Page 2 of Alchemised

W HEN LIGHT CAME, IT NEARLY SPLIT H ELENA’S brain open.

There was screaming.

“Fuck! How’s this one awake?” A voice broke through the sensory agony.

Light was stabbing her. A spike driven through her eyes, burrowing into her skull. Gods, her eyes.

She writhed. The brightness blurred, careening. The burn of fluid rushed down her throat. A roar in her ears.

Slick fingers dug into her arms, against bone, dragging her up. Air hit her lungs, sending them seizing as the fluid came back up.

“Fuck this stasis gel. Can’t get a decent grip. Make her shut up! She’s about to drown herself.”

Her head slammed into something as she was dropped. Rough stone tore her hands. She scrabbled blindly, trying to push herself up. Her eyes squeezed shut, but the light was still a knife in her skull. A hard object was ripped off the back of her neck, and something warm and wet ran across her skin.

“How the fuck is she awake? Someone must’ve fucked the dosage on this one. Don’t let her crawl off.”

Her arms were gripped again, and she was heaved up from the ground.

She tore herself free, forcing her eyes open. All she could make out was blinding white. She lunged towards it.

“You fucking bitch, you cut me!”

Pain exploded across the back of her head.

T HERE WAS STILL LIGHT WHEN she regained consciousness.

It came slowly, as though she were underwater, swimming towards a surface that rippled just beyond reach, consciousness seeping back in. Her eyes were closed; the light was just beyond them. She could feel the pain of it already.

She was lying on something hard. A cold table, its metal inert beneath her fingers.

She could dimly make out voices, muffled but close.

“Well?” A woman’s voice. “Any others?”

“No.” A man’s voice. That first voice from earlier. “We’ve pulled the rest out. It was just this one stored wrong.”

“And she was conscious when you opened the tank?”

“Sure was. Started screaming when we lifted the top and pulled her up. Gave me a heart attack, I can tell you. Willems was so startled, he nearly drowned her, and when we did get her out, she was fucking feral. Scratched the shit out of me until we got her knocked out. Had the intravenous and all, but the sedation was turned off. Someone must’ve bumped it. ”

“That doesn’t explain the lack of records for this one,” said the woman. “Seems odd.”

“Probably done in a hurry. Couldn’t have been kept for long. Even the ones properly done are mostly dead. Lot of the tanks are just soup and bones.” The man laughed nervously.

“We’ll know more once I have her in Central,” the woman said. She sounded disinterested. “You were right to call this in. It’s anomalous. Let me know how many of the rest wake. Any corpses intact enough for reanimation go to the mines. The living stock goes to the Outpost.”

“Of course. And you’ll put in a good word for me, right? It would mean a lot if it comes from you.” The man sounded hopeful, and his chuckle was forced. “Not getting any younger, you know.”

“The High Necromancer has many petitions to consider. Your work will not be forgotten. Have a lorry made ready for transport.”

There were retreating footsteps followed by an irritated sigh.

“There’s no need to feign unconsciousness; I know you’re awake. Open your eyes,” the woman said. “I’ve altered your senses, so the light shouldn’t be too much.”

Helena peered cautiously through her lashes.

The world around her was greenish dusk, every form shadow-like. The vague shape of a person moved on her right side.

Her eyes followed sluggishly.

“Good. You’re following instructions and tracking motion.”

Helena tried to speak, but a low gasping emerged.

There was a click of a pen and papers shuffling.

“So, Prisoner 1273, or are you Prisoner 19819? You have two inmate numbers, and there’s no record of either in this facility. Do you happen to have a name?”

Helena said nothing. Now that the mere concept of light was not a terror, she could think a little. She was still a captive.

The woman gave an impatient huff. “Do you understand me?”

Helena gave no response.

“Well, I suppose I can’t expect much. We’ll know soon anyway. You, bring her.”

The shape blurred away, and new figures appeared. Cold skin pressed against her wrists. The stench of chemical preservatives and old meat burned in her nose. Necrothralls. She tried to make out the faces, but her eyes kept sliding off, refusing to focus.

The table began vibrating as it was rolled across a stone floor, radiating through her skull into her teeth.

Then it was so bright, it was like needles being driven into her retinas. She gave a muffled scream, squeezing her eyes shut again.

There was a nauseating lurch upwards, and everything grew darker again, a motor rumbling to life somewhere beneath her.

She needed to escape. She tried to shift and felt the clank of metal.

