‘Fine,’ he hissed.
‘I’m sorry?’ Faraday replied innocently, ‘I didn’t quite catch that?’
‘I said fine,’ Theo repeated, ‘I’ll translate the prophecy with the woman’s help, but I need a shared space where we can work. I can’t keep trying to communicate through layers of reinforced glass.’
‘Very well,’ Faraday agreed. ‘We have a deal.’
His gaze dropped to the trampled sandwich which had toppled off the tray onto the floor.
‘I’ll have someone bring you a fresh lunch,’ his mouth twitched in amusement. ‘You need to keep your strength up for next time you try to kill me.’
10
Theo sat staring at the thin woman sitting opposite him as she scribbled away at the notes in front of her. It had been like this for over a week now. They sat at the table in their shared space surrounded by stacks of handwritten papers, nearly all of them written by him during his drug induced episodes.
He wasn’t even sure they weren’t complete and total nonsense. They were all written in that inexplicable and ancient language no one seemed to understand, punctuated every now and then with odd illustrations and diagrams.
Faraday had kept his word, well for at least a few days. He’d allowed Theo to rest but even as he’d started to regain his strength Faraday had grown impatient and once again, they’d begun administering the serum, but at least they gave him a period of twenty-four hours to recover between sessions. It was during this time, if he wasn’t sleeping, that he sat with the silent, tiny woman who they called Six and studied the illegible gibberish he’d written.
He was still no closer to understanding the prophecy or deciphering the writing.
His headaches had returned with a vengeance, bordering on pure agony. He was exhausted and frustrated, held at the whim of the head of the Veritas.
He turned to stare through the wall of the cube both he and Six were currently sitting in. Three of the walls surrounding them were dark but the fourth led into his cell which in turn backed onto Six’s cell. The other room, which led off the third wall of his sleeping cell, adjoined the cell with the chair and monitors.
He still had no clue as to where they were, but he’d come to think of it in his mind as the hive, as it seemed to be a strange network of little transparent cubes all attached to each other like a honeycomb.
Letting out a frustrated breath he turned back to his companion. She barely acknowledged him. Every so often he’d catch her studying him but as soon as he met her gaze she’d turn away. She never spoke, simply sat and trawled through the pages, scribbling little notes and diagrams of her own.
Theo had never felt more alone or helpless in his life. His mind felt like it was so stuffed full of information he couldn’t make sense of it. He was constantly plagued by strange dreams, where he would find himself standing in front of that door in the dark passageway, but every time he took a step toward it, he would freeze. For some reason he just couldn’t make himself step through that doorway. He’d wake in an icy, clammy sweat, breathing heavily, his heart banging in his ears and his hands trembling.
‘I don’t suppose you’re going to speak to me today?’ he asked the woman. She paused from the sentence she was writing, the nib of her pen hovering above the paper. She didn’t look up or give any other kind of acknowledgement, but he knew damn well she’d heard him.
‘Of course, you’re not,’ he sighed as his gaze wandered idly back to the transparent wall and his sleeping cot. ‘My wife usually says I’m the quiet one,’ he mused. ‘In this past week I think I’ve talked more than I have in the past month and it might as well have been to myself. I don’t know why I’m bothering really. It’s not like you care what I have to say.’
He fell silent, staring at the table.
‘What’s her name?’ a voice whispered, so faint he thought he’d imagined it.
He looked up and found Six staring at him directly.
‘Your wife,’ she clarified.
Her husky whisper was so indistinct he had to strain to make out the words. He wasn’t sure if her lack of volume was the result of not having spoken in a long time or the result of wearing the collar, which seemed to have done significant long term damage to her neck, but he was grateful she was at least acknowledging him.
‘Olivia,’ he answered.
Six continued to stare at him, her blue eyes unreadable.
‘Why do they call you Six?’ he asked, ‘don’t you have a name?’
She watched him carefully and just when he thought she wasn’t going to answer she surprised him once again.
‘I did once,’ she whispered, ‘a long time ago.’
