Page 5 of Alchemised

Her throat was closing. “No,” she said again as the bed jolted and began to roll, her captors paying her no mind.

It was at the lifts that Helena recognised her surroundings, realised what Central was. The murals and art had been scraped from the walls, the portraits and gilding all gone, leaving the interior brutal and raw, but she knew the intricate metalwork of the lift gate.

She’d seen it every day since she was ten.

She was in the Alchemy Tower. In the very heart of the Alchemy Institute that the Holdfasts had founded.

This was Central.

“What did you do?” Her voice shook with horror and grief. “What did you do?”

“Calm down,” the woman said through gritted teeth, glaring at Helena. She kept glancing at the necrothralls around them.

Helena couldn’t be calm. It was like coming home and finding all the comfort it had once offered torn apart, the beauty flensed, everything once familiar peeled off into ruin.

Helena had come halfway across the world to study in this Tower. Luc had been so proud of the Institute his family had built. It had been the heart of Paladia. She’d known it through his eyes, all the history and meaning of it. Now it was ravaged and mutilated.

The breadth of Luc’s loss was more than she could hold, but somehow she had the capacity to grieve this fragment of it. A sobbing, screaming moan tore from her.

Fingers gripped the base of Helena’s skull until nails bit into her skin.

She was spiralling down. Down.

A long tunnel. Twisting darkness.

Cold dead hands and the smell of death.

When her mind cleared, she was strapped down on a table. A bright light hung overhead, the beam directed at Helena so that the room beyond disappeared.

There was a small man beside her with a pinched nose, and he kept touching Helena’s face with sweaty, damp fingertips, prodding between her eyes, at her temples, poking through her hair to her skull.

“This is—quite a marvel of human transmutation, I must say,” the man was saying in a high, rapid voice. He had an accent—not the Northern dialect, but something more western sounding. “Vivimancy of this skill is—miraculous. Very right to call me.”

There was a long, oppressive silence.

He coughed. “The—the thing is. This is—impossible. This—can’t be done.”

“It’s obviously possible. The evidence is right here,” the woman said sharply from Helena’s other side, barely visible in the severe shadows.

“Yes, quite right, Doctor Stroud. Of course, it is as you say. But—the use of vivimancy on a brain has always been a most delicate procedure. Transmutation of this scale and complexity is beyond all known scientific possibility. Memory is a mysterious thing, very changeable as it’s moved around.

Not a place, it is—the mind’s journey. A path.

The more important, more journeyed, the stronger the path.

The less journeyed”—fingers fluttered—“it fades.”

“Get to the point,” said the woman—Doctor Stroud.

“Yes, yes. There are areas of the brain that can be altered. In the laboratories, we have vivisected countless human brains and reassembled them in various ways, to some success and also … failure. This transmutation, however, is upon—thought. M-M-Memory. What has been done here—” Something wet fell onto Helena’s face, and she realised the man was perspiring on her.

“This is alteration of the unalterable. Someone—has disassembled the pathways of her mind and created alternative routes for them. How could it be done without knowing all her thoughts and memories? No. No. This is scientifically impossible.”

“I thought the mind was your specialty.” A voice emerged from the darkness, low and rasping.

The man whimpered and looked ready to weep.

“The—the brain is, Your Eminence.” He bowed towards the shadows.

“But this work is beyond me. Bennet and I, you remember our labours for your cause? I hope … Memories cannot simply be regenerated; the mind and spirit must forge them. The spirit cannot be altered by external force—the—the fevers—”

“Is there any way to uncover what is hidden?”

The man opened and closed his mouth as if he were a fish, staring into the darkness as though he expected to be swallowed by it.

“The Holdfasts are dead,” the rasping voice said, “the Eternal Flame erased from this earth. What would they have hidden within her mind?”

The question was met with silence.

“Who placed her in that warehouse?”

Stroud stepped forward. “There’s nothing confirming it, but based on the records, Mandl was overseer at the time. It was shortly before her ascendance and transfer to the Outpost.”

“Send for her.”

Stroud nodded and disappeared. As she did, the shadows moved.

Helena could only see from the corner of her eyes, but she could not fail to notice when Morrough emerged from the darkness.

The High Necromancer was not what she remembered. When he’d killed Luc, he’d been human. Now he was mutated. His limbs stuck out in ways that were impossibly jointed, and he was nearly the size of two men.

