Iron Cast

by Soria, Destiny;

  “Please,” she said to the officer behind her. “No cuffs.”

  He ignored her and grabbed her chin, forcing her jaw open. Before she could struggle, another cop had shoved a flat metal plate into her mouth. There were leather straps that cinched behind her head, so tight that the plate pressed against the back of her tongue. It worked like a depressor—or a bit. Crude, but effective in preventing hemopaths from talking or singing. Corinne had to concentrate on breathing through her nose to keep from gagging. The cold steel on her tongue was almost unbearable.

  Her knees weakened, but she kept her feet as they searched her pockets, removing her grandfather’s watch. She didn’t even have the strength to protest. The world was spiraling in her vision, and she couldn’t focus on anything until a man in a suit stepped in front of her. He was shorter than average, and his smile puckered the corners of his round cheeks.

  “It’s a privilege to finally meet you,” he said. His voice was warm and pleasant, completely at odds with the madness unfurling around him.

  Something brushed Corinne’s arm, and she looked to her right into Ada’s eyes, where she saw her same pain and disorientation reflected. The man who had deposited Ada beside her was also in a suit. He was much taller than his partner, with a large square jaw and not a hint of warmth about him.

  “The two perpetrators of the Bengali banker,” said the shorter one. “What a catch. You know the odds were five to one against that we would ever find you.”

  Corinne shuddered with another wave of nausea and stared at the two HPA agents without blinking. She couldn’t figure out how they’d known to find them here. She couldn’t figure out much of anything through her blinding headache.

  “I’m Agent Wilkey,” he said, then gestured at his massive counterpart. “My partner, Agent Pierce, and I will be your escorts this evening. I believe you are both already acquainted with Haversham Asylum for Afflictions of the Blood.”

  “This time around, you’ll find the accommodations to be less . . . comfortable,” Agent Pierce said, his flinty blue gaze resting on Ada.

  Corinne pressed her arm against Ada’s, trying to reassure her somehow, even though she couldn’t think how they would find their way out of this. The police wagons were starting to pull away. Corinne caught sight of Gabriel standing at the rear of one, his hands cuffed behind his back. His eyes met hers, and his expression shifted from hard composure to something softer and more vulnerable. A policeman pressed an iron rod against his neck. Gabriel didn’t flinch, and he didn’t break from her gaze. They pushed him into a different police car, and then he was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The ride to Haversham was longer than Ada remembered. She imagined she could feel every droplet of blood in her body, writhing in protest to the iron of the car, to the steel in her mouth. Everything was a blinding, pulsing blur as the car jolted through the city. The lights outside the window streaked past her vision like paint on canvas. Distantly, she registered that it had begun to sleet.

  Agents Pierce and Wilkey spoke occasionally in the front seat, but never to her and Corinne. Pierce was driving, and every once in a while Ada would see his eyes in the mirror. There was an utter dispassion in them that frightened her. She closed her own eyes and didn’t open them until she felt the jolt of pain as they passed through the iron gates of Haversham. The car shuddered to a stop, and Agent Pierce half dragged her out of the car. She craned her neck to keep sight of Corinne, who was solidly in Wilkey’s grasp. Panic at the thought of being separated rose in her chest.

  The agents led them into the linoleum-tiled front lobby. The familiar sharp scent of antiseptic met Ada’s nose. Behind the front desk the same nurse from the night of Ada’s escape peered at them through the reading glasses perched on her nose. She moved the spectacles to her head, and scorn twisted her features.

  “I almost lost my job because of these two,” she said.

  “Fortunately for you,” said Wilkey, “these two have taken a lot more than that—and from much more important people.”

  Pierce laughed. It was an unpleasant sound.

  The nurse’s upper lip was still curled slightly. She moved her finger to the intercom button on her desk. “Shall I fetch Dr. Knox?”

  “No need,” Pierce said.

  “We know where the basement is,” said Wilkey.

  The nurse frowned and made a show of shuffling through her papers. “Dr. Knox is expecting three of them,” she said. She ran her finger down a page, then tapped it when she found what she was looking for. “You’re missing Sebastian Temple.”

