“I still don’t understand,” Moulsdale was saying, and for once, his booming voice was muted. “I thought you said the critical factor was the freshness of the subject. The parts we got her couldn’t have been fresher, so why didn’t it work?”
“In a sense, it did,” said Grimbald. “I mean, she’s speaking. She just isn’t making much sense.” They all looked at the figure hunched in the shadows, which made it growl and rattle its chains.
“Yes, what a great advance. She’s a mindless lunatic instead of a mindless moron.”
“And we’re out of time.” There was a tapping sound, then the sound of a match striking, followed by the overpowering scent of bay rum pipe tobacco. “I’ve just received information from our source at Windsor that the kaiser has produced a battle-ready prototype. Wilhelm is calling it the Dreadnaught.”
“Damnation!” Moulsdale’s voice reverberated through the room, making the unseen figure moan and shake. “Makepiece, what if you use the modified magnetometer on her again?”
“We could make her worse.”
“Try it anyway.”
Lizzie bit her lip as Makepiece came into view. He had a livid bruise darkening one eye, a gash on his cheek and a swollen lip. What had happened to him? And where was Victor? Neither he nor Igor appeared to be in the room.
“Come on, Makepiece. Hurry up.”
“Be patient. Do you want this to work or not?” Makepiece did something out of her line of vision, and then turned so she could see that he was holding her etheric magnetometer—and the Galvanic Reanimator’s helmet.
Moulsdale pushed a wheelchair forward, and now Lizzie could see the chair’s occupant more clearly: a small, plump, elderly woman with slightly protuberant eyes...and electrodes visible at her neck. She glanced back at Byram, recalling all his wonderfully rational arguments about why the heads of school would never turn the queen into a Bio-Mechanical.
The heads of school, it seemed, had seen things differently.
Makepiece put the helmet on the queen’s head in what looked like a grotesque parody of a coronation. As he stepped back, the queen blinked once.
“And how does your garden grow?”
Moulsdale flicked another switch, and the queen lurched forward in her chair, then listed to one side.
“Silver shells and cockle bells.”
“Pathetic,” said Moulsdale. “We must find a way before we have a go at Salisbury. Folks may excuse a dotty monarch, but the prime minister’s got to speak some sense.”
The others were growing restless behind her. “What’s happening?”
She glared over her shoulder at Byram and brought her finger to her lips.
In the laboratory, Grimbald was pacing. “It’s no use. We need to figure out what makes the other one’s brain different.”
“We need to find him first.” Makepiece touched his swollen jaw.
“I still can’t believe you were so careless.”
“How was I to know he would attack me?”
“After you drugged him? Anyone who knew Victor would expect it.” Grimbald walked out of her line of sight, but she could hear his heavy footfalls coming closer. “Has Igor checked the tunnels?”
Startled, Lizzie released the trapdoor. The sound seemed to echo in the tunnel.
“Scatter!” Byram said.
Lizzie scrambled after the others, but within moments she could hear them farther down the tunnel. She still couldn’t see a thing—her eyes were taking forever to readjust to the dark. She reached in front of her, hoping to feel the stairs, and instead felt a cool breeze. The passageway branched off in two directions...she must have stumbled the wrong way.
She tried to feel her way with her right hand—she remembered reading somewhere that you were supposed to always bear right in a maze. But where were the others? Should she risk calling their names? Suddenly she slammed into something so hard it made her cry out. A rough hand yanked her back, another hand covering her mouth so she couldn’t scream. She bit down, and the man holding her muttered a curse and shifted his grip. She inhaled the clean scent of skin washed with harsh carbolic soap and, underneath that, something subtle, masculine and familiar. Victor? She stopped struggling and let Victor pull her back into a dark cell that smelled of dust and stone. She could feel his chest moving with long, even breaths, behind her. Footsteps thundered past them, and someone shouted, but then the sounds grew more distant, then disappeared. She strained to hear if someone was coming back, but no one did.
There was a moment of ringing silence.
