by Andra Leigh
“Er…Eliscity?”
She blinked and cursed herself for getting distracted. She wasn’t here to stare at the sky and ponder what was happening a few hundred metres from her.
“Right, sorry.” Turning back she stepped past the two downed guards. And stopped short.
She’d forgotten about the doctor.
The middle aged woman, bed hair pulled back into a ponytail, shirt buttoned wrong, stood between them and the tunnel. Although apparently, she wouldn’t be too much of an obstacle. Rather than dive for a boltbow, rush to look after the guard or do anything which remotely resembled fighting, she was standing, lips quivering, with her hands raised in surrender. Eliscity was suddenly overcome with the urge to laugh at the ridiculous picture she presented. Pity. That’s what she felt for the woman. Was it that the woman believed herself too weak to do anything, or did she value her life so much that she couldn’t imagine a good enough reason to put her life in danger?
“What do we do with her?” a stunned Faust asked out of the corner of his mouth.
“Depends how useful she proves to be,” Eliscity said loud enough for the woman to hear the threat.
“I can be useful,” the woman said, her voice barely louder than a squeak.
Eliscity didn’t hide the disgust she felt for the woman. She doubted any of the Family would help the enemy just to spare their life. Suddenly she realised that the Clinic had given them that resolve. A resolve the doctors didn’t share as their lives were never handed over to someone else. Eliscity found it strange that those who knew the closeness of death could fight for life, yet find something worthy of dying for in the same breath. Yet those, like the woman trembling in front of her, only understood what it meant to die, and because of that, never found anything real to live for.
Eliscity considered picking up a boltbow but knew she wouldn’t feel comfortable with the crude weapon in her hands. And it would be silly to arm herself with a weapon constructed out of something that irritated her skin. She doubted the woman needed the extra threat of being shot anyway. Watching Faust melt flesh posed enough of a threat.
“You’re going to take us to the blood bank,” Eliscity ordered. “If I decide you’re leading us the wrong way or that you’re trying something, then I’m going to let my friend here hug you.”
The doctor turned ashen as her eyes darted from Faust to the waxy red claws which had once been the guard’s hands.
An explosion rocked through the air, blasting orange across the sky and skimming heat across the back of her neck. Instinctively, Eliscity threw her arms up to shelter herself and heard the clatter and thuds of stone from their dome wall crumble and hit the ground, kicking up dust that bloomed out toward them.
“Move,” she ordered the shell-shocked doctor. “Now!”
Eyes wide, the woman spun and scuttled into the tunnel she and the guards had come through. Eliscity and Faust stuck close to her, making certain she felt suitably boxed in. The tunnel gave way to another ringed dome filled with rooms of her nightmares. Metal cuffs with the sharp inductor rods were chained and bolted into the walls, room after room. Eliscity felt dizzy, the little she had managed to eat today churning in her stomach. Faust was ghostly beside her. Luckily, the doctor hurried them through the dome, taking the second tunnel they reached. The next dome had more rooms she was horribly familiar with. Stone tables with straps. The stench of dried blood. Needles and tubes. All these rooms made Eliscity want to revise her previous threat and smack the doctor across the head.
They’d passed through the Borning dome and into the Blooding dome. Much to her horror, they didn’t skirt around the edge of this dome. She swallowed three times quickly in an effort to keep down the contents of her stomach, as they veered right and moved into the inner rings of the circular building. They cut their way deeper into the dome’s centre. Silently, she hoped Faust would be able to handle the doctor if she suddenly decided to grow a backbone. He hadn’t been Blooded, so wasn’t affected by the sickening rooms. The woman came to an abrupt halt in the middle of a hallway curving to the left. The only point of difference this section of the hallway had, in comparison to the rest, was a decorative thin metal frame running in a high rectangle, set into the inner stone wall. Eliscity could just see another rectangle a few metres down before the hallway curved out of sight.
Faust gave their hostage a warning glare.
“It’s one of the entrances to our sections,” she whimpered desperately.
Faust’s usual crinkled grin had been replaced with a serious and stern frown as he jerked his head, giving her his approval to continue. She dug her fingers into a divot in the stone at the centre of the rectangle frame and tugged it. Something clicked as the portion of stone her fingers curled under lifted like a latch. Eliscity saw the metal frame shiver before the woman swung the stone within it inward, opening the door.
