From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 27
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
"I wanted it to," she whispered. That was how she'd made ice. "Well, I want this lock undone." She stared at it, willing it to happen, reaching out with her mind to the little teeth and tumblers she knew lie at the heart of every lock. Inside were delicate mechanisms that thieves took a lifetime to learn how to overcome, and she imagined them falling perfectly in place, along with the satisfying clunk of the bolt sliding aside.
None of that happened.
Superheated metal sprang to mind, but then so did explaining a puddle of molten slag that would most likely set the floor on fire, and she dismissed it immediately.
Stopping bullets.
Starting knives.
Energy! Bullets had lots of it. A knife needed it in order to fly straight up and imbed itself halfway into a solid wood beam. Tables even more.
Energy, but from where? Where could she get it? No, where had she gotten it, she corrected herself. She'd done it already!
Then the answer she'd awaited struck like thunderclap. It came firing out of her memory hole straight at her and she reached out to pluck it from thin air, just like the bullet. When she saw what it was, she pulled it in and hugged it against herself in glee. Her dragon had coughed up a single, shining coin.
On it was engraved a single word: matter.
November shot to her feet in triumph. Matter and energy were the same thing! Of course! It was so obvious now. One could be exchanged for the other, theoretically. Only it wasn't theory any more, it was her stark reality.
With her new prize in mind, she opened herself to her obstacle and gently encouraged the laws of physics to cooperate.
With a groaning, shrieking crack, they did. November felt as much as heard the bolt smash itself into the locking mechanism, spitting a single spark out of the keyhole.
"I did it!" she squeaked in surprise.
Gingerly, she reached a disbelieving hand towards the knob and twisted.
The door swung freely and silently aside for the one who had tamed it, and November greeted the door opposite hers with a wicked grin.
Exiting into halls she had all to herself, she stalked them like they belonged to her. Even in the dimness allowed by the ambient light from outside, she strode with confidence down the corridor and towards the stairs.
In the still silence of the entire women's wing after midnight, the sound of her dress swishing against itself was like the roaring of the ocean, a rhythmic, rasping hiss that seemed to carry for miles.
"I hate dresses," she muttered. The hissing stopped. The thought was not a new one. In the darkened hall, November stood rock still, allowing any other connected thoughts the chance to bubble up alongside it without fear of being jostled away.
She felt the shape of familiarity on her tongue as she mouthed the words again, and knew that it was a truth. She'd been wearing trousers when she'd woken up.
A lady, out alone on Christmas Eve in trousers wasn't scandalous—it was right, because she had wanted to. Looking down at the drab grey triangle that flared out from her hips, her lips curled into a grimace. There was nothing she could do about it, however, so she had no choice but to bear the discomfort.
Instead, she turned this new bit of information into confidence and continued on.
She ascended the twisting stairs in silence, and found the door to the third floor unlocked. A shout prevented her from wondering at the oddness of that fact. Placing her hand on the knob, she was nearly knocked over with the intensity of the feeling that burst from it, like it had been electrified. She yanked her fingers off of it as quickly as if she had been shocked, but the feeling persisted like the echoes of thunder off of distant hills. Someone on the other side needed help, but not in the general sense that everyone in the hospital needed help. It vibrated November's bones and charged the hairs on her skin, and she felt the same draw she had felt downstairs, only magnified by proximity. Pushing the door open, she found it was heavier than the door on her floor. Only once it was open fully did she understand why.
It was heavily soundproofed.
Standing there without it in the way, November was peppered with noises she knew she would never forget, no matter how severe the blow to her head. It wasn't the screeching or screams, it was the whimpering. November's chest tightened, but she pushed herself deeper into the wretchedness.
Having no idea what she was looking for and regretting her decision to climb the stairs already, they were slow, halting steps that took her through what someone somewhere had probably penned as a version of Hell.
Though the main door may have been soundproof, the doors that defined November's field of vision were not. The slats that allowed a view in were terribly ineffective at keeping voices from getting out.
It wasn't a constant, haranguing cacophony, and that's what made it worse. It was sporadic and random, coming from every direction with no pattern as to where it would come from next. From ahead and to the right, an inhuman moan, like a soul was being drawn out slowly and fed directly into a meat grinder. From behind and the left, a strangled, gargling shriek that sounded like a banshee having her head pulled underwater by the noose around her neck.
The doors were all locked, and those suffering behind them were no physical threat, November had to keep reminding herself, because her mental state was already taking a battering.
From her left came a different sound. The sound of struggle. A woman was trying to scream but couldn't. It wasn't pitiful and it wasn't strange, it was fearful and angry. It was also not alone. When November trained her eyes on the door it was coming from, the pull became a yank, and she felt compelled to find out what was on the other side.
She sidled up to it and brought her ear to the slat in the centre, listening as hard as she could. There were at least two men in the room, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. The only sounds that made it out were the sibilant ones, and all she could hear was a whispering susurrus that wanted very much to pretend it wasn't there.
