tea. I slid the hospital gown back over my mother’s thin, bruised arms and exhaled long and deep. The first part of our task is done.
The next one would be harder.
I gently pushed Mother’s amber hair back from her forehead. My mind felt jumbled. On the one hand, I felt incredibly grateful she was still alive. On the other, I knew it was up to me to keep her that way. A wave of indecisiveness came over me. Am I doing the right thing? Am I risking all our lives? But there was more than our own lives at stake, and I had no choice but to keep going.
The crow mask lay by some bushes. It taunted me with its hollow eyes. Acting on impulse, I went over and picked it up. The leather was smooth and hard. I ran my fingers along the long curved beak, feeling each rivet down to the tip, a sharp metal point. I touched the small scar on my chest where one of these beaks had punctured my skin at the party. My pulse quickened. Slowly, I raised it to my face, pulled the strap over my head, and adjusted it tight. It swallowed me. The darkness inside was complete except for the dim light seeping through the filtered goggle lenses. My trapped face began to sweat. I couldn’t breathe.
My fingers touched a seam underneath and pressed it inward, creating a slit for air. I took a deep breath, forcing my heart to calm.
I walked around, testing the weight of it on my head. I felt secretive. I felt powerful. I imagined I was capable of unspeakable acts, hidden as I was behind this mask. Do all of us have a dark side? Could we lose ourselves to it if we hide behind a mask such as this? Like the Ku Klux Klan, I thought. My father had taught me about the Klan. Formed by Confederate veterans down in Tennessee, they used fear and violence to terrorize people. They’d never commit such atrocities without the anonymity of their pointy white hoods.
Suddenly, I had to get it off. I pushed the mask up and tossed it away. It stared at me knowingly, its evil birdlike gaze unflinching. I hunched over, breathing hard, my throat still constricted from the stale smell of leather and sweat.
“Avery.” Indigo put his hand on my back. “Are you all right?”
I couldn’t explain what I’d seen
through those lenses. Shaking my head, I scooted over to sit with my mother.
Mr. Gentry returned and joined me, cradling his teacup. “Sally and I went a-searching last night. We think we found your blond friend, we do, just where you said to look.”
“What?” I sat up straight. “You mean Hurricane?”
“Yes indeedy. I do indeed.”
Mr. Lemming had been right; she was in the abandoned cells. Unfortunately, Sally did not find the boy. We decided Indigo would take the guard’s mask and go down through the tunnels to Hurricane’s cell. Mr. Gentry gave him some serum darts, in case he encountered trouble.
According to our plan, Indigo also had to get into the morning room where the crow-guards, doctors, and nurses gathered before their shifts, for coffee and tea. Using Boggs’s own tactic, Indigo would poison all the water to, hopefully, prevent anyone from being capable of sounding an alarm. In the absence of any direction, Mr. Gentry thought they would wander around placidly, before being summoned to the execution. Indigo would lock the guard whose uniform he took in a cell to be discovered later so that Mr. Gentry would not be implicated.
“Please be careful.” I hugged my arms to my chest. “We will be waiting. We must leave here at exactly five o’clock in the morning.”
“Avery.” Indigo took my face in his hands. “Promise me: if I’m not back in time, you will go without me.”
“I’m not going to leave—”
“Promise me,” he repeated, his voice urgent. “I must hear you say it.”
I looked at my mother. Whatever was in her system had weakened her. Curled up on her bed of burlap, she was rail thin, the dark skin under her eyes sunken. I had to get her out of here before the Tombs took her life. I breathed deeply and told Indigo what he wanted to hear. “I promise.”
Indigo leaned down and grazed my lips with his, a kiss so light it felt like the wings of a butterfly. Then I watched him disappear down the dark hole of the air shaft, followed by the guard in his long johns.
In his absence, Mr. Gentry and I sat down and went over the plan one more time. He’d secured Pepper to his shoulder, just as I used to do with Seraphine. On occasion, he even brought Pepper into the conversation.
“People are flocking to the city, yes they are.” Mr. Gentry pointed up at the lights of the airships clustered above us.
“Mr. Gentry, why do you suppose so many people want to come see an execution?” I shuddered at the thought.
“Well, it is Norman Bale, after all. I even heard about it in here, I did. It was all the talk of the prison yard.”
“Norman Bale?” I remembered Khan telling me the rally was because of anger over what he’d done.
“Righty-o. It’s not often a wealthy industrialist is sentenced to the gallows, no sirree. Those poor little sisters that worked for him . . . ’Tis no wonder the people of the city want to see him hang, no wonder at all,” Mr. Gentry said. “I’d like to watch it myself, if I could.”
“Mr. Gentry, tell me again what happens at the execution.”
“Very soon, the gallows will be assembled in the machine room on this floor. Early next morning, they pull it out into the courtyard. Quite the contraption, it is. Eight a.m. sharp, old Norman is taken to the Criminal Court Building for formal sentencing, yes sir.” He ticked the items off on his fingers as he went. “The gate opens to let in the spectators. Bale is brought back over the bridge, his last look at the world. Might be heckling and flying tomatoes. Then they hang him, yes sirree, and that’s about it.”
“I hope a lot of people come.”
“You know, out on the street, folks sell food and ale like it’s a party, they do. You won’t get out until it’s over, when the crowd is allowed to leave, no way.” Mr. Gentry yawned loudly. “Time for some shut-eye. Come along, Pepper.”