Only then did the hands holding her finally release their hard grip. Turning in his arms, Lizzie was close enough to make out the rough outline of Victor’s familiar features. He didn’t say anything, and neither did she, because she was suddenly aware that she was in his arms, his mouth inches from hers. Perhaps he did not realize, because he did not remove his hands. Or perhaps he was very much aware of what he was doing. A shiver of excitement raced down her spine.
“Victor,” she said. “Thank God you found me.” She reached up to touch his jaw, surprised at her own temerity.
“Victor’s not ’ere, darlin’.” He turned her back to the wall and placed his arms on either side of her shoulders, hemming her in. “But I’m ready and willin’ to take ’is place.”
28
The girl didn’t slap him, which was encouraging. But she didn’t flutter her eyelashes or put her hand out for cash, so that was a bit of a puzzlement. In his admittedly limited experience with the fairer sex, one either got smacked down or got down to business.
This girl, though, seemed to follow her own rules. Frowning up at him, she said, “Very funny. I take it this is your way of apologizing for last time?” Before he could reply, she put her finger over his mouth. “Wait! I think I hear something.” In the corridor outside there were voices, and footsteps pounding past. They listened together, and when the footsteps faded, she looked up at him and smiled. “I think we’re safe, for the moment.”
Safe? He had her trapped between his arms in the dark, with no one around to stop him from doing whatever he liked, and she was smiling up at him. Whoever Victor was, she was more than fond of the bugger.
“I should be yelling at you, you know. Shoving me away like that. Are you even going to say anything about it?”
“Must’ve been out of me loaf,” he said. Why would any man put this tasty crumpet aside? Suddenly, the right side of his temple throbbed as though he’d been coshed by a two-by-four. He felt a wave of light-headedness, and a voice in his head said, Don’t you touch her.
“Loaf?”
“Loaf of bread, ’ead.” He tried to smile at her, but his head was still throbbing. It occurred to him that he didn’t really know where he was, or what he was doing here. This wasn’t the first time he’d woken up after shore leave in a bit of a fog, but he’d never come to in a place as strange as this before. First there had been that strange old man with the bushy eyebrows, and the dead-eyed fellow with the twisty back, and then he’d heard that same voice in his head telling him to run! How much had he drunk last night? He’d never woken up hearing voices before. “Ye don’t know where we are, do ye, lass? I’m a bit lost.”
“No, it’s my first time down here.” She frowned. “You sound different.”
“So do you.” He thought he knew the lass, which was strange; she was too fresh-faced and wholesome to be one of the dollymops that worked the docks, but she wasn’t a girl from back in his village, either. Not with that accent. So how did he know her? He didn’t see many women in his line of work, other than the ones he paid to pretend they liked his touch. A battleship was a world of men.
“I sound different?”
“Yeah. American.” Her accent conjured up a memory of sailing into New York harbor and gazing up at the copper-colored statue of Lady Liberty rising up out of the waves like the godd
ess of a new age. The folds of her robe were already oxidizing green. He remembered thinking that in a few more years, the Statue of Liberty would be green all over, and in a hundred, no one would remember that she was ever anything different.
“Very funny. You’re a regular vaudevillian tonight.”
The American girl’s voice brought him back to the present moment. She lifted her chin and looked at him expectantly. Does she want me to kiss her? The pain in his head faded, and now he felt like he’d just taken a swig of rum, sweet heat and thickened thoughts. The dollymops objected to kissing unless you paid extra, and he never had the dosh to spare. He was no virgin, but he’d never been kissed on the mouth.
“Victor,” she said. “I thought you were angry at me.” In the dark, her pupils were enormous.
