by Adam D Jones
Dawn could read it in his eyes. A hard certainty. Somehow, this young man had no regrets. His stern face made it clear he was facing the death he had chosen. Did you pick this instead of giving up some Lodi secret? Are you protecting someone?
Inder patted one of the guards, a large, silent man. “Lur, here, is going to stay and watch over you two.”
Dawn heard a slight whirring sound. The others didn’t notice.
Inder continued. “I won’t be around to monitor―”
BAM!
The walls and floor shook with a noise that made Inder and the men jump and cover their ears. Dawn took it in stride. The Lodi prisoner on the floor barely moved.
“What was that?” asked Inder.
“The man in the next lab is testing a compression system,” said Dawn. “The bang is predicted by a soft whirring. I’ve become accustomed to it.”
“‘The man in the next lab,’ huh?” Inder smirked. “Cenn has been working next to you for a year and you never learned his name?”
Dawn shrugged.
Inder shook her head. “Like I was saying, Lur here is your babysitter until the morning. I know we don’t normally work this way, but it’s a special assignment.”
Lur put a hand on his holstered pistol. “No one leaves until the Patricians come back. Tomorrow.”
Dawn nodded, pushing her mind back into the place where she could work and live with herself. Working through the night was normal. But this particular job was not.
“Bring it in!” shouted Inder.
Two men pushed a large, wooden box, half as tall as Dawn, into the lab. They began using a pair of prybars to remove the top.
Dawn heard the whirring sound through the wall. The young man covered his ears, but none of the others noticed. Dawn smiled when they all jumped again at the noise.
When the box was open, the delivery men walked out and most of the guards followed. Only Inder, Lur, and the Lodi boy remained. Inder locked the door and then turned to Dawn.
“Recognize that stuff?” asked Inder.
Dawn had already reached inside and grabbed the manifest. It contained a list of alchemical ingredients. Glass bottles lined the inside of the box, eight or nine different substances that, according to their labeling, were all too toxic to touch.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You know what we make with this?”
“Yes.” Then, in a whisper: “It dissolves people.”
“Yes, but too quickly. We need it to work slower. You only get one test subject,” she gestured to the Lodi youth, “so use it in one place on his body at a time. Find the mixture that works the slowest. Congratulations on getting a top job. Your colleagues will be jealous.”
Dawn’s eyes went to the prisoner. He was watching. Listening. His breathing sped up while Inder explained the chemicals.
“Are you paying attention?”
Dawn felt her jaw being squeezed. Inder grabbed Dawn’s face with a strong grip and forcefully turned it to her own. “Lur’s here watch you don’t do anything stupid with that boy.”
Still gripping Dawn’s face, Inder pushed her back, against a table, and squeezed until Dawn tasted blood.
“You don’t do this,” said Inder, “then someone else will do it for you, and you’ll live out your life in a cell.”
Inder released her grip and threw Dawn’s head back. She walked out the door and Lur moved in front of it when it closed, staring down Dawn with his hand still on his pistol.
Dawn locked eyes with the Lodi, then turned to her workbench. “Let’s get started.”
13
When the sun rose, Dawn stood at her workstation looking down at a few scattered contraptions. A metal tube, something with a grip, and an apparatus that held chemicals. She kept all eleven parts separated on the table, as if they had nothing to do with each other.
The only sound came from the next lab, where the occasional pounding was preceded by a distant whirrrr.
There were times when Dawn could forget what day it was. What she had eaten, done the day before, or even what she was doing. Years became blurs, and at times she saw her hands moving as she went about her job even though she had no sense of doing it herself. Like she was a viewer from another world trapped in her skull, looking through someone else’s eyes.
But today wasn’t one of those days. Her face held still and calm, Dawn found herself in a clear state of mind.
The door opened with a crash. Dawn recognized Inder’s harsh footsteps.
“Report.”
Dawn turned around. “It worked very well.”
“His body?”
“Disintegrated. See for yourself.” Dawn pointed.
On the floor lay a pair of dismembered hands, all that remained of the man who had been given to the acid.
“He’s...gone?” Inder stared at the hands, at the strange stain on the floor surrounding them. “I expected some flesh to remain.”
“I improved the formula.” Dawn stood still, almost like a soldier. “Not much is left behind anymore.”
“Well, I’m convinced. I’ll tell the—”
A bell, loud and low, rang out. Inder froze. Another alarm bell clanged. Then another.
Dawn shut her eyes. We were so close.
Inder ran to the closed window. “Why is this shut?” She struggled with the clasps of the metal curtain.
“The light distracts me.” Dawn didn’t move to help.
Inder finally unlocked the clasps. She pulled up hard on the metal curtain, forcing it upward. Dawn winced as light streamed in. I should have welded it shut.
Inder looked out at the courtyard below. “Someone’s out...is that? Dawn, get over here!”
Dawn didn’t move. She knew what Inder was seeing.
The young Lodi man was surely running through the courtyard, dressed as one of the scientists. Dawn had placed him in the tall, wooden box, nailed it shut, and then sent it out for delivery. She knew there was a chance someone would inspect, and now, she assumed, the Lodi boy was in the courtyard running for his life.
