Quicksilver Soul

by Christine d'Abo

  Piper’s mouth had fallen open as she took a step forward, despite the way Ryerson held her back. A flash crossed her face, echoed by her emotions. Excitement bubbled inside her; the urge to leap appeared as a bright warmth in her mind.

  Ryerson stepped past Piper and strode forward with a long, even gait. “Who is the sergeant in charge?”

  “That would be me.” Samuel gave the customary bow stiffly, knowing his men would be watching the exchange with interest. “Sergeant Hawkins.” Adding his name was only a formality.

  Ryerson stopped on the far side of the body across from Samuel. His eyes were pale, the irises nearly white with only an edge of blue rimming the outside. His skin stretched tight across his face, marred by only the occasional wrinkle.

  “But, sir, see it’s better. The machine spoke to me and I listened.”

  “You little fool. They aren’t alive.”

  Samuel held up the tiny motor, allowing the cables to drape across his arms. “This one is. Look, I made its heart beat. And I can hear it talking to me when I plug it in. It’s lonely.”

  The motor shattered as it landed on the floor, his cheek stinging from the slap he’d sustained.

  Ryerson cleared his throat. Samuel had been staring too long. Shit. “The victim is female, but given the state of her body we cannot determine an age. Based on her attire I’d guess she is a prostitute. My men will ask our normal contacts to confirm this. We have collected what evidence we could and have taken a few photographs, though given the lack of light, I’m not sure we will get much detail from them. Obvious signs of a struggle. Her body was cut open and her face slashed. There is a distinct lack of blood on the scene, indicating that the body may have been moved.”

  Ryerson nodded. “We will make a note in the Archives once we have processed the information.”

  Piper stepped up beside the old man, but she wouldn’t meet Samuel’s gaze. He was hyperaware of every ripple of her emotions—hurt, excitement, relief. The scent clinging to her skin. How the warmth from her body seemed to beckon him closer. She’d managed to clamp down her impulsive urges to speak to him, to chat, and instead had slipped into a calmer space. Of course they would have drilled away the one thing about her he’d always loved before they would have allowed her to become an archivist.

  Dammit, this wasn’t how things were supposed to have gone for them.

  She’d brought light to his life with her arrival at the Archives all those years earlier. He’d been relegated to the shadows, pushed aside and ground down until he was nothing. Piper saw him, forced friendship on him with her bubble and charm, and refused to let him fade further. She arrived as a child of five, but she’d somehow known how to save him.

  Tonight her hair was pulled back into a simple bun. Errant strands curled across her cheeks, kissing the skin. Like Ryerson’s, her attire was standard issue for their guild, plain and serviceable with no ornament—full skirts, blouse, jacket, simple black boots. The lamp cast a glow across the fabric of her bodice, making it impossible to tell if it was green or blue.

  “Sam. Please, don’t go.”

  “Pip… I…”

  Piper carried a large black box around her neck—the extractor. The shadows box. A thick leather strap was bolted to each side of the thing to support its bulk. Her muscles and skin pulled with the weight of the machine, and she fought to stay upright. Samuel had never held the contraption, but he knew it weighed more than thirty pounds. The Hudson’s Bay Company had designed the extractor to be rugged, capable of withstanding any climate or landscape from the damp of New London springs to bitter Canadian winters. It was far too heavy a burden for such a slip of a woman to carry.

  Piper let out a soft huff. “I’m ready, sir.”

  Christ, he’d missed that beautiful Welsh lilt. “You’re running the machine tonight, Miss Smith?”

  Piper’s gaze finally returned to his. The dark brown of her eyes hadn’t yet faded. In fact, they hardly looked touched. Samuel swallowed his sorrow that one day her eyes would become a shallow reflection of their current state. White, lifeless in their gaze.

  “I am.” A wave of regret flowed from her, a palpable press of emotion against Sam’s oversensitive mind. They both knew he didn’t want to watch what was about to happen. “Sergeant, am I clear to begin?” Piper’s face went blank and the flow of her emotions stemmed. She was the only one who could do that for him. The only one who’d ever cared enough to try.

  Don’t do this to yourself, Pip. You deserve more. But he’d run and she’d stayed, and this was where they were now. “Yes, Miss Smith. Gentlemen, step back and give the lady room to work.”

  Samuel waved his men away, and all but Timmons scurried back to the shelter of the clockwerk factory. The weight of their emotions lifted enough to help Samuel focus.

  Coiled hate… it was the only description he had for the emotions emanating from Ryerson. The tendrils licked out at Samuel, courting his repressed anger, luring it out to the surface. He’d learned to deal with this years ago, keeping the impact of others’ emotions at bay. And yet here he stood, hands shaking and jaw clenched as Ryerson’s white gaze flicked up and away repeatedly. Goddammit, no.

  Piper eased down to her knees beside the frozen body. She freed herself from the weighted box, setting it on the ground to her left. With a brief look at Ryerson, she set to work straightening the body.