Not entirely decorative apparently… Eliscity was beginning to feel glad she hadn’t left the doctor in the dirt back at the arena. Obviously, Faust shared her thoughts as he leant close to her and whispered, “Think we would have figured that out?”
With a quick glance down the hallways, Eliscity followed Faust through the door, pushing it shut behind her. Walls pressed close on both sides, tunnelling straight. It was dimmer than the hallway they’d just left.
Faust kept the doctor firmly in front of him, a warning hand holding the nape of her neck, causing her to whimper. Eliscity saw the corner of Faust’s mouth twitch up. He was enjoying himself.
They were walking through the short tunnel on what she assumed were the walls between two Blooding rooms. She confirmed this a moment later when she passed a series of small holes on both sides. Light glimmered through them from the rooms beyond. Drawing even with them, Eliscity could see the slabs of stone used as tables. She felt a fresh wave of nausea roll through her. Not because of the sight of the room but because of the peep holes. Was this how the doctors spent their free time? Sipping tea and observing torture through holes in the wall? Eliscity wondered if tunnels like this ran through the entire Clinic. The tunnel, dim as it was compared to the Blooding rooms, would render the holes almost invisible from the other side.
Forcing herself to not grab the pathetic doctor and rub her nose in the spy-holes like a badly behaved animal, she moved on, stepping through into another circular hallway. This one didn’t have rooms decorated with pools of blood shooting off from it. It did, however, have the innermost ring.
“This is it, isn’t it?”
The doctor nodded, mutely.
“Good.” Eliscity took a step toward her.
Eyes widening in terror she begged, “Please. Please I’ve done what you ask–”
“Yes, you’ve been more useful than I would have expected,” Eliscity confessed. Then promptly knocked the woman out.
“What if we need her again?” Faust asked, sounding completely uninterested in the answer.
“Well, then…” Eliscity stepped over her dishevelled figure, “we’ll throw some water on her.”
Leaving the woman to her nap, they both sidled around different directions of the inner ring. Half a minute later she heard Faust’s yell travel down the hallway, saying he’d found a door, as she came across her own door. It was solid metal with a wheel handle. Ignoring the itch of iron, she began the slow heavy turn of the wheel.
Wrenching the door open, she found herself in a large clean room, looking across at Faust who had just pulled the door on the opposite side of the room open.
Nine low pillars were set at even intervals around the circular room. Upon each top, reaching to Eliscity’s head height, were large crystal hourglasses. Rather than sand, thick liquid filtered through their narrow necks. The glasses didn’t sit on their bases, waiting for the final drop to empty from the top funnel into the bottom chamber, they were suspended between two thin malleable metal rods protruding from the pillars. Attached to either end of the hourglasses, the rods spun the crystal slowly. When the hourglass ra
n out, it was turned to start the whole process again. It looked as if it worked by moving against the constant shift of balance within it. As the liquid dripped through, the weight would change and the rods would attempt to work in harmony, to find a perfect balance and still the crystal. Curves in the rods offset any chance of this, ensuring it unintentionally kept the hourglass turning by keeping it unbalanced. Stuck in a momentum that wouldn’t end. It was quite a beautiful design. Eliscity watched the nine hourglasses spin at different points of their rotation.
Each one held a different quantity of liquid, all varying in hue, though most with a crimson shade. These colours reflected out from their crystal coverings, bathing the smooth and polished stone walls of the room in shimmering, sliding lights. It was like being submerged underwater. Except they were swimming in the water of the fallen, with the red of blood sweeping around them.
She stepped into the room at the same time as Faust. The floor was gradually sloped, descending into the centre of the room. Moving toward this dip, she saw that strange groupings of letters were carved into the stone pillars below each hourglass. They didn’t make any sense to her. To her left the closest one read Cpˇ while the one to her right said oeˆˇ. She peered into the Cpˇ hourglass, its thick liquid such a pale red that it was semi-transparent.
“Why do they make them move?” Faust was studying another hourglass labelled Rhˇa, its liquid so dark it was almost black.
“Perhaps the blood has to keep moving. So it doesn’t go off or something.”
“Didn’t think there’d be so many types.”
Eliscity looked over the nine hourglasses. Nine different types of Bloods blood. Nine different things people could be Blooded with. Unlike Faust she found she had expected more. There had been more than nine different species of Bloods before the War. Had they simply used all the other blood first, or were these the only species they’d ever managed to gather the blood of?
“Er… Eliscity. We ain’t got weapons for all these types. And… how do we tell what type is what?”