“Not at you.” Memories pushed at him from that last time, touching her, his consciousness rising up out of the shadows, the other one, Victor, shoving her away. My turn now. He pressed his body into her and kissed her hard, his stomach muscles tensing—she wouldn’t be the first girl to try to slip a knife under his ribs whilst he was distracted—but to his amazement, her lips opened under his, and he felt the tip of her tongue. Sweet Jesus. He felt the shock of that contact zip down his spine and pulled his head away, trying to get himself back under control. This was kissing? This was what his mate Lou called “a sop to the ladies”? This was bloody amazing, was what this was. He’d gone his whole life without knowing what he was missing.
“What are you laughing at?” Her eyes smiled up at him.
Sheer joy, he thought. “No idea,” he said. He traced her plump lower lip with his thumb.
“Hmm.” She raised herself up on tiptoe, her little hand cupping his jaw, and by all that was holy, this time she was kissing him. She had her head tilted at an angle now, and somehow that made things even better, for now their tongues were tangling and sending sparks down his spine. No bleedin’ wonder the working girls charged extra for this! He was shaking from head to toe, and she hadn’t even touched him anywhere but his face.
“Lizzie. Kiss me again.” The words came out in a growl, but she didn’t seem to mind. She lifted her chin and kissed him, her hands tangling in his hair. It was the best feeling in the world. Better than a bite of a sweet, ripe mango after a month of weak tea and hard tack. Better than climbing to the top of the rigging and finally, finally seeing land. Better than diving into an ocean the color of sky and air, and feeling as good as baptized. It wasn’t just the feel of her; he knew this girl, down to his bones. Somehow, she could see right through all the bad he’d done.
Don’t think about it. Touch the girl. Drown in her. He pulled her in to him, hard. She gasped.
“Wait, stop, what are you...?” Her voice was whisper soft. She did not want them to be discovered. She trusts me.
It stopped him cold, and he pulled away, looking down at her bewildered expression. He stroked her cheek in wordless apology, and she kissed him again. Tightening his arms around her, he kissed her back with wild tenderness, his hand cradling the back of her head, the side of her jaw. She inhaled sharply, and oh, blimey, there was no mistaking the sound for fear. “Oh, Victor.”
Victor. A tremor went through him. He was in the laboratory with Henry, arguing. Moulsdale is the one pulling the strings. That fat lushington? The room spinning him into darkness. Damn it, those were not his memories. He rested his forehead against hers. Lie to her again, he thought. But he couldn’t. The throbbing pain in his head was back, worse than before. “I ain’t Victor. Don’t know who I am,” he admitted as she smoothed back her hair where it had come loose. “But I know I was hanged for murder.”
He waited for her to scream, to cringe, to run as far and as fast as she could. Instead, all she did was suck in a sharp breath, then frown as if she were working through a problem in her head. On second thought, of course she wasn’t screaming. After all, this was the same redoubtable lass who had followed him through dark tunnels without a qualm and cut into her first cadaver without flinching. No. Not followed him. Followed Victor. “Ah, Jesus,” he said, bringing his fist up to his head as if he could pound out the pain and the voice and the thoughts that weren’t his. “I don’t know who I am, but I think I’m supposed to be dead.”
Her cool fingers closed over his wrist, stopping him from hurting himself further. “That’s all right,” she said. “I can help.”
29
Lizzie tucked her blouse back into her skirt’s waistband with trembling fingers. She was wearing gloves, but the cold had penetrated the thin material, and she felt clumsy. Of course, some of that could be attributed to nerves.
I know I was hanged for murder.
It had to be some sort of delusion or nightmare. No wonder he kissed so differently this time, with an edge of ragged desperation. Never mind that, she thought. Focus on coming up with a plan to restore him to himself.
“I think if we wait a little longer,” she said, “it should be safe to go back to the laboratory. I have my magnetometer there, and perhaps, with another treatment...”
“No.” His hands gripped her wrists, and there was something fierce and urgent in his tone. “I don’t want you to send me away.”
“I won’t send you away.”
“No,” he said in a low, gruff voice. “Don’t know who I am, but I know there’s two of us in ’ere, me an’ the other one. I know I was on a ship.”
She frowned. “A ship?”
“We brought the ammo to Ladysmith.”
