Alchemised, page 84
But maybe they’d been too late after all.
She jolted out of her seat. Pace reached out, trying to stay her, but Helena bolted from the room, running through the hospital and straight to the war room. There was no one there except a cadet, who looked up nervously and told her that she didn’t have the clearance to be there.
She glared at him. “Do you know where Crowther is? It’s urgent I speak to him.”
He shook his head, clearly sullen about guarding an empty room. “No. They were looking for him earlier. Disappeared last night, it seems.”
That made no sense.
It was as if she were standing in a trap laid with dominoes. She could feel them falling around her. Closing in.
“Do you know where Luc’s battalion is?”
The boy rolled his eyes and drew himself up. “You don’t have clearance to—”
Helena eyed the map on the table. There was a golden flag amid the sea of blue.
She turned and left before the cadet was done talking.
She ran to her lab, snatching up everything she could get her hands on. First, her new set of knives. Then a couple of obsidian knives Shiseo had been experimenting with. She ransacked her remaining healing supplies.
Shiseo entered with a box from the off-site lab as she was cramming a final vial into her overfilled satchel. He was probably the only person who would take a warning from her without asking for proof or an explanation.
“Get out of Headquarters,” she said. “Take everything you can and go back to the off-site lab. I’ll send word if it’s safe to come back. I can’t explain now, but something’s about to go wrong.”
She went to Crowther’s office, but it was empty. Where was he? There was no time to search. She headed out.
She traversed the island on foot. She knew from flyovers which parts were still intact, and that she was headed in the right direction when the air began to smell of smoke and burning flesh.
Whenever she spotted Resistance units, she asked for updates. Reports were contradictory, but there were consistent stories of many necrothralls dropping, leaving whole districts with only a few bewildered Aspirants to defend them. They were making piles of the necrothralls and burning them to ensure they couldn’t be recovered and reanimated.
With all the good news, Helena began to doubt herself. Was she paranoid? It was going so well. She refused to turn back, though; she had to find Luc.
A broad-shouldered commander that she vaguely recognised as part of Luc’s battalion stepped out of a building.
“Marino?” He said her name doubtfully.
“I need to see Luc,” she said, gripping an obsidian knife in her pocket so hard the handle bit into her skin.
“Well, he’s not here, he’s fighting,” the man said.
She must seem insane. “I know, but it’s urgent. I can work with the medics on-site until he comes back.”
The commander looked confused but didn’t object.
Healing at the front had none of the organisation used in the hospital. Most of her work was stopping blood loss by staunching and closing wounds, healing only the simple injuries. The priority was completing the most urgent interventions and then sending the patients on to Headquarters for full treatment.
The bombing was believed to be either an accident or an act of sabotage. No one even considered that the Resistance might have planted a bomb.
The miracles had begun, people were saying. The gods were on their side.
Victory Day, they were already calling it. They’d retake the whole city.
The injured combatants arriving slowed to a trickle because the battalion had pushed so far into the West Island, no one was being brought back.
The field commander was on the radio, wanting to know if they were supposed to relocate closer to the action. They’d had no instructions about whether to follow.
The current base of operations was in an old building on a mid-level of the city. It had solid walls and small windows. It was a good place to fall back, reasonably defensible. The air inside grew suffocating, warm from bodies and motion. The medical transport lorry had departed for the hospital and not yet returned.
Helena was closing a deep cut along an inner thigh when someone outside yelled, “They’ve taken Headquarters!”
Everyone looked up, staring at one another in confusion.
The lorry driver stumbled in, gasping for air, his head bleeding. “The Undying have taken Headquarters!”
No one spoke for a moment as shock rippled through the room. In all these years, Headquarters had never been touched. There were so many protective measures in place. It was the most secure place in the entire city.
Everyone seemed to snap back to life. There was a clamour of furious voices, everyone descending on the driver, demanding information. Helena pushed through, checking his head. He had a graze, and his hands were torn up.
“I went through all the checkpoints,” he said, allowing Helena to tilt his head to the side and close the wound. “Showed my papers, got waved through. Everything was—normal. Pulled in, the patients were being unloaded.” He mopped his forehead, smearing blood across his face. “Quiet, though. really quiet. I get fuckin’ awkward when it’s too quiet. Always rather talk, you know? Asked a guard a question. No answer. I thought all the blood on them was from carrying the wounded. Asked another question. They started moving towards me. That’s when I realised. They were all greys. Fresh killed, still warm. I drove out—ran over a few, didn’t look back. First checkpoint, tried to report it. They weren’t talking, either. Barricade was up. So I ran. Didn’t know where to go except come back.”
The building was palpably silent as everyone tried to absorb this. It was beyond belief.
The Undying would have needed extensive information about their security protocols to infiltrate, a spy with a high-level security clearance to get in, and intimate knowledge to create necrothralls with the right instructions. How could it have happened? With no word? No distress signals?
The commander tried to contact Headquarters by radio, but there was only static.
“Signal to anyone you can, without setting off any alarms. You, you, and you,” said the field commander, pointing at several men. “Go check the nearest checkpoint.”
