“Is there any way to uncover what is hidden?”
The man opened and closed his mouth as if he were a fish, staring into the darkness as though he expected to be swallowed by it.
“The Holdfasts are dead,” the rasping voice said, “the Eternal Flame erased from this earth. What would they have hidden within her mind?”
The question was met with silence.
“Who placed her in that warehouse?”
Stroud stepped forward. “There’s nothing confirming it, but based on the records, Mandl was overseer at the time. It was shortly before her ascendance and transfer to the Outpost.”
“Send for her.”
Stroud nodded and disappeared. As she did, the shadows moved.
Helena could only see from the corner of her eyes, but she could not fail to notice when Morrough emerged from the darkness.
The High Necromancer was not what she remembered. When he’d killed Luc, he’d been human. Now he was mutated. His limbs stuck out in ways that were impossibly jointed, and he was nearly the size of two men.
She thought, at first, that he was wearing a mask. The High Necromancer had been masked during the celebration, wearing a huge golden crescent that concealed half his face like an eclipsed sun.
As he drew nearer however, she realised it wasn’t a mask she was staring at. Morrough’s face was skull-like, his features so sunken, the skin so translucently pale, that she could see through to the bone.
Where his eyes should have been were two blackened, empty hollows, as if they’d been burned out with live coals.
Somehow, he still seemed to see Helena.
He walked forward, one hand outstretched, but there was something wrong about it, over-jointed, the skin bizarrely stretched. Too many bones inside it. Before his fingers grazed her skin, the pain of his resonance lanced through her skull.
Her vision turned red.
Screaming surrounded her, blistering her eardrums and going on and on as her memories detonated inside her brain. A cascade of images tore through her consciousness.
Everywhere she looked, people were dying. Her hands were covered in blood. There were bodies everywhere.
She was kneeling on the floor, holding together torsos and faces and limbs, trying to put them back together, knitting them into wholeness. Again and again and again. Bodies raw with burns, so consumed by fire that she couldn’t find their features.
Always another body, and another.
The resonance burrowed deeper and deeper, and the screaming grew louder.
She saw Luc. Vivid as if he were there with her. His beautiful face, and eyes as blue as a summer’s sky, golden sunlight reflecting in them.
Then Luc was gone. Blood was everywhere. All she could see was a reddened light, fractured and disjointed, swimming overhead. And the screaming.
Her screams. Her vocal cords were shredded, raw pain tearing through her lungs and throat. A lancing pain through her heart each time she gasped for air.
The small man was muttering, “I wouldn’t recommend—” over and over with his arms cradled defensively around his own head.
There was a knock on a door, and Stroud reappeared, barely glancing at Helena.
“Mandl is on her way. And—” She hesitated. “I brought Shiseo. I thought he might have some insight into our prisoner. He did consult with the Eternal Flame. She needs a new nullification set anyway; I thought he might apply them before his departure.”
There was a quiet shuffling in the dark. Helena craned her neck as much as she could, eyes straining for a glimpse of the traitor.
A round-faced man with dark hair emerged, carrying a small case. He paused to bow reverently before the High Necromancer.
Morrough waved him towards Helena. “What kinds of vivimancy did the Eternal Flame utilise?”
Shiseo drew closer, and Helena realised he was Eastern. Far Eastern. He only met Helena’s accusing stare for a moment before he averted his gaze.
“I am sorry.” He bowed slightly once again. “I was only consulted on occasion due to my metallurgical knowledge.”
Helena released a small breath of relief.
“Surely you know something—you did work in their laboratories,” Stroud said, impatiently. “Do you recognise her, at least?”
Shiseo barely glanced at Helena.
“I believe she was a healer,” he said quietly as he returned his attention to his case.
Helena fought back a wince.
Stroud looked sharply at Helena, her eyes narrowed.
“Really? A healer, you say?” The way Stroud spoke was venomous. She cleared her throat, glancing around. “Of course I knew there were vivimancers who supported the Eternal Flame. As if martyring themselves could earn acceptance, even though the Faith spurned their gifts as an abomination.” Her eyes were scathing. “I just didn’t realise this was one of them.”
No one said anything. Stroud’s face reddened. “I’m sure I would have realised if I’d had more time to retrieve the Resistance’s records. But why would someone transmute a healer’s mind?”
Shiseo bowed to Stroud now. “I could not say.”
A growing sense of agitation permeated the room.
Morrough sighed like a gusting bellows. “He knows nothing. Apply the nullification and get him out.”
Shiseo bowed and lifted Helena’s hand as far as it would go, inspecting her wrist and the cuff around it. He had soft hands for a metallurgist.
“These are—a very old model. They do not fully suppress the resonance,” he said. He slid the manacle up Helena’s forearm as far as it would go, and it was as if the static of the suppression was pushed up towards her brain along with it.
His fingers pressed deftly along her arm, finding the dip just below her wrist between the two bones of her forearm.
Her pulse beat against his fingers. He felt it for a moment and moved his fingers away from it, squeezing briefly before he turned to Stroud. “Just here.”
Stroud’s dry, hard fingers wrapped around her wrist. Helena felt a brief tingle of Stroud’s resonance before all sensation from hand to elbow vanished and her body went limp with paralysis. Without explanation or warning, Stroud plucked something out of the case. It gleamed in the light, revealing the bulbous handle and long pointed spike of an awl.
With practised ease, Stroud drove the tip straight through Helena’s wrist. Helena felt nothing, but her throat closed, stomach inverting as she watched Stroud work the awl in slow circles as it sank between the bones, the tip emerging on the other side.
When Stroud pulled it out, there was a drop of blood on the tip and a hole running straight through Helena’s wrist. The wound was bloodless, all the torn skin, muscle, and broken vessels instantly closing in the process.
Setting the awl aside, Stroud manipulated Helena’s hand, bending and arching it back, checking for range of motion. Sensation returned, but the paralysis lingered.
“Nerves and veins are all intact,” Stroud said, letting go.
Helena could do nothing but watch as Shiseo stepped over and pushed a tiny, notched tube through the hole now running through her wrist until the ends protruded on each side. The moment the tube slipped into place, the blurred sense of resonance in Helena’s left hand vanished completely.
It was as if one of her senses had been ripped out.
She could feel the tube inside her, a deadening sense of inertia emanating from it.
Shiseo pulled out a ribbon of metal. It was smooth and shining on one side, grooved on the other. He slid the groove over one notched end of the tube before wrapping the ribbon around her wrist and sliding it over the other, locking the tube in place before he wrapped the rest of the metal ribbon around and around.
He inspected the tension and fit, lined up all the layers, and with little more than a flick of his fingers, the layers morphed into a solid ring of metal, perfectly fitted.