Page 156 of Alchemised

H ELENA HAD RARELY VISITED THE W EST I SLAND even before the war, but she knew she needed to head south, and down to the lower levels of the island, to reach its small port.

It was dark and quiet; in the plaza, one might not even realise there was a war.

The lifts would require fare and identification, assuming that they were even operational, but there were always stairways, some large and others designed for maintenance and service workers.

They would be the most efficient. When she came across gates, the locks were usually simple enough for basic transmutational lock picking.

She was almost to the lowest levels before she saw anyone.

She reached a gate, and just as she got it unlocked, two people came around the turn of the stairs, heading up.

Helena tried to tuck herself against the wall and let them pass without drawing attention to herself, but when she risked a glance up, she gave a gasp of surprise.

It was Crowther. He met her eyes dully, no expression on his face, but he stopped in his tracks as the person beside him turned and looked at Helena.

Ivy gave a small smile. “You got out, too. I hoped you would.”

Helena stared at her in horror, looking again at Crowther, blank-faced and empty-eyed. He was dead.

“What did you do?” Helena’s voice shook.

The smile on Ivy’s face vanished. “The Necromancer has Sofia. He said he’d give her back to me if I gave him the Headquarters and Crowther. They wanted him alive, but they said it was all right if I had to kill him. So I did.”

Because Crowther was believed to be the one making the obsidian. Helena’s head swam.

“You’re the one who gave them all the information?” she said. “Who let them into Headquarters?”

It wasn’t Cetus. Here stood the real traitor.

“I had to,” Ivy said. “It’s the only way to get Sofia back.”

“Ivy, your sister’s dead.”

“No!” Ivy shook her head. “She’s alive. I’ve seen her, she knows me when I visit her. He’ll give her back to me when I bring him Crowther.”

“How could you?” was all Helena could say. “All those people—”

“They would have all died anyway,” Ivy said with a callous toss of her head. “This way, it was quick. I made sure the plan had them all die quick.” She shook her head. “I’m not a traitor. They were going to die no matter what.”

Ivy turned and continued, Crowther’s corpse behind her.

T HE W EST P ORT L AB WAS a huge, windowless building, originally built as an industrial shipping warehouse. Kaine had given the Eternal Flame an interior blueprint for the lab earlier that year, but there had never been any context to use the information.

There were only small pipes for airflow throughout the building, intended to ward off external pyromancy attacks. The ventilation was poor. Which was exactly what Helena needed.

There were a few smaller buildings scattered around it, and she eyed them warily as she passed.

As she stood studying the warehouse, a necrothrall approached her; her casual presence was enough to merit investigation, but a solitary, unarmed figure wasn’t cause for alarm.

As it neared, Helena pressed her hand against her neck, clearing her head again, and then reached out and pulled the energy out of the necrothrall, as easily as plucking a piece of lint off a jacket.

The corpse sagged against her, the smell of rot closing in. She shoved her own resonance through the dead body, reanimating it again.

It wasn’t a very good corpse. It was in the early stages of bloat, the tissue and ligaments all damaged.

She was careful to use only a little energy.

Her new necrothrall turned and held the next necrothrall in place while she repeated the process until there were more than twenty greys gathered around her.

Her focus blurred as the edge of her consciousness fragmented into all the different shadowed minds, but it was only the edges this time; her mind remained her own.

“Find the openings,” she told them as she began activating and distributing her bombs.

The effect of the sedative was worse now with the necromancy.

The focus required was exhausting. It was fortunate they were all intended to perform nearly identical tasks.

She gritted her teeth as she began transmuting each bomb, performing the final step before sending the necrothralls away as quickly as possible.

It was a delicate balance between staying far enough away that she wouldn’t get caught in the blast zone, but near enough that the phosphorus wouldn’t ignite prematurely after the initial activation.

She watched them reach the warehouse and start climbing up the walls.

She started to back away, and her eyes went out of focus as she followed the greys, up, up. No pain centres to feel their fingers shredding.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus on their progress.

They reached the pipes and slits in the warehouse. A few were on the roof, pulling off the vent covers. Her heart pounded as one of the necrothralls with clearer vision held a sphere up to the pipe and confirmed that it would fit through.