With the tranquility of the greenhouse enveloping us, I squirreled under the blanket next to my mother, taking comfort in her presence. I watched the green lights of the airships hovering in the sky above us, listening to the drip, drip, drip of the lab’s watering device and the loud snores coming from the tree house. My mother and I had a lot of lost time to make up. I couldn’t let anything go wrong. Tomorrow, I would need all my strength.
My eyelids grew heavy.
The next thing I knew, I opened them to a sense that something was wrong. It took me one second to remember where I was, and another to realize my mother was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The Gallows
A violent storm of thoughts burst into my head, and I leapt up as if I’d been struck by lightning. Where is she?
The storm was not only in my head. Rain battered the ceiling, as if nature were trying to shatter the glass above. Without the moonlight, the lab was a nightmare of shifting shadow, the loud drumming of the rain echoing throughout the space.
What if she accidentally stumbles across the devil’s breath flowers?
“Mother? Where are you?” I listened, but the downpour drowned everything out.
As my eyes adjusted, I saw light filtering through the branches and followed a path through the greenery toward it. Pushing aside a thick curtain of leaves, I entered—to my amazement—an outdoor kitchen of sorts. My mother sat at a table, head in her hands. Mr. Gentry bustled about, pouring tea and stirring a pot. He rattled on to her, unaware that her eyes were glazed over and she probably couldn’t hear a word he said. It was such a surreal picture that it put me completely out of sorts. “Mother?”
She didn’t answer, but Mr. Gentry came over and escorted me to the table. I decided we must be under the tree house where Mr. Gentry slept. A lantern hung from above, lighting the space with a soft amber glow.
“Found her wandering around, I did. Nearly frightened me to death. She looks a little ghostly, does she not?”
She looked to me like a lost little girl, hair hanging down, parted in the middle. It made my heart hurt, I wanted to protect her so. Mr. Gentry placed a steaming bowl of porridge in front of me, which I ate ravenously. My mother did not touch hers.
“Thank you,” I said, my mouth full. “How much longer do we have? Has Indigo returned?”
“No,” Mr. Gentry said. He sat across from me with his tea. “No, I’m afraid he has not. But we must get you out of here in exactly thirty minutes, no more, no less.”
“Mr. Gentry.” I turned to face him. “Why don’t you come with us?”
He stared at his cup so long I thought he was ignoring the question. Finally, he looked up, first at my mother, then at me. “I cannot; no, this is my home, it is. Sally and I hear about the world beyond these walls. It is no longer a world I understand.”
I thought about the Civil War that had torn the country apart. Brothers killing brothers, the newspapers reporting at least half a million men dead, hatred still dividing the nation. And all the while, Mr. Gentry had been cloistered away safely in his greenhouse. I nodded. I understood why he would not leave.
While we waited, I repacked the burlap sack, adding an extra blanket, two pairs of small canvas shoes from Mr. Gentry, and a canteen of water. The seconds ticked by, the three of us staring at the opening where Indigo had gone last night.
“It is time; the time is now,” Mr. Gentry said after a while.
We had a little over an hour between the completion of the gallows and the movement of that terrible device into the courtyard. We could not wait for Indigo any longer.
My mother removed the blanket she had wrapped around her body and stood by the door in her hospital gown and knit socks. Her bruises stood out like inkblots on her pale skin. My heart twisted at the thought of leaving Indigo and Hurricane, but a glance at my mother’s frail form reinforced my determination to get her out of here.
I adjusted my bun and nurse’s cap, neat and tight. Then I pulled the goggles down over my eyes. This was it. We had to go. My nerves were raw, but I felt alive, ready, as if all my senses were on alert.
“We’re getting out of here, Mother. Don’t talk to anyone. Just
go along with whatever I do, all right?”
Her watery eyes searched mine, but she nodded.
“Thank you, Mr. Gentry.” I smiled at him. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
My mother stumbled forward and gave him a gentle hug. “Thank you,” she whispered in a still-groggy voice.
With one last glance at the shaft, I opened the door and looked both ways down the hall. There was one guard at the far end, opposite from where we had to go. When his back was turned, we slipped out into the hall, my nerves sizzling. I held on to my mother as if she was too weak to walk, which was probably the case. We had to be careful not to go too fast, even though the urge to run quivered up my legs.
Our first test came as we turned the corner. A guard was heading our way. I guided my mother to the opposite side of the hall and kept my head down.
“Come on.” I filled my voice with forced impatience. “Let’s get you washed up. I don’t have all day.”
It worked. The guard passed with barely a glance. We were almost there. I hoped Mr. Gentry had the timing right. His directions, at least, seemed perfect. One more corner and there should be a set of louvered doors. We turned down the hall. Yes; there on the right.
Ahead of us, another nurse guided an old man down the hall, their backs to us. And beyond that, two guards stood talking. We fell into step behind the nurse and patient, perfectly shielded from the guards and thankful for the dim hallway lighting.
The moment we were upon the louvered doors, I gripped the handle and pushed one open. We ducked inside, and I closed the door as quickly and quietly as I could.
We were in a tall-ceilinged mechanical room. The smell reminded me of the Works, all grease and hot steel. If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel at home. Flickering light from an overhead lamp glinted on the metal machinery around us.
The Tombs Page 28