Only two men came back.
“They were all dead,” said one, holding a hand against his stomach where blood seeped through his fingers. “They were waiting for us.”
The field commander sent out anyone capable of carrying word to intercept and recall any units or lorries they encountered, and then he sat down at the radio and began uttering a string of jargon into channel after channel, arguing furiously with everyone who answered, because no one wanted to believe the report.
The door burst open, and Luc strode in, Sebastian only a few steps behind him, concealing a limp, the rest of the battalion milling in back of him.
Luc’s face was pale and streaked with blood and smoke. Although he looked skeletally thin, his eyes were blistering, a brilliant feverish blue, but rather than acknowledge the field commander, his attention went directly to Helena.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
She stood up. “I need to talk to you, Luc. Urgently.”
He blinked and finally turned to his field commander. “Who let her in here?”
Before anyone could respond, Helena spoke again.
“It’s about Lila,” she said.
The words worked like magic. Luc’s attention snapped onto her, and his throat dipped as his eyes darted around the room.
“Fine,” he said after a beat. “Let’s talk. Sebastian, get everyone ready to move. We’re retaking Headquarters.”
“No, bring him, I’ll heal him while we talk,” Helena said. “It’ll save time.”
Luc eyed her warily but nodded. He seemed so familiar, and yet—there was something off about him.
You should have known. You should have noticed.
He turned to the field commander, who looked lost. “Take everyone who can fight and start moving back towards Headquarters. Sebastian and I will follow.”
There were rooms deeper in the warehouse that connected to the next building, and as they walked there, Helena slipped one of the obsidian knives into the waistband at the back of her skirt, hidden under her jacket.
Sebastian had cracked ribs and a gash to the leg where a knife had gotten through a weak point in his armour.
Helena gave him one of her last vials of medicine to help sustain the amount of tissue and blood she was about to regenerate. Before she could stop him, he unfastened and began removing his chest plate.
“What’s wrong with Lila?” Luc asked the instant the door was shut and the three of them were alone.
“Nothing,” Helena said. “She’s fine.”
Anger lit Luc’s face.
“I just didn’t realise you knew about the baby,” Helena said, meeting his eyes.
Sebastian started. “What baby?”
Luc tensed enough that his armour clicked, but his expression was controlled. He didn’t even look at Sebastian.
“What baby?” Sebastian asked again.
“That’s why you came here?” Luc asked, his blue eyes glinting cold. “Because of that?”
Helena’s heart was beating so fast, it was a thrum in her chest. “No, I came because I don’t understand why you wouldn’t let me heal Titus but you’ve been letting me take care of your heir.”
“Luc, what did you do?” Sebastian said.
Luc ignored his paladin; all his focus was on Helena. “Lila can protect herself. You’ve already done enough to Titus.”
Helena’s throat closed, but in that moment, she knew: This was not Luc.
She should have realised sooner, but she’d spent so much time fearing his rejection, dreading the inevitable schism, that she had not questioned its happening.
She looked away. “You know, I was in one of the field hospitals during the massacre. When the liches infiltrated using living bodies. Apparently, a living body won’t accept another soul; it’s like an infection, the body tries to burn it out. That’s why they came in sick with brain fevers, screaming and clawing at themselves, saying, ‘Get him out,’ until they died.”
She drew a slow breath as she finished healing Sebastian’s leg. “Do you know anyone who suffers from fevers like that, Luc?”
Sebastian had gone very still.
Luc shook his head. “Can’t say I do.”
He said it calmly, but there was a growing pressure in the air.
Helena found the cracks in Sebastian’s rib. “You surrendered yourself to save Lila. You knew it would cost everything, but you did it anyway. You told me that you chose her as your paladin because you wanted her by your side, so you’d have a chance of protecting her, even though you knew you weren’t supposed to. I know how it killed you every time she got hurt. You didn’t even want me to clear her for combat again after she lost her leg.” She kept looking for any glimmer of the person she knew. “Now she’s the mother of your child, and instead of getting her to safety, you’ve kept her in isolation for months. And right this minute, you have every reason to think she’s been captured, that she’d be one of the first people they’d kill, but instead of running to her, you’re here with me. Luc would never do that.”
“Luc, what have you done?” Sebastian was staring at him in horror.
Helena asked, “Who are you?”
It was like watching a curtain being pulled back.
One moment, the expression and characteristics were still there, and then Luc sighed and seemed to vanish beneath his own skin.
“Well.” He grinned at them both, a smile like a slit throat. “I thought you’d realise months ago, but you’re all such fools when it comes to the Holdfasts.”
Sebastian trembled beneath Helena’s fingers as they both stared at this thing standing in front of them.
Helena’s hand slipped to her back. “Who are you?” she asked again.
“I’ve gone by so many names, I don’t even remember them all,” said the person in Luc’s body. “Once, long ago, my brother called me Cetus.”
Helena’s eyes widened.
“Cetus?” she said.
He inclined his head, but she shook hers.