In unison, the necrothralls pulled out the delicate pins that Shiseo had transmuted for her, then dropped the spheres down the pipes. Sending them into the reinforced, sealed-off warehouse.

As the last of them dropped, Helena turned and started running.

There was an almost perfectly simultaneous muffled bang behind her as the initial blast went off. She looked back and saw tiny clouds of dust, some glittering, some white.

The world exploded.

The air was shattered with the violence of the blast, a wave that twisted the air as Helena ran, a searing heat that seemed to chase her down.

The fire was trying to swallow everything, cannibalising itself as it burned, raging and starved, dragging in the air to fuel itself until it created a tornado of wind. Every pyromancy sin Helena had ever warned Luc over, she’d committed.

Warehouses were designed for storage, not structural integrity.

The blueprints had shown exactly where the few structural supports were located.

The building collapsed in on itself and then blew apart with another sudden explosion.

Whatever weapons Bennet had been developing, whatever dangerous, flammable, incendiary resources they had from their own bombs, the fire had found them.

The ground moved like liquid under her feet. The paving stones cracking open.

She was flung against one of the buildings.

Fire was still roaring when she blinked again. The sedative had absorbed the pain of the blow. She lay on the ground, trying to catch her breath, a pulsing throb that should be agony pressing against her skull.

Everything was on fire. She could feel the heat, could dimly make out more explosions. There was a sharp, painful ringing in her ears that muted all other sounds. She looked where the lab had been, but there was only rubble and flames.

Her legs wobbled, giving out when she tried to stand. She collapsed, gasping unsteadily. Her lungs were burning, but breathing made her head swim.

There might be nullium.

She pulled off her jacket and pressed it over her mouth and nose, trying to breathe slowly.

Get up. Run.

But she was so tired. Nothing felt real. It had to be a nightmare. All that time. All those years, everything she’d done, telling herself it would all be worth it in the end. All lies. She’d killed Luc. The first person she’d ever been meant to save, she’d stabbed through the heart.

She lay falling into her loss. Pinned by the weight of her grief. How could she get up now? How could she bear it?

Kaine.

Her eyes snapped open, and she clawed at her throat, trying to push back the sedation, fumes filling her lungs. She’d told him she’d be waiting for him.

If she didn’t go back, he’d return to find a mess of hastily assembled explosives and her scrawled note.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

She forced herself up. She wasn’t going to die. She wouldn’t leave him behind. She had to go back.

She managed a few steps before her legs gave out again. There were figures approaching through the smoke, but she couldn’t make her legs hold her.

She scrabbled in her pocket, finding the vial and syringe she’d put there. Last resort.

She pulled it out, hand shaking as she stabbed the needle into the vial and pulled up the plunger, filling it. She drew a deep breath and braced herself as she jabbed it straight into her heart and injected it.

The cocktail of stimulants had been formulated for Kaine.

It hit like a shock wave, energy roaring through her body, ripping away any last remnants of the sedative and Kaine’s transmutation.

Energy seemed to hum inside her veins. She could feel her mind sharpening, everything growing brighter, clearer.

She leapt to her feet and ran faster than she’d ever moved in her life. She could barely feel her body. She knew she needed to run.

Something tackled her to the ground. She twisted, going for her knives, but she felt fur. She grabbed hold of her attacker and shoved her resonance through, finding all those places where transmutation had stitched the creature together. She unravelled them.

The chimaera died instantly.

She scrambled up, whipping out an obsidian knife as necrothralls reached her. She tore through them, barely feeling their attempts to grab her. Her eyes were locked on the high towers of the island. She was going that way. She’d get back. She’d be there, waiting for Kaine.

She was not going to die.

There was no time to reanimate the necrothralls to fight for her.

She destroyed everything in her path with savage efficiency.

There was so much power exploding through her body, her heart threatened to tear in two if she didn’t keep moving.

She fought free and bolted again. The blood was roaring in her ears.

More figures emerged from the smoke. Helena stopped short in horror.

Among them stood Althorne.