  Ada jerked at the mention of Saint’s name, and Pierce shifted his grip on her arm.

  “We’ll have him before the night’s over,” Pierce said.

  “We have a few other matters to attend to first.” Wilkey smiled at the nurse, revealing the dimples in his chin.

  The nurse looked between them, her disdain replaced by something more wary, but she nodded. She made a show of busying herself with the contents of her desk, although Ada saw her cast them one furtive glance as the agents led them through a door at the edge of the lobby. Ada quickly lost all sense of direction as they moved through a maze of taupe corridors that all looked the same. She couldn’t catch her breath. A part of her had known that Haversham was inevitable, but that didn’t mean she was prepared. This was different from last time. Before, she had known that Corinne would come for her, that if anyone could plot an escape from Haversham Asylum, it was Corinne Wells. All the terror she had repressed came back to Ada in waves. Every whispered rumor, every remembered scream.

  Then they turned a corner, and at the intersection of two halls was a thick wooden door with dual dead bolts. Ada had the sickening thought that it locked from the outside—clearly meant to keep people in rather than out. When Wilkey opened it, the hinges made no sound, as if they were well-oiled with use. Corinne turned her head to catch Ada’s eye over her shoulder. The look was fleeting, lasting only the length of a heartbeat, before Wilkey moved between them to prod Corinne first down the stairs into the basement, but Ada saw everything there was to see. Corinne was afraid.

  Ada took a short breath through her nose, trying to find some courage, some equilibrium. Then Pierce pushed her toward the stairs, where shadows enveloped her, and it was too late.

  Corinne stumbled blindly down the steps, knowing that if she tripped with her hands cuffed behind her back, she would tumble headlong down the entire flight. Agent Wilkey probably wouldn’t bother to catch her. As her eyes adjusted, she could see that there were a few dim electric bulbs, hanging from wires along the wall to her right. There was no banister, only faded brick that glistened faintly with moisture. The smell of mildew trickled into Corinne’s nostrils, and she had to gasp in a few breaths through her mouth to fight the nausea rising in her throat. Choking on her own vomit in this godforsaken hole was not how she intended to die.

  Accompanying her descent was a growing ache from iron somewhere below. She tried to quote Dante in her head, to distract herself from the pain, but it was no use. Even Dante could never have imagined the hell that Haversham had created here. By the time she reached the bottom of the steps, she was trembling uncontrollably. The stairs emptied into a long, narrow corridor lined with metal doors. Pain lanced through her legs with every footstep, and she looked down to see that the floor of the corridor was iron.

  “Clever, eh?” Wilkey asked, giving her a little shove forward. “You wouldn’t believe how much effort was put into this place. Just enough iron to keep the slaggers quiet, but not enough to render them useless. It really is an art.”

  Corinne’s vision slanted sideways, and she thought she might collapse, but Wilkey was propelling her forcefully down the corridor now. The doors on either side went by in aching streaks of gray, blurring as her eyes filled with tears. They twisted through corridors and doors that led to more corridors. She told herself that Ada was still behind her, that they were still together, that Haversham and the HPA didn’t
stand a chance. She repeated it again and again in her head. A mantra punctuated by every agonizing footfall.

  They went through a doorway at the end of a long corridor that opened into a large, low-ceilinged room. The sharp smell of disinfectant assaulted her nostrils. This room was brighter than the corridors, with bright medical lamps that glared off the white tile and stainless steel surfaces. The brilliance temporarily blinded Corinne, and they were several steps into the room before she recovered. Once she did, the only thing she could really see was the man a few feet away from her. His face was so skeletal that for a split second she thought he was dead—but no, his gray smock moved barely with the slow rise and fall of his chest. He was strapped to a hospital bed, the buckles cutting into his skin. There was a tube inserted in his bruised arm, bright red with flowing blood. In a bed next to his, strapped down in the same manner, was a woman. Her chest heaved with rattling breaths, and her damp, tangled hair covered most of her ashen face. The tube in the woman’s pallid arm was connected somehow to the man’s via a small machine between their beds that whirred and hummed like a phonograph with no record. A second tube in the woman’s thigh trailed down beside the bed, draining crimson into a metal canister.