There was no reason beyond her bizarre hunch to believe that 'the new one' was behind that door, but given how upset the smothered screams November was hearing were, she supposed it didn't matter. If she was right that something untoward was going on in the hospital, and that she may at some point be a target of it, she had to know. With no past to guide her, she needed new information. If she was to solve the puzzle before her, indeed if there even was a puzzle before her, she was going to have to accept the fact that she had no idea what it was going to look like until it was done.
With a deep breath, she pressed her fingers against the cold metal until her skin was pure white, and slid the viewing window silently aside with excruciating slowness.
The light from within was blinding to her dark-accustomed eyes, and she had to look away to let them adjust.
"Just relax, it will all be over soon," said a male voice. Garland's voice. "You won't pose a danger to anyone anymore, and we can remove that gag from your silver tongue. Then we can converse as equals, and you'll be all the better for it."
Then came a sound that made November's blood freeze. It was such a light, delicate sound, that in another context might have been pleasant—one that had been made in the creation of some of the greatest works of art in history, revealing the sculptures lurking within solid stone.
The soft tap of a hammer against a chisel.
Squinting, November shoved her face back before the gap she'd made just as the soft crack of bone snapped through the air.
Not a chisel. A pick.
'The New One' was seated in a chair with her hands tied behind her back and her mouth tightly gagged. Long blonde curls hung down from a head that was tilted back awkwardly, held that way by the strong hands of an orderly November had never seen before.
A thin steel rod was being shoved up the woman's nose as another stranger slowly shortened it with a tiny brass hammer.
Her lungs were heaving in panic, her shining blue eyes wild and searching. November watched in horror as they widened in pain, and the call that had drawn her here became a silent scream. November winced at the intensity of the alien feeling, overwhelmed by something she couldn't explain.
Then, in the next tap, the call ended and the light in the woman's eyes winked out. She let out a long, shuddering exhale that twisted November's guts on a such a visceral level she doubled over in a pain that was almost existential.
Whoever the woman had been when November first saw her, she was someone else now. November forced herself to look again, to bear witness for this stranger who had suffered a kind of living murder right before her eyes—for the woman was still alive. No longer frantic, her eyes were placid and docile. She no longer struggled, or moved at all.
When the spike was removed, it was the lack of blood that made November sick.
One hand flew to her mouth as the other shut the slat as quickly as she could before she hurtled down the hall, through the soundproof door and down the stairs, her terror such that she only made it to the first landing before smashing into the wall and sinking to the floor in a tightly-packed ball.
How naive, how stupid she was. Is that what had happened to Mary, too? The poor girl was scatterbrained and could barely recall her own name half the time. The idea that she had been made that way drew the tears that November had been trying not to shed. Though Mary's eyes were alive, they weren't her eyes, were they? The Mary she knew wasn't the Mary that had come through those gates.
Garland. He had been there. He watched it happen. By the look on his face, he had ordered it.
And the only reason it hasn't happened to you is because you were already damaged when you came in, November thought.
But why? Why them?
A beautiful woman that was dangerous if she talked…
November thought of those fading eyes, of Mary's false ones, and a new kind of darkness settled in like a shawl made from the cloak of Death himself. It was cloying and sticky, and so very heavy. Like wet silk, it clung to November perfectly, conforming to her until it was her. Blackness, awful, terrible blackness that dimmed an already dim stairwell. Above and below, there seemed to be less light in the world then there had been a moment before. But it was a dimness that emanated; from the walls, the floor, everywhere she looked, the dimness was coming from the building itself.
Is this what the world looked like to Mary? Is it what the woman upstairs saw when she was brought here? Did she still see it?
There was something between them they all shared, but November didn't know what. Like her memories, the answer was just beyond her reach, and she understood then the special kind of hate the gods must have had for Tantalus to torment him they way they had—always reaching and never grasping.
But she was not Tantalus, and this was not Tartarus. It was a torment, but not one designed by gods. The answer was within her, and she could reach what she so grasped for, she just had to figure out how.
November drove herself to her feet, supporting herself with one hand against the wall as she stared down towards the first floor while the headache that had been threatening earlier arrived in full force.
There were answers elsewhere, not only within herself, she realised.
Her footfalls echoed up the stairwell as she gained the ground floor again, and she arrowed straight for a room she knew would be unoccupied. She strode with purpose down the empty hall, no longer skulking and sneaking, until she arrived at the door to Garland's office.
She tested the knob to find she had not been so lucky that he had forgotten to lock it before leaving on his heinous task. It had to be done quietly, and different from how she'd done her own lock, as that had been too dangerous and too loud. She wished she could come up with way to make it reversible, but she didn't think so fine a task was even possible, given how blunt a tool she had been thus far.
Her mind went back to heat, because it was both of the things she wanted, but it was also too dangerous. Or was it?