‘Why do they call you Six then?’
‘It’s what they do.’ Her voice was so weak that every now and then it would fail, although her mouth was still moving, and he found he could more or less understand what she was saying from the shape of her lips. ‘Your name is a reminder of your old life. One they want to separate you from, it’s how they condition you.’
‘Don’t you have a family?’ Theo frowned. ‘Isn’t anyone looking for you?’
‘There’s no one left to look for me,’ she looked down at the papers in front of her. ‘They’re gone now. It’s just me, six three four two, that’s all that’s left.’
‘Six,’ Theo whispered softly as her eyes once again lifted to meet his, ‘will you tell me your real name?’
She shook her head slowly.
‘She’s gone,’ she whispered. ‘It’s too painful to remember who I was, to remember what I lost, what they took from me.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he replied sincerely.
‘Save your pity for yourself. Eventually you’ll also be nothing but a number. Your Olivia will fade until she is nothing but a distant memory, an echo of the person you once were, a fragment of a hazy dream you can’t quite place.’
‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘that’s not going to happen, not to me. I’m getting out of here.’
Six blinked slowly.
‘You think you are the only one to think that way? You think we’re the only ones here? There have been many before you who believed the same thing and yet they’re still here… What do you think this place is?’
‘A prison?’ Theo guessed, ‘some kind of holding facility?’
‘It’s Faraday’s own personal cabinet of curiosities,’ she whispered. ‘We’re all here for his amusement; catalogued and stored until he decides we can be of use to him. There is no way out, no escape. You will never leave here.’
He shook his head again resolutely.
‘You’re wrong Six,’ he replied firmly, ‘I’m getting out of here one way or another.’
Clearly deciding she was done talking to him she fell silent and turned back to her papers as she once again began to write in her untidy scrawl.
With the frustration beginning to eat at him Theo stood and paced the room. After a moment he stopped in front of the wall leading to his sleeping cell and pressed his hand to the glass. It rippled slightly and allowed him to step through, solidifying behind him.
There wasn’t much point in sticking around. Six was supposed to be helping him learn to decipher the weird language but so far, apart from the one brief conversation where she’d told him he was Faraday’s shiny new toy, she’d more or less ignored him completely.
His head was banging as he slumped down on his cot, his back pressed against the wall as he drew his feet up in front of him and rested his head on his knees.
‘Rough day?’ a painfully familiar voice asked.
Theo’s head snapped up to find Jake in his police uniform propped against the wall opposite him, watching him with a cheeky grin.
‘Jake,’ Theo whispered, his eyes drifting to the gun holstered at his hip. ‘You’re not real,’ his eyes narrowed.
‘Bingo,’ Jake grinned, ‘and they said you weren’t smart.’
‘Great,’ Theo muttered sourly, ‘now I’m hallucinating.’
&nb
sp; ‘It’s not such a bad thing,’ Jake shrugged. ‘Howard Hughes locked himself naked in his screening room for four months, living on chicken and milk, and pissing in bottles. One man’s crazy is another man’s creative process.’
‘Why are you here Jake?’ Theo frowned.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
Theo blinked at him blankly, clearly it was not obvious.
‘I’m here to help you, or rather,’ he amended, ‘I’m here to help you help yourself, because I’m not really here.’
‘That’s not helpful,’ Theo replied dryly.
Jake grinned again.
‘Listen,’ he crossed his arms across his chest comfortably. ‘While they had you tripping with Lucy in the sky with diamonds, you were able to access parts of your brain that were dormant. It’s woken up not only your latent abilities but it’s trying to show you what you need to do.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Theo frowned.
‘Zeus and Hades were trying to tell you,’ Jake replied. ‘Theo, you were never just an ordinary man. I know you don’t believe it, or maybe some part of you doesn’t want to believe it, but you are powerful. You are the one stopping yourself moving forward. You’ve got all your abilities locked up tighter than Cartier’s vault. You have to find the key.’
‘How?’