  The woman’s eyes opened suddenly, and she let out a scream that reverberated through Corinne’s bones. She held the cry so long that Wilkey stomped over to her bed, still dragging Corinne by the arm. He took a rag, spotted with blood, from a nearby table and shoved it into the woman’s mouth. Her strangled scream continued, even through the gag, and her wild gaze met Corinne’s. The madness in her eyes, birthed of pain and terror and rage, made Corinne feel weak at the knees. She was perversely grateful when Wilkey pulled her away, continuing their trek through the room. There were at least two dozen beds, but the rest had sheets pulled over their occupants. This wasn’t a hospital. It was a graveyard.

  Corinne felt she owed it to them, somehow, to not look away, but her eyes fluttered downward of their own accord. Her shoes clomped on the floor, and she could almost see her reflection in the scrubbed white tiles.

  When they finally passed through a doorway into a smaller room, it was a strange relief to be pushed inside, where there was blessed concrete under her feet. She didn’t know exactly what she had expected to find, but the empty table with its four wooden chairs was not it. Overhead, a single bulb gave off a dull yellow glow, flickering intermittently. Corinne thought vaguely of Dante and his inferno again. They had traded one circle of hell for the next. Very faintly, she could still hear the woman’s muffled screams.

  Agent Wilkey made her sit in one of the chairs facing the door. Ada dropped into the chair beside her and laid her head down on the rough grain of the wood. Though she was trying to hide it, Corinne could see that she was flushed and shaking. Corinne wasn’t in much better shape herself. She wished she could reach out and take Ada’s hand, give some comfort, draw some in return. Agent Pierce left the room, and Agent Wilkey stood in the corner, arms crossed, humming to himself. Corinne briefly tried to summon an illusion for him—something clawed and bloodthirsty—but it was an impossible task and she knew it. If she didn’t speak any words first to prepare his mind, then she couldn’t make him see anything. The attempt made her feel slightly better, though.

  After a few minutes that might as well have been decades, the door opened again. Corinne recognized Dr. Knox from Jackson’s imitation of him. The squat, spectacled man in his pristine white coat seemed out of place in the dank room. He wiped a handkerchief across his shiny bald head and shut the door behind him. The room still held the barest scent of disinfectant. Agent Pierce had not come back.

  “This is disappointing,” Knox said to Wilkey, tucking the handkerchief into his pocket and sitting down across from Ada and Corinne. “I expressly instructed you to bring Temple too. I’ve been told he’s showing signs of abilities well outside the norm of his affliction. I need him for the next phase.”

  “We’ll pick him up later, when the streets are quieter,” Wilkey said from the corner. “We know exactly where he is.”

  Corinne caught Ada’s eye as she straightened suddenly. Agent Wilkey saw the movement and smiled blithely at both of them.

  “Interesting setup you have at the Cast Iron,” he said. “I’m assuming that basement was part of the Underground Railroad?”

  Corinne’s chest was tight. No one outside the Cast Iron was supposed to know that the basement even existed. The blueprints gave no indication. City inspectors had no records of it.

  “Take off the gags,” Dr. Knox said. “We can get started with these two, at least.”

  Out of the breast pocket of his coat he retrieved a pencil and pad of paper. He flipped to a clean sheet and set it on the table.

  Agent Wilkey unbuckled Corinne’s gag first, dropping it on the table in front of her. When he freed Ada from hers, she let loose a string of Portuguese on him so fierce and fluid that Corinne was a little in awe. She hadn’t understood a word of it, but judging from the tone, there was plenty of cursing involved.

  “That’s enough of that,” Dr. Knox said. He took something else from his pocket and set it on the table between them. It was a piece of metal, the size and shape of a nickel. Despite the assault on her senses from the other sources in the basement, Corinne could tell that it was pure iron.