  “Set the extractor beside the body close to you and get her in position,” the Guild Master snapped. Piper hesitated, her fingers wrapping around the straps. “Quickly, Miss Smith.”

  “Let me help.” Falling to his knees beside her, Samuel stretched out the dead woman’s limbs and pushed aside the tattered remains of her shirt. “You need the chest exposed, yes?”

  Piper nodded, a quick grin curling her lips for a moment before disappearing. Her hands shook as she fiddled with the straps of the machine, shifting the box close to the body. “And flat on her back, if possible.”

  Samuel bullied the corpse into the requested pose. He leaned against the body’s shoulders, shivering as the cold seeped into his hands. The body protested the change in position, but eventually stayed where he wanted it to.

  “Make sure she’s flat. Push the organs back in if you need to, sergeant.” Ryerson couldn’t even bother to keep the disdain from his tone.

  Samuel should have moved away then and rejoined his men. Instead, he rubbed his hands along the tops of his thighs and waited. Timmons frowned, but Samuel waved him off. There was no sense in both of them being face to face with the horrors to come. Not that Timmons listened. Stubborn bastard stayed put.

  Piper cocked an eyebrow at him before turning her attention to the machine. The lid was locked, the key on a chain around her neck. He knew the metal would be warm when she pulled it from between her breasts. Unable to tear his gaze away, he watched as she did just that and leaned forward to release the lock. The hinges were silent as she carefully pushed the lid back, exposing the guts of the box.

  This could have been his life.

  Nothing but wires and bodies, stretching on forever and ever. Not that he’d remember any of the encounters. They’d take even the most basic of experiences from him, the sole purpose of being an archivist. Madness or memories—not much of a choice.

  Piper pressed one of the leads into a small suction cup, then dipped the cup into a foul-smelling liquid kept in a pot she’d also brought with her. With the cups, she mapped out a path across the victim’s chest, securing each one to the dead flesh. The stomach and chest had been slashed, but enough skin and bone remained where it was needed to make the necessary connections. Samuel watched in morbid fascination as she repeated this action—one to each temple, across the jugular, over the left eye and several spots around the neck and torso where the killer hadn’t sliced. The free ends of the wires were then wrapped around contacts on the box. The moment Piper completed each circuit, a small light engaged on the control board. Soon, red, blue, and amber lights cast sparkling pattern
s up into the night.

  Piper double checked her placements, muttering. “Base, solar plexus, heart, crown…”

  “Check the ninth.” Ryerson stepped closer, nodding as she made the adjustment. “That’s good, child.”

  Samuel watched as the old man pulled a large glass cathode from his inside coat pocket. It looked like a thin glass vial, but Samuel knew it was more than that. It had to be, considering what they were about to cram into it.

  “You know what to do next,” the old man said with pride.

  Piper full-out grinned and the sight took Samuel’s breath away even at such an inappropriate moment. She was no longer an impulsive child or even the crying girl he’d left behind. No, she’d matured into a woman of twenty-one years of age, one who possessed the knowledge and confidence to face the darkness of her trade.

  She took the cathode with sure fingers. The glass slipped easily into the slot made specifically for the container. Several of the men shuffled behind him, but he was too engaged watching Piper to care if they were trying to get closer or run away.

  Piper put on a pair of goggles and pressed the final wire into a small notch in the frame. The lenses were blackened so it would be impossible to see the images that would be shown to her through them. Not that Samuel had any desire to witness such horrors.

  “Sergeant, you might wish to move back a bit,” she said in a hushed voice. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Please. You’re here, I’m here,” he muttered. This was old ground for them. An argument that had a much different outcome the last time they had it. “Continue, Miss Smith.”

  Samuel wasn’t sure if she sighed, or if it was a trick of the wind, but Piper leaned forward and pressed a small button along the top of the circuit board. He counted three heartbeats before the quiet of their surroundings erupted into chaos.

  Piper gasped, back arching like a current was going through her. It took every bit of his self-control to stop from reaching out and holding her tight. Instead he watched as the corpse also jumped, mimicking her with a ghoulish gasp.

  Then it began to speak.

  “HolyGodwhat’shappeningtomepleasedon’tithurts.” The corpse’s voice lacked emotion or syntax. Simply one long mess of words, pulled from memory by the archivists’ bloody machine.

  “Workstoomanyhours. Beautifulskinshitwanttofuckyou. PleaseMumcanIgoandplaynow.”

  Somewhere along the way, Piper began to say the words half a beat behind the reanimated corpse. Samuel ignored it, watching the lower half of Piper’s face twist with emotions that weren’t hers. What feeling the corpse lacked, she more than made up for.

  “IhatethatbastardsomuchIwanttokillhim.”

  “I hate that bastard… soooo much I want to kill him.”

  Ryerson stood over her shoulder, watching but doing nothing to stop her from twisting and turning, and scratching at her hair. The cathode in the box glowed red. As it filled with the too-bright liquid, the corpse began to lose its voice. Piper continued the litany, speaking words of the dead.