“Lady Smith? Who is...?”
“Ladysmith, Mafeking... Ah, Jesus, the camp. They made me a guard. Why’d they do that? I’m a sailor, not a bloody soldier.”
“Mafeking? Wait, that’s in the South African Republic, isn’t it?”
“Fighting for queen and country, they said.” He gave a derisive snort, releasing her wrists and turning away from her. “I was supposed to stand guard over a bunch of women and children. Said they would treat ’em with full ’umanitarian care, seein’ as ’ow they was white.”
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
That made him turn around. “The camps, woman. Don’t tell me you ’aven’t ’eard?”
Lizzie shook her head. She had not even been aware that Great Britain was fighting a war until she had heard about it on her trip across the Atlantic. In the Oceanic’s second-class dining room, seated at a table set with white linen and good china, Lizzie had discovered that there was a war going on in the South African Republic between English soldiers and Dutch farmers, or Boers. For some reason, this was causing tension between England and Germany, and the only thing keeping the situation from blowing up was the fact that Kaiser Wilhelm was Queen Victoria’s grandson.
Still, what could all this have to do with Victor? He had been a medical student at Ingold, not a sailor. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What women and children?”
“Why, the wives of the Boer fighters, o’ course. And the kiddies, as well. Skeletons in skin and rags, six to a tent. Filthy rags, at that. No soap, and precious little food. I ’ad to cart off the bodies. The officers said it was the typhoid and dysentery, but we was the ones ’olding them prisoner, all clumped together so they caught it off one another.” His voice shook. “I killed the guard. I’m not sorry, neither, but I’m going to ’ell all the same, for what I done.” His eyes were unfocused, or rather focused on something far off. “I’m damned, all the same. Knew it when they put the noose around my neck. Only thing I don’t understand is why I’m not in ’ell yet, ’cause far as I can recall, they strung me up and killed me. So why am I not dead?”
Lizzie stared at him, his face so close she could see the bleak flatness in his gaze, and behind it, something hungry and hard. She felt a moment of real fear, and had to work not to give in to panic. This was a man on the brink. She had let him kiss her before, and more. S
ome would say she deserved whatever he did to her now.
In her head, she could hear Aggie telling her, Don’t be daft.
Then, to her astonishment, he sank slowly to his knees on the frozen ground. “The boys too young to shave. Little girls, too... Ah, God, I remember it all.” He lifted his face, and even in the shadows, she could see the anguish there. “Do whatever you like wi’ me, lass. Bring back your Victor. Sorry I touched you wi’ my filth.”
The rough accent, the stories he was telling about the Boer War—he sounded as though he really had been there. Yet Victor had never said anything about serving in the navy. Perhaps he had read something in a newspaper, and confused imagination with reality.
She looked down at Victor, who was kneeling beside her, holding his brass-encased left hand in his right. “Victor? Have you sustained an injury lately? A blow to the head?” No response. Hesitating only a moment, she ran her fingers through his hair, searching for some bump or cut that would indicate trauma to the skull.
He sighed at her touch, placing his hand over hers, either to stop her from examining him, or to keep her hand in contact with his head. Her hand appeared almost childlike, covered by the metal gauntlet of his sinistral limb, but as he removed her hand, tracing his thumb over her palm, she did not feel anything like a child.
In a low, gravelly voice, he said, “Ye must stop, lass. For I like yer touch. More than like. And if ye keep touching me so...” He looked up and met her gaze, his blue eyes black in the darkness, and what was in them was stark and primitive and required no words. She could feel desire rising up off him like heat, and an answering heat pooled low in her belly, which was wrong. Because this is not Victor. She felt it in her body, in nerves and pathways that bypassed the higher brain and spoke directly to ancient centers of reflex and survival. This was a stranger. A stranger she had kissed. Suddenly, she realized something she had noticed before about the arm; the difference in skin tone. It was not Victor’s arm. Was it possible that another man’s memories, even his essence, remained embedded in its cells?
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