  “You should probably work on your intimidation tactics, Doc,” Corinne said.

  Without the gag she felt more like herself. Not being able to speak—and give derisive commentary—was like missing all her limbs. With effort, she pushed all that she had just seen to the back of her mind. From the corner of her eye, Corinne saw Ada raise her chin slightly.

  “A gun might be more effective,” Ada said. “Or a knife.”

  “Hell, even a pair of pliers will do,” Corinne said. She turned to Ada. “I liked the Portuguese, by the way. Very incisive.”

  “Thank you,” Ada said, falling easily into the rhythm of their familiar banter.

  It was as if they’d made the decision together. Dr. Knox and his HPA cohorts clearly wanted them terrified and compliant—a pleasure that she and Ada would deny them.

  “You going to teach me some of those curses anytime soon?” Corinne asked.

  “Not a chance.”

  “How about just the translation for ‘Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood.’?” She looked at Dr. Knox and smiled innocently. “I have a feeling I might need it tonight.”

  Dr. Knox did not appear to be perturbed by their exchange. He only scratched the tip of his nose, checked his watch, and sighed.

  “If you’re quite through,” he said, “I would like to get started.”

  “By all means,” Corinne said.

  “There’s only one simple rule,” Dr. Knox said. “You do exactly as I tell you, or Agent Wilkey will hold you down and shove this iron down your throat.”

  Corinne’s breath caught in her lungs despite herself. Suddenly the small iron coin on the table seemed enormous, crowding every corner of her vision. When she was thirteen, only a year after she had manifested as a hemopath, she had taken a dare from one of Carson’s boys to hold an iron fishing sinker in her closed fist for five minutes. She’d made it forty-seven seconds before the pain became unbearable, radiating through her body until she lost touch with the world around her, until she had dissolved completely and nothing but the pain existed.

  When she tried to imagine what it would feel like to have the iron inside her, she couldn’t help but think that she would rather die.

  In the corner, Agent Wilkey was chuckling. “We had a slagger once try to claw open his own chest. What a mess.”

  Dr. Knox cleared his throat. “Yes, well, he brought it on himself.” He eyed Corinne and Ada. “And if you have any ideas of escaping, you should know that Agent Pierce is on the other side of the door, wearing earplugs, and he does have a gun.”

  Corinne wanted to look at Ada, but she was afraid of what she would see in her best fri
end’s eyes. If Ada had given up, then Corinne wasn’t sure that she could go on.

  Dr. Knox nodded to himself, seemingly satisfied that they had grasped the gravity of the situation.

  “Now that we have that nasty business out of the way, we can begin.” He waved Agent Wilkey over. “You can take your seat.”

  Wilkey moved from the corner to sit next to the doctor. His expression was benign, almost bored.

  “Some of the methods for conducting our research are unfortunately crude,” Dr. Knox said, taking up his pencil. “But I assure you it’s for the greater good.”

  “That’s what they said when they mutilated slaves in the name of science,” Ada said. Her voice was low and trembling.

  Dr. Knox ignored her and continued. “Tonight will be a very straightforward experiment. You’ll simply be using your hemopathy on Agent Wilkey here, who is one of our best natural-born resisters. We’ll determine exactly how long he is able to resist each of you. Once we have a workable measure of the hemopathic pathogens in your blood, we’ll be able to move into the next phase of experimentation.”

  “Is that what you’re calling your torture chamber out there?” Corinne asked, concentrating on keeping the tremor out of her voice. She almost succeeded.

  Dr. Knox waved his pencil dismissively. “We’re winding down that phase. None of the subjects have survived the process, and I don’t have high hopes for this latest round either. There’s a cerebral component we’re missing that interacts with the pathogen somehow. A full transfusion is not a viable cure. We need to isolate the lobe of the brain that is accelerated by the pathogen. I believe that is what gives you the power to manipulate others and to resist manipulation yourselves.”

  “God, you’re boring,” Corinne said, but inside she was reeling.