Jake shrugged and grinned. Theo blinked and found himself once again alone. He slid down fully onto the bed, stretching out tiredly as he slung one arm over his eyes to block out some of the bright artificial light.
‘Find the key,’ he muttered sourly, ‘find the key.’ Right now, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to find the damn metaphorical key. He didn’t want to unlock any more garbage in his head, because he was pretty sure he was slowly losing his mind and there was no way he was going to jump off that particular cliff any quicker.
He closed his eyes and drew in a slow breath, and just for a second he cursed the day he’d been born.
11
London 1862
Elias balanced precariously atop the rickety ladder, ignoring the way it swayed slightly and gave an alarmingly loud creak beneath his boots as he tied off the broken washing line, securing it to the roof beam above the fireplace once again.
‘That should do it,’ Elias murmured as he glanced down and noticed Ulysses standing watching him.
‘Aye that’ll do,’ Ulysses nodded in approval as Elias climbed back down the ladder. ‘A grand ‘elp ye’ve been these past few days.’
‘It’s the least I can do.’ Even though Elias himself was over six feet tall, he still had to step back and look up to meet Ulysses gaze.
Ulysses nodded toward the nearest table by the crackling fire and took a seat. Seeing no reason not to, Elias slid onto the bench opposite as Tom dropped two tin cups filled with a thick brown soup in front of them and a generous slab of bread perched on the top.
Elias murmured his thanks and watched as the man shuffled back to the fire and continued to stir the huge pot of soup. His hand resembled a lobster claw, given that he only had his thumb and forefinger, with the rest of his fingers missing.
He was an odd sort of fellow. Most of his teeth were gone, and his lower jaw jutted out extensively and twisted slightly to the left. A huge scar ran from his jaw to the corner of his eye socket causing his eyelid to remain partially closed, giving the impression of a perpetual wink. He didn’t speak much but seemed pleasant enough. A few of the other more permanent residents of the doss house had told Elias that Tom used to be a dock worker, but an accident had left him disfigured and without work, until Ulysses had taken him in.
Elias’s attention was drawn back to the table as a huge ginger cat leapt down and landed on the surface, sniffing at the bread on top of Ulysses’ cup. It gave a croaky mewl as Ulysses stroked it gently, and even though the cat was rather large it still appeared dwarfed beneath his enormous hand.
Elias watched as Ulysses broke off a corner of the bread and fed it to the cat, who had only one eye and no tail.
‘We get a lot of wounded creatures in ‘ere,’ Ulysses looked up, his eyes locking on Elias, giving him the impression, he wasn’t just talking about the cat.
Choosing not to respond Elias reached for the bread on his own cup. Ulysses’ eyes dropped to Elias’s hands noting how they shook. If he realized how badly Elias was craving the poppy, he generously chose not to mention it. Instead he merely reached into the inside of his worn patched jacket and withdrew a dented but full flask.
Elias took the offered flask gratefully as he unscrewed the lid and took a long deep swig, coughing slightly as the cheap brandy burned his throat. Once he’d finished and handed the flask back, Ulysses tucked it back into his pocket without a word.
Elias tore his bread in half and dunked it in his soup. He ate the bread in two bites before picking up the tin cup and chugging back the soup, allowing it to soothe his ragged throat and warm his belly, not stopping until the cup was drained.
Ulysses watched him in that comforting silence that seemed to emanate from him constantly. He scooted his own cup across the table and nudged it toward Elias, who looked up at him questioningly. Ulysses nodded and inched the cup a little closer. He lifted the cup gratefully and drank it down, a little slower this time, while Ulysses continued to feed little chunks of bread to the cat as he studied Elias with watchful eyes.
Elias couldn’t remember the last time he’d been sober for this long. Since he didn’t have the opium and alcohol to dull the edges his appetite had returned and thanks to Tom and Eben for feeding him, his face was beginning to lose the gaunt, sallow appearance. The only problem was that his appetite wasn’t the only thing to return. The bad dreams, the bone deep misery and the soul crushing guilt had come along for the ride.