“Lie still.” The woman’s voice was suddenly back. Very close.

Helena jerked away, breath coming in rapid pants and her hands and feet twisting against the restraints. She had to run. She had to—

“Don’t make my day harder,” the woman said, her voice icy.

Fingers gripped the base of Helena’s skull, and a pulse of energy flooded through her brain.

Darkness again.

J OLTING AGONY AND SUDDEN TERROR ripped Helena back into consciousness.

She lurched upwards, eyes wide, just in time to see a syringe pulled away. There was a snap of chains, and she fell back, heart racing, every beat a throb of pain as though it’d been stabbed through.

“There now.” There was the clatter of the syringe being dropped onto a metal tray somewhere to her right. “That should get you lucid and talking.”

It was the woman from earlier.

Helena was no longer on the table or in a lorry. There was a hard mattress under her, and the strong sterile scent of antiseptic everywhere.

A dim grey ceiling loomed overhead.

Through the pain, energy was suddenly roaring through her veins, growing into a searing heat that burned in her hands as they flexed. She could feel her consciousness sharpening and everything growing brighter, clearer. She twisted, and metal bit into her wrist.

“None of that. You’ll break your bones before you break out of those shackles. Answer my questions and I might let you get up before that drug wears off. I understand it can be quite painful otherwise.”

Unable to move, Helena felt her mind begin to race instead. An injection, some kind of harsh stimulant. Trapped inside her, the energy poured into her brain, and her scattered, panicked thoughts were narrowing into crystalline focus.

“Helena Marino. You”—there was a sound of shuffled pages— “should be dead according to your 1273 file. You were marked for culling, due to unspecified ‘extensive injuries.’ But the 19819 designation means you were selected for stasis.” More pages were shuffled.

“However, there’s no record that you ever arrived there or underwent processing.

” The woman sucked her teeth. “You have not existed anywhere in our file system since Augustus of last year. Fourteen months. And now we find you in the very stasis warehouse you never arrived at. How is that?”

Helena blinked slowly, trying to process the information. Fourteen months?

“Obviously no one can survive in stasis that long. Even at six months with perfect conditions it’s nearly impossible, and you weren’t even stored properly. So where did you come from? And who put you there?”

Helena turned her head away, refusing to answer.

The woman hummed, stepping closer. “You’re not in any trouble. Tell me the truth and this will all be over. Where were you before you were placed in stasis?”

The question was enunciated slowly.

Helena said nothing, although her jaw was burning to move. Her body started to tremble as her heartbeat drove the drug deeper into her veins.

There wasn’t anyone left to protect, but she refused to cooperate with her captors. To make anything easy for them, even their filing system.

Besides, she hadn’t been anywhere else.

“Where. Were. You. Before stasis?” The woman was speaking loudly.

Helena’s throat tightened, trying not to even think about the answer, because it tore her apart to remember.

Before the warehouse, she’d been captured along with everyone else, crammed into cages outside the Alchemy Tower, where all the prisoners had been brought so they could witness the “celebrations” of the war’s end.

She could still smell the smoke and blood in the summer heat, hear the raucous cheers as Resistance leaders died, their screams fading. Watching them die, and knowing it was still not over, even then.

Some necromancer in the crowd would hurry forward, eager to show off, and in a matter of seconds that dead body would get up again.

Someone Helena had trusted or served under, brought back with reanimation.

A necrothrall, an empty automaton corpse.

They’d be slit open, their skin in ribbons, organs excised, eyes blank, face slack, and they would be used to kill the next “traitor” in an even more brutal way.

The executions had not stopped until the air was red with a mist of blood.

General Titus Bayard’s dead body was used to kill his wife. Slowly. Making him eat the strips of her as he cut them off.

Each death had carved out a piece of Helena until there was a cavern of grief inside her chest. When there wasn’t anyone left worth publicly killing, they’d put her in that stasis tank.

The other prisoners had been unconscious as they were paralysed, needles inserted in their veins, tubes shoved down their noses, breathing masks adhered to their faces. Not Helena.

She had been kept awake, aware of the claustrophobic horror of all that was happening to her, as she was locked inside her body and left in the dark. Waiting for someone to come for her.

No one ever did.

Fingers snapped in front of Helena’s face, jolting her from her memories. The woman was glaring at her.

“I’m not having a filing error damaging my reputation. If you won’t answer, I’ll stop doing this the easy way.”