Hanging on the walls are photographs of Thea in happier times. Here’s one of her getting a piggyback from Hephaestus, while an older woman laughs in the background. In another, she’s lying on the beach, pulling a face at the camera. There’s a roaring fire with seven people clustered around it, heads tipped back in joy. Drinks are being served out of a bathtub.
Emory peers at the photos one after another, seeing an entirely different Thea from the one she’s always known. Though she hasn’t aged much physically, it’s obvious she’s younger in these pictures. She’s laughing for a start, enjoying her life. Emory doesn’t think she’s ever seen that before.
‘What happened to her?’ she asks.
‘Her world burned,’ I say. ‘Her family died, then her friends. She lost too much not to lose herself along the way.’
A great wave of pity overcomes Emory.
‘Hold on to that feeling,’ I say. ‘It will be easy to hate them, but both Thea and Hephaestus have suffered far more than you can ever imagine. Whatever they are today, it wasn’t their choice and they didn’t deserve it.’
Emory starts pulling open the desk drawers one after another. The bodies in the infirmary suggest Niema had a way to get back into Blackheath, even though it was supposedly lost to the fog. If Thea found that out, she’d have a strong motive for murder.
‘Motive,’ she mutters, shaking her head at herself.
She’s read that word so many times in her books, but she’s never said it out loud before. It doesn’t belong in this place, she thinks. It’s something old, and blunt, and dusty. It thuds into the air when spoken.
The first drawer is empty, but the second one contains an ancient camera, its case held together by wire. Thea used to make her apprentices take this on expedition with them, so they could snap any new flora or fauna they found. Unfortunately, it was so fragile that by the time you tried to take a picture of the animal running by, the camera had fallen to pieces in your hands.
Putting the camera back where she found it, she opens the next drawer to find an old diary inside.
She flips through idly, until she comes to the last entry.
Ellie’s gone. She wouldn’t listen, not to me or Hephaestus. She climbed into the last free stasis pod. Said it was either that or she goes two-footed off a cliff.
I don’t know what I’m going to do without my sister. We haven’t spoken much recently, but that’s only because we’ve been here sixty-eight years. What’s left to say?
I don’t know who’s more upset, me or Hephaestus. He loved her more than life itself.
‘Thea’s sister is trapped in Blackheath,’ says Emory out loud. ‘Niema wasn’t just keeping Thea out of Blackheath, she was keeping her from seeing her sister.’
‘Emory, you have to stop your father,’ I interject urgently.
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s about to do something incredibly stupid,’ I say.
FORTY-FIVE
Bringing the boat into the shallows, Seth leaps into the surf, landing awkwardly on his injured ankle. The flesh around the circular gouge is black and purple, and starting to swell, sending spikes of pain up his leg whenever he puts weight on it.
Grimacing, he drags the boat up the pebbles.
‘Dad!’
Emory’s waiting for him with her hands on her hips.
‘Emory?’ he asks, tossing the oars onto a pile on the beach, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Abi told me what you’re about to do.’
‘Abi shouldn’t be sharing my private thoughts,’ he replies. ‘Where’s Hossein? We need the cart. I found a body on the rocks near the lighthouse.’
Emory approaches the boat. There’s a woman inside, or what’s left of one. Every limb is shattered, her face is crushed, and her chest is broken open. She’s wearing a grey jumpsuit similar to the one they found in the infirmary. It’s tattered, but the threads are acting like a net, holding the pieces together.
Bile rises into Emory’s throat, but she swallows it back down, refusing to look away.
This is what today is, she thinks. Forget this was a life. Forget this person breathed, and cried, and had dreams. None of that helps. Something here might be able to help me save the island.
The only thing that’s immediately evident is that this broken collection of body parts was once a human, like those they found in the infirmary. Emory can see her organs through her exploded stomach, and they’re in entirely the wrong place. This has to be the woman Niema was experimenting on.
‘‘What happened to her?’ asks Emory.
‘Somebody carried her to the cliffs and dropped her over the edge,’ Seth says, working the stiffness from his shoulders.
‘Did you see who?’
‘No.’
‘Was she dead when …’ The sentence is so horrible she can’t finish it.
‘Of course she was,’ he replies, narrowing his eyes. ‘Why would anybody drop her over the side if she wasn’t?’
Emory doesn’t answer that. She doesn’t have the heart, though she’s surprised by how quickly she’s stopped thinking about death like a villager.
Hossein emerges through the gate, pulling the wheelbarrow we now have to use to transport the dead. Seth lifts the body out of the boat, dropping it unceremoniously inside. The pieces land with a stomach-churning squelch.
‘Can you take her to the furnace?’ asks Seth.
‘The lab,’ corrects Emory. ‘Thea will want to see her.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Niema’s dead, and everything’s connected,’ she says, setting Hossein on his way with a nod.
Seth’s about to follow the wheelbarrow into the village when Emory catches his arm, her look conspiratorial.
‘You can’t tell Thea where you woke up this morning,’ she says. ‘Hephaestus found a memory extractor in the lighthouse. He’s planning to strap it to anybody who might know something about Niema’s murder.’
Seth regards her, before shaking his head in disappointment.
‘Abi told me everything that’s been happening,’ he says, hobbling away on his injured ankle. ‘I know the barrier’s down, and the fog is coming. I know that somebody purposely killed Niema, and I was the last person who saw her.’ He tugs at his T-shirt, the material cracking unpleasantly. ‘I have blood on my clothes I didn’t have last night. I’m involved somehow and if the elders think my death is what’s required to help the island then that’s what’s right.’
‘Why don’t you tell me what happened instead,’ she says. ‘I’ve been asked to investigate the murder.’
‘I’d rather tell the elders,’ he insists stubbornly.
‘Dad!’
‘Enough, Emory,’ he says, his anger giving way to shock as he enters the exercise yard, newly decorated for the funerals tonight.
It was only a few days ago that he said goodbye to his father, and it feels like only a few months since he was grieving Judith. Now the lanterns are up for Niema. The losses are coming too fast for him to handle.
Sucking in a deep breath, he limps forward.
People look up as he passes, their eyes widening. He’s breathing heavily, and grimacing in pain from the wound on his ankle. His shirt is soaked in sweat and blood, and he’s moving with an urgency that’s uncommon in the village.
He looks like a late arrival from the apocalypse.
‘How did you hurt yourself?’ asks Emory, trying to see the circular gouge above his ankle. The wound could have been made with the end of a jagged pipe, but she can’t immediately recall where one would be.
‘No idea,’ he says gruffly. He nods to the bruised faces in the exercise yard. ‘Doesn’t look like I was the only one, though.’