Page 135 of Alchemised

Mandl looked unfazed. “You’re not going to make me talk,” she said. “I used to break my bones and gouge myself open just for fun. Just to feel something inside that hole they raised us in. You’re too weak to hurt me, Traitor.”

“You’d be surprised,” Helena said, heart pounding.

Mandl just laughed.

The bodies from the warehouse were such a fresh tragedy. All those people, moments from rescue, and now they were gone because Mandl wanted to hurt the Eternal Flame and the Resistance even more than she cared about freedom.

Helena didn’t delude herself that the Eternal Flame had the degree of moral superiority that they tried to claim, but how could anyone find the Undying better?

“Why were you keeping the prisoners in tanks like that?” she asked, maintaining a calm, steady voice.

Mandl smiled, her wide mouth stretching across her face. Her fingers twirled even though her wrists were shackled with inert iron. “Come on, try touching me. Let’s see who breaks first.”

Helena’s anger sat like a boulder in the pit of her stomach as she moved towards Mandl. “I’ll admit, you’re probably better than me at hurting people. I can’t beat you at your own game, but we’re playing mine.”

Mandl’s eyes flicked over to the door and then at Crowther, the first glimmer of nervousness. She forced a laugh. “What can you do?”

Helena was behind Mandl now. “I don’t think you know this trick.”

Mandl tried to crane her neck, attempting to twist and see what Helena was doing. She jerked away as Helena slid her bare hand up from the nape of her neck, fingers lacing through the short hair. Mandl’s hands twisted, trying to break loose from the shackles.

“It’s all right.” Helena’s voice was as practised and clinical as her resonance as she blocked the right nerves along the spine, making sure not to stop Mandl’s heart or suspend anything vital. “I guess there’s something to being Institute-trained after all.”

Helena slowed her heartbeat, stifling the rising terror. Like a gas valve, tinkering with the cocktail of hormones racing through Mandl, telling her to be calm, that Helena was not a threat.

“You want to tell me everything I ask,” Helena said softly.

Mandl seized violently, trying to resist, her body lurching. Her resonance flared, trying to push back against Helena, but she was too late.

“Bitch—traitorous bitch—” she slurred as Helena winnowed through her raging emotions.

Mandl’s eyes lost focus. Her mind and body were in direct conflict, and it was impossible for her to struggle as Helena slipped into her memories.

Kaine had made the process seem simple. It was much more difficult than Helena had expected.

The noise of another mind. There was so much sound and energy, and Mandl’s panic and attempts at resisting made it so much harder.

Kaine had always let Helena’s thoughts wander, catching them as they passed.

Helena couldn’t help but think there were easier ways to do it.

“What’s your name?”

Elsbeth.

The name rang from a dozen directions all over inside Mandl’s mind, coalescing at the forefront.

Mandl’s face was slack, a trickle of drool running down one side of her mouth, but her eyes followed Helena with growing fury. Her mind trying and failing to recoil at the way Helena was manipulating her.

“Why were you keeping prisoners in tanks like that?”

Mandl tried to resist, but a memory flitted across her consciousness. A man in uniform was speaking: “—keep the best specimens …” Mandl’s attention in the memory wandered to a buzzing fly and everything went out of focus.

Helena tried again. “If you had a new prisoner, what would you do with them?”

Memory fragments were like tatters of moving pictures, sounds and sensation all whipping by as if carried by wind. She heard voices, but they were too distant to make out.

She saw the walls of a warehouse, greenish light from the tinted windows. A boy whose face she half recognised, writhing.

Everything blurred, but a tingle of anticipation ran along her spine.

The gleam of a hypodermic needle in the low light. A finger flicking it to knock loose an air bubble. A glimpse of the boy again.

Blur.

Rows of the bodies laid out on gurneys next to the tanks. A bloated corpse with yellowish eyes, grey discoloured skin. Squeezing the arm of a young man and saying, I’ll take this one next.

A printed form requesting ten female subjects. Signed Artemon Bennet. Mandl’s hands pushing a cart with the boy lying on it, the mask and tubes still attached as she wheeled him into an empty room.

Shutting the door softly. Another shiver along her spine.

Helena ripped her mind free, snatching her hands away, wanting to scrub them until the skin came off.

“What is it for?” she asked. Her skin was crawling. She didn’t want to go back into Mandl’s mind.

Mandl was breathing unsteadily, her pupils dilated so wide that the blue irises barely showed.

“I’ll pull it out if you don’t answer,” Helena said, gripping Mandl by the hair. “Do you prefer that?”

Mandl’s expression twisted, and she spat. “It keeps them fresh.”

“Fresh for what?”

“Anything. New bodies for the Undying. Test subjects. Thralls. The thralls last longer when they’re new.” Mandl was panting openmouthed, her lips growing chapped.

“How long are they kept there?”

Mandl smiled cruelly. “There’s high demand, so usually not more than a few months. Electric shock keeps the muscle toned. We slow the vitals.”

It felt an eternity before Crowther was satisfied with the amount of information Helena pulled out. By that time, Mandl’s eyes were so disoriented that they looked in different directions. She’d grown feverish and was slumped forward, trembling.

“Well,” Crowther said, sneering down at Mandl, “it seems you’ll make a passable replacement for Ivy.”

Helena said nothing. She never wanted to do it ever again. She regretted agreeing to it.

She turned wordlessly to leave.

“Traitor …” Mandl called after her.