Dawn turned to her workstation. The scattered pieces, eleven in total, fit together perfectly if one knew how.
“Dawn, what did you do?”
The first two pieces joined together with an elegant click. The handle went on with little effort. The hardest part contained a few moving sections, but it only took a few moments for her quiet fingers to slide everything into place.
“Dawn! Explain yourself! How did he get...and if…”
Yes. Now, you are putting it together, you addle-brained bureaucrat.
Inder backed away.
“If that boy is out there,” said Inder, “then...whose hands...”
Dawn turned around, holding the completed apparatus. “The guard, of course. I think his name was Lur.”
“What’s that in your hand?”
“Lur asked me the same question last night. This, Inder, is a gun.” Dawn raised an eyebrow. This was a ballistics lab, you know.
“You wouldn’t.” Inder took another step back.
“Lur said the same thing.”
“You would have fired by now if you were going to, instead of making threats.”
“He said that, too. Do you know why?”
Inder shook her head.
“Because…” Dawn cocked her head to the side. “He, like you, wasn’t listening.”
“Listening for what?”
From the next room. Whirrrr.
“That.”
Dawn squeezed the trigger. The pounding from the next room echoed louder than the gunshot, like it had last night, and, for the second time, no one nearby heard the shot from Dawn’s improvised pistol.
Inder fell back. She clawed at the wound in her stomach and failed to speak.
“I would fire again, but someone might hear. I’m sorry, but this...” Dawn pointed at the gaping wound, slowly bleeding out. “...will take some time.”
Dawn disassembled the weapon and put the pieces into diff
erent pockets. No one would think twice about a scientist carrying around strange looking devices. She took a canvas pouch from a hook on the wall and slung it over her shoulder. It was a satchel used to safely carry chemicals from place to place, but Dawn had made sure to put a few things inside, like money, that she would need if she left town.
“I added a compound to your acid that turned it inert. Then I poured it down a drain.” Dawn put a hand on the doorknob and looked back. “Goodbye, Inder.”
Inder, writhing, raised a shaking finger. “...get...you…”
“No one will ‘get’ me. They will arrive soon and believe you were killed by the Lodi boy. Their prejudice can bring them to no other conclusion.”
Dawn shut the door as she left, while Inder struggled to scream.
◆◆◆
The front door is the only way. If they open that box, you’ll have to jump out and run for it.
Dawn had given the young Lodi thorough instructions, knowing someone was likely to pry open the box. Nothing left the compound without permission, and she couldn’t forge documents for every possibility.
She walked around the corner where a window gave a better view. The alarms had brought guards to the courtyard who tore apart every bush and barrel looking for the Lodi. He must have run into a crowd and blended in. Smart. But won’t last long, even with my clothes on. They’ll be guarding the exits.
Still, a resourceful person could get away if they were determined enough.
She was shoved by a group of security guards rushing past her, heading to secure the main doors. She wondered if she could spin an effective lie. He went that way, or, I saw him upstairs. None of it sounded convincing enough to try, and the guards were flying past in too much of a hurry for her to attempt it. Lying was a skill that required practice.
Dawn searched her mind for other ways to throw them off the Lodi prisoner’s trail. Just need to distract them. Give the kid a shot. She opened her satchel and remembered that it was filled with every kind of ingredient she could think of, all arranged in neat rows of stoppered glass tubes. Second floor. They refine the Dae water up there.
Dawn smiled with an idea.
She hurried to the stairwell and ran through a hallway on the second floor. Normally, none of her fellow scientists could possibly make the mistake of even leaving their workshop unlocked, but this morning, with alarms ringing and rumors buzzing, people could be careless. Near the end of the hall, she came across what she was looking for: an open door
The cracked door led her into an empty research room. Barrels sat along the far wall, some open, all containing precious Dae water. Dawn quietly approached the nearest barrel while looking inside her pouch.
The open barrel looked to be filled with ordinary water, but Dawn knew, by the markings on the side, that it was from the Elari river, where the water ran past rows and rows of powerful Dae stones buried under the river bed. After being filtered and refined, the water was able to strengthen alchemy. Even better when heat was added, but a barrel full Dae water was enough for her current needs.
Dawn found a burning agent among the vials in her pouch along with a bag of sulfur, and she dropped about half of each into the barrel. Smoke rose immediately from the surface of the water, and Dawn backed away in a hurry.
She left the lab door open so the smoke could escape, even though, in Dawn’s mind, leaving a door open was tantamount to anarchy. She put it out of her mind and made her way downstairs.
◆◆◆
“That way! He’s on the other side!”
Dawn stepped aside as a dozen officers rushed past her toward the smoke. Her alchemical fire produced rolling billows that already filled the hallways in half of the compound.
“He’s got to be hiding in that cloud,” someone else said.
Dawn tried not to smile.
Friend, whoever you are, that’s about all the help I can give you.
Dawn was down the stairs now, making her way calmly toward the front lobby. A small crowd of her colleagues were walking toward the door, and Dawn decide she could slip out with them.