  “I don’t like the dark. Why the hell am I here? Mum’s solstice pudding makes me sick, but that’s because she puts too much rum in it. If he’s not careful, they’re going to find out and then everything will go to shit.”

  Time ticked on for God only knew how long, as she spewed forth string after string of information in no semblance of order. Finally, she let loose a long shuddering sigh. Her body slumped forward, as if someone had pulled a lever and shut off the steam. He barely had time to react, catching her before she landed across the bloody body.

  “Are you all right?” He chanced a quick press of his lips to the shell of her ear, memorizing the smell and taste of her before setting her right.

  Piper’s hands shook as she pulled the goggles from her face. “Not exactly what I was expecting.” Tears now streaked her cheeks as she stared at him wide-eyed. They were still brown in color.

  Thank God.

  And yet…

  “Sam, you’re crying.” She reached out to touch him, but stopped herself short as someone cleared his throat.

  Sam brushed away the wet trail and pulled back to glance at his damp fingertips. Strange, he hadn’t even realized.

  “Did you gather all of the data, Miss Smith?”

  Samuel jumped, having forgotten that Ryerson stood over them. “Give her a minute to catch her breath.”

  “She knows her duty, even if you do not.” The words were bitten off, sharp and painful.

  “I am well aware of my duty. I serve as a bastion of the law.” Samuel spat the words, no longer caring if everyone saw his disdain. “My life to protect and serve the citizens of New London.”

  “I have no doubt you’ll betray them too. Run away when they need you most.”

  The comment stung. “You never needed me.”

  Piper cleared her throat. “Master Ryerson, Sergeant Hawkins, I have captured all of the data—”

  “Memories, Piper. They’re her memories.” The cold couldn’t chill him as much as her words. With so little effort the archivists had begun to strip away her humanity.

  “I’ve collected her memories,” she rephrased, but still not sounding like the girl he remembered. “We will review them.” She smiled at him, far from the professional detached manner that all the archivists used. “I’ll let you know if we learn anything that will help catch her killer, sergeant.”

  “So it was premeditated murder?” Given the state of the body, he’d been nearly certain.

  “I’m not…” She shook her head and snapped her mouth shut. He didn’t need to be able to sense emotions to know Piper was frustrated. She’d always struggled between doing what she wanted and what she knew others expected. “I’ll require the use of the equipment in the Archives to give you a full report, but I believe so.”

  “God rest her soul.”

  “There is no such thing. We collect only the shadow of who they were.” The old man’s voice was too loud in the silent evening. “I hadn’t realized you believed in that superstition, sergeant. Are you finished yet, Miss Smith?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come along then. We must return.” Ryerson turned on his heels and strode back to the carriage.

  Not wanting it to end like this, Samuel helped Piper lift the machine, giving her room to pull the heavy strap around her neck. “Thank you,” she muttered.

  “You’re welcome.” She started to turn away from him, but he caught her by the arm, stopping her. “It’s been far too long.”

  Piper looked up, so close he could see the light dusting of freckles across her nose. “Then you shouldn’t have left.”

  Sam, please don’t leave me.

  “I had no choice. You know that.”

  “I know, but—” She cast a quick glance at Ryerson before leaning in and whispering. “I… there’s…”

  “What?” He squeezed her arm.

  “I shouldn’t say.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “There is a procedure to follow.”

  “Since when did you start worrying about proper procedure?”

  “Since I turned sixteen and had no choice but to play the part of an adult.”

  He was dancing too close with the past, but if there was something he needed to know about the victim, the sooner he uncovered the truth the better. Bending down, so his face was close to hers, Samuel rubbed his nose against her cheek. “Pip, this is me. Please.”

  “Damn you.” He felt her shiver before she stepped back, once more meeting his gaze. “I think this murder is connected to the Archives.”

  Crying in the dark.

  “Sammy, where are you? I’m scared.”

  “What? How—”

  “She called the killer a zombie.”

  “Come now, Miss Smith!”

  Piper turned and waved to Ryerson, before giving Samuel one final small smile. “I miss you still, Sam. Even if I think you were wrong to leave.” She strode away without another look back.

  He was
forced to watch her disappear inside the carriage until the door closed. The mechanical horse roared back to life with a hissing cloud of steam, the sound drowning out the cries of a nearby child.

  A killer from the Archives. Dear God.

  “Are we ready to take her now, sergeant?” Timmons’ voice was its normal steady self, reminding Samuel that they still had a duty to perform here.

  “Yes, let’s finish this up quickly and get inside where it’s warm.”

  “You heard the sergeant, boys. Move your arses! I want to be in bed before morning.”

  Samuel didn’t need to supervise his men, so he stepped closer to the road to give them room. The lamplight still burned bright and strong, aiding the men in their work. There were no shadows in the spot where Piper had stood. No way for the light to have fooled him into seeing something that wasn’t there.

  No way had he imagined the thin rings of white around the center of Piper’s irises.

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