That would make him older than Paladia, older than the Holdfasts, older than the first Necromancy War. No one could live that long. Cetus was an invention, centuries of alchemists pseudonymously writing under one name. Not a person.
It had to be a lie, an attempt to distract her.
“I checked Luc,” Helena said, trying to keep her voice steady. “There was no talisman. How is this possible?”
“Cetus” tilted his head to one side so that Luc’s neck popped, as if Luc’s body were a suit of armour that didn’t fit properly.
“My brother and I were born entwined. We entered the world as one when we slid from our mother’s womb. We’d sucked her dry from within, and the fires of her pyre licked across our skin, branding us from birth. Cursed children, they called us, when they called us anything at all. Our shared blood has endured for centuries and now we’re one again, as we always should have been.” He gestured down at himself.
“You’re—related to Luc?” Helena said in disbelief.
The smile split Luc’s face again.
“You should have seen Orion. He had such a way about him. People worshipped the ground he walked on. He could charm with a look. He found us sponsors, lodging, funds so I could do the Great Work and he could find audiences to adore him. He would do anything for adoration, and I taught him the tricks to do it. Gold and fire, and he thought that should be enough for us; we could buy ourselves a kingdom.” Cetus looked scornful. “But I had greater aspirations. Kings and kingdoms rise and fall. We were made for eternity, my brother and I, we were gods.
“I lacked my brother’s natural charm, but I’m a fair actor. Orion drew so much attention, most overlooked me, so I pretended to be Orion, coaxed just a few of his followers into cooperation. I needed trust, the kind that he earned so easily. It was necessary for my work, and he had always benefitted most, but when Orion learned what I’d done, the source of this new power, he called me a monster and left me. I knew he’d come back, once I discovered the true secrets of immortality. When he realised that humans were mere puppets and saw what I could offer, he would beg for me to take him back.”
“You were the Necromancer,” Helena said, realising. “The one who built the cult in Rivertide. After you made that Stone, you called Orion here, but when he saw what you’d done, he tried to kill you.”
Rage flashed across Cetus’s face. “His mind was poisoned by those paladins of his. If he’d come alone, he would have seen reason—”
“Why did you come back now?” Helena asked. “You disappeared for half a millennium. The Holdfasts don’t want anything from you. Why are you helping Morrough?”
She studied Luc, or what was left of him. Gaunt, sweated down to nearly bone. He was dying; it was just a slower death than what she’d witnessed in the field hospital.
Luc laughed. It was the timbre and note she’d heard a thousand times over the years, but the malice and mockery in it were all new. “I am Morrough.”
Sebastian shot to his feet, but before he had even drawn a weapon, Luc had his sword out and stopped him, tsking.
“A piece of him, I should say. When young Luc so boldly surrendered himself, I was curious how alike we were. I have lived for so long now, and he was so—fresh. I bound a piece of my soul to my bone and placed it inside him. I’d hoped he would accept me—hoped that we could be one as my brother and I should have been—but he’s as self-righteous as Orion. It’s fortunate that healer Boyle is so eager to please, she keeps him sedated for me.”
“Luc’s still alive, then?” Helena’s voice shook.
“Of course. This is his body after all.” Morrough, or Cetus, or whoever he was, gestured downwards. “I’m just a shadow in the back of his mind, or I would have been, if he hadn’t gone so mad trying to tear me out that they drugged him to a stupor. Gave me free rein.”
“You’re puppeting him like a necrothrall? Is that how you infiltrated Headquarters?”
Luc’s features twisted in offence. “I’m not a puppet. I know what’s in the interest of my primary self, and I have found the means of pursuing it. You can kill me, and it’ll do nothing—only Luc will die. As for your Headquarters—” He shook his head. “It seems that young Luc isn’t your only traitor.”
“But what is all this for?” Helena asked. Apollo, Luc, Lila…she couldn’t understand. “Why come back to Paladia after all these centuries?”
“Because I want to erase my brother’s legacy the same way he destroyed mine.” Fury swept across Luc’s face. “He tried to blot my name from history, to discredit any of my work that he couldn’t steal and claim as his own. Attributed my discoveries to charlatans, taking my research and making himself a god with it. It’s only fair to return the favour.”
Helena shook her head. She didn’t believe that. Morrough had too many opportunities to wipe out the Holdfasts; even Kaine had remarked on it, that Luc was being intentionally spared.
She thought of Luc, cut open on that table, all those decaying organs inside him.
“You’re dying,” she said. “Your original body, wherever it is. You came to Paladia because all the power in the world isn’t enough to keep regenerating forever. There’s a limit and you’ve reached it and you can’t push beyond that no matter how much vitality and how many souls you harvest. When you had Apollo killed, you took his heart, and when you had Luc, we couldn’t heal his organ damage because those organs were yours. You’re harvesting Orion’s descendants for parts. And—” It dawned on her slowly. “—that’s—that’s why Lila’s pregnant. You’re making yourself another descendant. That’s why you wouldn’t let her go to Novis: because you’ll need that baby next.”