‘Ya look like a man wiv somethin’ on ‘is mind,’ Ulysses finally spoke in his soft rumbling baritone. ‘Might ‘elp some to get it out.’
Elias stared at the gentle giant of a man, with his soft blue eyes and neatly combed hair, and sighed. He supposed it couldn’t hurt, it could hardy make him feel any worse than he already did.
‘I found out a couple of days ago that my brother’s wife is in London,’ Elias admitted quietly.
‘Where’s yer brother then?’ Ulysses tilted his head slightly as he watched Elias.
‘He… was captured, he’s being held prisoner,’ Elias frowned, not really sure how to explain.
‘Ah,’ Ulysses nodded, ‘shame that American war. I was readin’ in the paper the other day, there was a great battle at a place called Antietam or something. They reckon it were the bloodiest day of the war so far. Some twenty-two thousand wounded… bloody waste if you ask me.’
Given his own very definite American accent he wasn’t surprised Ulysses had assumed his brother was caught up in the civil war. In fact, it was infinitely easier than trying to explain that Theo was actually a hundred and fifty years into the future and being held by a murderous secret society who liked to steal magic artefacts. Besides, after leaving France he’d headed to England rather than go home to the states. He had plenty of his own problems. The last thing he needed was to be conscripted into the Union army, and he suspected it would be difficult to explain why he couldn’t die and kept getting resurrected on the battlefield.
‘Is she alright? Yer brother’s wife, she need any money, food? A place to stay?’ Ulysses asked.
Elias’s gaze softened at the man’s obvious concern.
‘She’s fine for the moment,’ he replied, ‘she’s staying at the Drunken Duck. She has a friend with her.’
Ulysses nodded.
‘Ya should check in on ‘er,’ Ulysses nodded as if the matter was that simple. ‘Make sure she’s all good.’
‘I barely know her,’ Elias admitted with a frown. ‘We met briefly, a very long time ago.’
‘Still,’ he replied firmly, ‘she’s yer kin. You owe it to ‘er and to yer brother to make sure she’s cared for proper like.’
‘It’s complicated,’ Elias heaved
out a frustrated breath, ‘I can’t help her.’
‘Elias,’ Ulysses fixed him with a penetrating gaze. ‘Sometimes ya don’t get to choose. I picked ya up outta the snow and give ya a little bit of an ‘elping hand cus it was the right thin’ to do. Ya ain’t a bad man, I could see it in yer eyes. Yer a little lost and yer hurtin’ but don’t let that stop ya from seeing others’ pain. Could be she’s a little lost too.’
Elias stared at the huge man silently, feeling thoroughly chastised and deservedly so.
‘Ulysses,’ he stood slowly letting out a resigned breath, ‘you’re a rare man.’
Elias patted him on the shoulder as he walked past and headed for the back door.
‘Ere,’ Ulysses climbed to his feet and strode toward the door. He lifted a bowler hat from the hook on the wall and set it on Elias’s head, frowning slightly. Shaking his head, he removed the bowler and replaced it with a Homburg, nodding in satisfaction. ‘It wouldn’t ‘urt you to comb yer beard and put on a clean shirt y’know.’
‘I’m checking on her welfare, not courting her,’ Elias frowned as he headed out the door, ignoring Ulysses deep rumbling laugh.
The walk through the snow from Limehouse Street to Longbone Square gave him time to think. He couldn’t help Olivia; he couldn’t give her what she wanted. He wasn’t being obtuse on purpose; however, Ulysses had made him feel guilty as hell. The fact was, Olivia didn’t belong here, and he owed it to her and to Theo to make sure she was okay, but that was it. He’d check in with her and that was it, he was done. Time to move on again. He’d book passage on the first ship out of Southampton if he had to.
All too soon the creaky sign bearing a picture of a duck and a bottle of port came into view as he rounded the corner. He paused and sucked in a sharp breath, and with all the enthusiasm of a man being marched to Tyburn he headed toward the door of the public house.
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