You don't have to melt the whole thing, she managed to think through her scattered wits, just the important bits.
Pressing a bare hand to the cold steel, she struggled to feel the structure of it take shape in her mind. The delicate clockwork of pins and tumblers within, together formidable to even an experienced lock-picker, were individually fragile.
Choosing one at random, she tried to look at it the same way she had seen Bertram's poker: individual parts, discrete elements that made up the whole.
Atoms. Molecules. November smiled grimly at the words, welcoming them to her like the familiar friends she needed in that moment. In Bertram's cabin, she had still been so shaken up from the pub she hadn't even recognised what she was seeing at the time.
But now she knew; she embraced them wholeheartedly and made a request: move.
Deep in the heart of the lock, a single pin began to glow and deform as the very foundations of its structure began to behave in a way quite contrary to how it had since it was cast, and began to revert to how it had looked as it had been. Red then orange then white, it became a teardrop, which itself became a sphere for a fraction of a second before splattering against its brothers below and rapidly cooling in a mutant echo of their shape.
She repeated this several times, letting each one cool off enough that it didn't eat through the rest of the housing, until the bolt rattled loosely in the cylinder.
Removing one of the pins from her cap, she slid it into the jamb of the door, and massaged the bolt from its home until it was clear enough she could open the door.
But as she rose to do so, sparks and spots exploded across her vision and her hand flew to her temple. She doubled back over again, collapsing to one knee as some unseen force stabbed her in the head with a blade made of ice.
She sat on the cold floor in agony for what felt like years with her teeth gritted so hard she was relieved they didn't explode. Her jaw began to ache and pain spidered out from her bruise like lightning firing out of a black cloud, searing everything it touched.
Through the pain, she knew she couldn't be found where she was, and struggled to get to her feet. When gravity yanked her back down again, she began to crawl.
She'd left her shoes off to stay quiet, but now she wished she had them to provide some kind of purchase on a floor that was a lot slicker now that she was much more familiar with it. Fear and agony dragged her along the worn floorboards, her face an inch from ten thousand footsteps, and she felt like she was scraping every one of them off as she dragged herself down the hall, pulling on door frames when she could.
It was no good. At the rate she was crawling, she would never make it back to her room before she passed out, to say nothing of managing the stairs. The next doorway she came to, she struggled just to turn her head upward enough to find the knob. As the tiny chunk of brass wavered and shrank before her, she strained with one arm to reach it. Every movement of her head was agony, and she was forced to reach for it blindly. The sound of her fingers scratching against the wood seemed deafeningly loud, as if her nails were being dragged across her eardrums rather than an inanimate door.
When she felt her fingers brush against chill metal, she scrabbled at the smooth surface, willing her fingerprints to be enough to find the purchase she needed. Squeaking and slipping, she hurled a final lunge at it and it twisted. The door swung away from her and she dragged herself past it, spittle exploding past her clenched teeth.
It didn't matter what room she'd found herself in—she had no power left to find another one. Her eyes were still screwed shut when the pain fled with her consciousness.
1919
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
The words stared up at November, stark black against the fading brown of pages turned one too many times. She had grabbed the book more or less at random, as she was no longer keen on her hunches amounting to much of anything, but when she got to that passage, she no longer wanted them to mean anything if that was what she was going to get.
As she sat in the rocking chair before the library's picture window like an old spinster, the chord that Mr. Carroll's words had struck continued to reverberate through her mind. She wasn't mad. She wasn't.
Just dangerous, to yourself as much as anyone, she thought. Her head ached, her body felt as though she had extruded herself through a mangle, and she knew she was coming nearer and nearer the end of whatever rope life had left her when she'd clambered out of that hole.
Whether her subconscious had led her into the library or if it was just pure, dumb, luck, she couldn't say. It didn't matter anymore, anyway.
Coming to the hospital had seemed so reasonable. What else could she have done, besides live on the streets and starve until her memories came back, if they ever did? Maybe she should have gotten herself arrested, at least then she would have been confined to a cell and she could resign herself to that. She would be taken care of and reasonably safe, but devoid of the hope that was currently eating her alive. Hope that there was someone out there to claim her; that she might ever be able to explain the litany of impossible things she'd done. They were dim hopes, but real.
She sighed and looked up from the book, watching the birds flit about the trees just beyond the border of her world. If she found herself resentful of hope, then perhaps she was mad, if only a little. It was only a matter of time before she pitched herself completely over the edge, at that point. Or off the roof.
So proud she had been of what she'd done to the locks, she hadn't anticipated paying so steep a price for it, or what she'd found once she had. If she'd known ahead of time, she wouldn't have done it. Or would she have? She didn't even know anymore. What she'd seen was horrifying, what she'd felt afterwards perhaps more so. The world still seemed dimmer, somehow, and the cloying stickiness was still there, but as long as she didn't move, it was bearable.