She thought, at first, that he was wearing a mask. The High Necromancer had been masked during the celebration, wearing a huge golden crescent that concealed half his face like an eclipsed sun.

As he drew nearer however, she realised it wasn’t a mask she was staring at. Morrough’s face was skull-like, his features so sunken, the skin so translucently pale, that she could see through to the bone.

Where his eyes should have been were two blackened, empty hollows, as if they’d been burned out with live coals.

Somehow, he still seemed to see Helena.

He walked forward, one hand outstretched, but there was something wrong about it, over-jointed, the skin bizarrely stretched. Too many bones inside it. Before his fingers grazed her skin, the pain of his resonance lanced through her skull.

Her vision turned red.

Screaming surrounded her, blistering her eardrums and going on and on as her memories detonated inside her brain. A cascade of images tore through her consciousness.

Everywhere she looked, people were dying. Her hands were covered in blood. There were bodies everywhere.

She was kneeling on the floor, holding together torsos and faces and limbs, trying to put them back together, knitting them into wholeness. Again and again and again. Bodies raw with burns, so consumed by fire that she couldn’t find their features.

Always another body, and another.

The resonance burrowed deeper and deeper, and the screaming grew louder.

She saw Luc. Vivid as if he were there with her. His beautiful face, and eyes as blue as a summer’s sky, golden sunlight reflecting in them.

Then Luc was gone. Blood was everywhere. All she could see was a reddened light, fractured and disjointed, swimming overhead. And the screaming.

Her screams. Her vocal cords were shredded, raw pain tearing through her lungs and throat. A lancing pain through her heart each time she gasped for air.

The small man was muttering, “I wouldn’t recommend—” over and over with his arms cradled defensively around his own head.

There was a knock on a door, and Stroud reappeared, barely glancing at Helena.

“Mandl is on her way. And—” She hesitated. “I brought Shiseo. I thought he might have some insight into our prisoner. He did consult with the Eternal Flame. She needs a new nullification set anyway; I thought he might apply them before his departure.”

There was a quiet shuffling in the dark. Helena craned her neck as much as she could, eyes straining for a glimpse of the traitor.

A round-faced man with dark hair emerged, carrying a small case. He paused to bow reverently before the High Necromancer.

Morrough waved him towards Helena. “What kinds of vivimancy did the Eternal Flame utilise?”

Shiseo drew closer, and Helena realised he was Eastern. Far Eastern. He only met Helena’s accusing stare for a moment before he averted his gaze.

“I am sorry.” He bowed slightly once again. “I was only consulted on occasion due to my metallurgical knowledge.”

Helena released a small breath of relief.

“Surely you know something—you did work in their laboratories,” Stroud said, impatiently. “Do you recognise her, at least?”

Shiseo barely glanced at Helena.

“I believe she was a healer,” he said quietly as he returned his attention to his case.

Helena fought back a wince.

Stroud looked sharply at Helena, her eyes narrowed.

“Really? A healer, you say?” The way Stroud spoke was venomous.

She cleared her throat, glancing around.

“Of course I knew there were vivimancers who supported the Eternal Flame. As if martyring themselves could earn acceptance, even though the Faith spurned their gifts as an abomination.” Her eyes were scathing.

“I just didn’t realise this was one of them. ”

No one said anything. Stroud’s face reddened. “I’m sure I would have realised if I’d had more time to retrieve the Resistance’s records. But why would someone transmute a healer’s mind?”

Shiseo bowed to Stroud now. “I could not say.”

A growing sense of agitation permeated the room.

Morrough sighed like a gusting bellows. “He knows nothing. Apply the nullification and get him out.”

Shiseo bowed and lifted Helena’s hand as far as it would go, inspecting her wrist and the cuff around it. He had soft hands for a metallurgist.

“These are—a very old model. They do not fully suppress the resonance,” he said. He slid the manacle up Helena’s forearm as far as it would go, and it was as if the static of the suppression was pushed up towards her brain along with it.

His fingers pressed deftly along her arm, finding the dip just below her wrist between the two bones of her forearm.

Her pulse beat against his fingers. He felt it for a moment and moved his fingers away from it, squeezing briefly before he turned to Stroud. “Just here.”