She walked past a window and something in the courtyard caught her eye. A carriage rolled away from the facility, the carriage that took shipments off-site, and sitting in the back, looking out at the facility, was the Lodi boy, still wearing Dawn’s clothes. He saw her and winked.
Crafty.
Dawn tore her gaze from the Lodi and fell in step with a larger group walking for the main door. She slipped in between them, keeping her head down as she disappeared between the shoulders of a few taller co-workers.
When they were through the front door and outside, the others slowly walked apart, mostly heading back to their homes. Dawn picked up her pace. A small stream ahead of her separated the Grey Quarter, the military complex, from the rest of the city of Gamon. Dawn crossed over the river on a little wooden bridge and didn’t look back as she disappeared into the city.
14
The Grey Quarter was kept apart from the rest of the Republic Capital so Gamon’s citizens could enjoy their cosmopolitan luxuries without the burden of unsightly workers. The buildings in the proper part of town were made of marble stones, and some stood a few stories tall. At night, the streets were lit by tall, glowing lamps powered by Dae stones buried deep underground.
Dawn hit the streets just as the twin suns rose and the sidewalks began to bustle. Men and women carried packages and made their way along cobblestone paths between buildings; Dawn noticed they took great care not to make eye contact with one another. I thought people would smile once I got out of that building. Dawn knew her parents would fit right in.
She had considered going to her quarters, but by now surely the body of Inder had been discovered, and Dawn needed to be somewhere else as quick as possible. Even Gamon, the largest city on the continent, wasn’t big enough to hide her from the coming search.
As if to confirm her thoughts, bells from the Grey Quarter clanged behind her. Every pedestrian on the street froze for a moment and looked around before continuing on their way.
Dawn hadn’t explored Gamon enough times to know her way around. The other researchers were happy to leave their cramped labs in the evenings to attend parties or buy clothing and trinkets, but Dawn had always avoided the city. Mostly, she had been avoiding the people.
People always pushed and shoved, breathed on her, and jabbed her with elbows. There was no end to the faces that drew near and the hands that reached out. Dawn knew most people, “normal” people, didn’t mind the constant barrage of other humans. The sharp sounds didn’t pierce their ears and the warring smells didn’t make them squint; the entire city didn’t make them feel like they were being shoved into a corner.
The bells rang again. Loud and violent.
They’re looking for me.
Dawn slowed her walk, trying not to look like someone rushing away from the Grey Quarter in a hurry.
Across the cobblestone street, a man stared at Dawn. In front of her, a woman stopped mid-step and looked Dawn up and down, worry growing on her face. The entire street came to a standstill as Dawn walked past as casually as she could manage.
It took her a moment to understand. I’m still wearing my uniform. Dawn smiled, or did her best impression of such a thing, and walked on, certain she was only making herself look more conspicuous.
She had barely worn anything other than her lab clothes since getting hired. Going back to her apartment in the Grey Quarter to get something else to wear was out of the question, and she wasn’t certain she even owned anything personal. Looking up and down the street, she noticed a short building at the end of the block with a dress hanging in the window and quickly made her way inside.
Dawn pushed the door open and jumped as a bell rang over her head. Infernal thing.
“I’m here for new clothes,” she announced.
A little man in a brown suit emerged from the back with measuring tape draped over his shoulders. “You appear to have come to the
right place!”
“What do you mean?” Dawn stood with her hands held behind her back, waiting, like she did when addressing her colleagues.
“Well.” He made a weak gesture at her uniform, a white suit with a long black apron. “It was only a joke.”
“I don’t understand.”
His jowls fell in defeat. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m here for new clothes.”
He let out a long breath. “Yes. I know. Anything in particular?”
Dawn had never bought clothes. Growing up, the appropriate attire simply appeared in her room, and since graduating she had only worn what the facility provided. Something that doesn’t look like me, so they can’t recognize me from across town.
She realized ladies’ clothing was gathered in one half of the room. Dawn scanned the far wall and saw long dresses. Outfits that did not allow for running.
“That.” She finally found something useful. “I’ll take that.”
The tailor followed her gaze to an outfit pinned on the wall. Brown pants, tall black boots, and a white, loose shirt.
“Well, why didn’t you say you were going riding?”
Riding? Is that the only time these women get to wear pants?
“Yes. How much?” she asked.
“Ah...” He paused, trying to think of how to explain the next part as he fixed a monocle over his eye. “That isn’t your size. I’ll need some measurements.” He slipped the measuring tape from his shoulders.
Dawn cringed. To his credit, the tailor moved his hands and his tape all around her body without touching her a single time.
He removed a stubby pencil from behind his ear and made notes on the tape, muttering to himself as he went. “Thin cotton for the shirt. Double-stitching for the leggings. Boots are going to need...” He looked at her with a grimace. “You can pay, right?”
Being an Idaris meant, yes, Dawn knew she could pay for anything. In her satchel she had hoarded away enough coins to buy one of the buildings nearby. Her colleagues always seemed to run out of money, but Dawn could never figure out what to do with her stipends.