Eliscity had been beginning to wonder this herself. The strange combinations of letters on each pillar were clearly blood types. Standing in front of the hourglass with Cpˇ etched into it, she wondered which of the Bloods it could have belonged to. Was it her? Was it Fae blood? Or perhaps it was Wolf.
Faust tapped a finger against the Rhˇa hourglass, as if hoping it would wake up and tell him all its secrets. All it did was rock slightly in its precarious cradle. It gave Eliscity an idea. Cautiously she wrapped her hands around the Cpˇ hourglass. It was so large that her hold barely reached halfway around each chamber. Her grip was enough to halt its orbit but she could feel a gentle tug of its intention to continue with its rotation. Bracing herself to take its weight, she lifted it off and out of the metal rod’s hold.
Faust looked at her, bewildered, as if to say ‘what the Bloods are you going to do with it now?’.
“Dump it all together,” she panted. “In here, come on.” She dropped the hourglass onto the dipping centre-point of the room. It smashed with a tinkling of breaking crystal. She didn’t pause to watch the pale blood seep into the shallow bowl, moving to remove the oeˆˇ hourglass, its blood a brilliant golden orange. “At the very least it’ll taint the blood we can’t destroy.”
“Or make a super blood that no one can stop.”
Eliscity shot Faust an exasperated look.
“What – just saying…if a year from now we’re fighting off Blooded wolf-witch-griffin-human things, that’s on you.” Nevertheless, he detached the Rhˇa hourglass and cast it into the centre.
An hourglass labelled L2ˆ was the next to join the growing pile, followed by xˆ. As the crystals were broken, thick scents rose into the air. Salt. Rot. Tangy. Metallic. Life. Death.
It made her want to sneeze.
They continued until Faust dumped the final hourglass – a glittering opaque scarlet – into the mess. Ready for this to be over, and somewhat surprised she’d made it this far, she pulled out the weapons she had carried all the way in with her.
A small vile of Drops. A rolled stick of Aconymph, ready to light to release its smoke. A bag of crushed Pyrem pills. A flask of Shade wine. And a bag of golden brown granules – Dust.
Eliscity had been pleased when Acanthea and Jinx had managed to get so many different types of Blood highs in such a short time.
She passed a few over to Faust as he said, “I wonder how many of these are just drugs.”
Eliscity gave a nervous laugh. What if they were trying to destroy nine types of Bloods blood with substances that only served to get people high? She had her doubts about the Shade wine. She suspected its only purpose was to render the drinker completely inebriated or dead. If Nymph Shade had been grown from the bodies of the Nymphs then she imagined it would just be like adding Nymph blood to the mixture.
Faust held the Aconymph stick in his hand, crushing the wick between two fingers. After a moment of concentration he lifted his fingers away, revealing a small flame. Seeing his nod, she readied herself. As the wick burnt into the stick and the first puff of smoke snaked into the air, they scattered their collection into the mess of crystal and blood. The bottles were smashed, the crumbled pills sprinkled and to ensure a decent coverage Eliscity dared to blow the Dust out of its bag, sending it flying over the pool.
The effect was immediate.
Rather than douse the flame of the Aconymph stick, the blood fuelled the fire, causing the smoke to thicken and rise around them. Bubbles boiled through it, turning a brilliant white she recognised from her Dusting. The sickening stench of charred flesh hung heavily around them and a high pitched whistle issued out of the blood, like a kettle left on the fire too long. The whistle turned into a screech. Flame burst into life along a pale strand of blood. Heat blistered the air. It bubbled at her feet, spitting and rising. It didn’t stop.
It was going to explode. Faust realised this at the same time she did. Stumbling backwards, they threw themselves out one of the doors, slamming the metal slab closed a moment before the eruption.
“That’s destroyed right?” Eliscity said from the floor when the noise subsided.
“Yup.”
They weren’t safe yet. With the doors sealed, the heat was building up in the blood bank as it had within her Dusted veins, warping the metal door. There would be another explosion.
Faust made it to his feet first, hauling her up with him. They raced toward the exit, pulling one another along. They made it to the heavy door leading out of the doctor’s section. Eliscity thought she was imagining the heat of the stone until she tripped into the Blooding dome’s hallway.
The corridors were ablaze. The incinerator fire had spread quickly in their absence, despite the amount of stone in the Clinic. The flames had followed the wooden support beams through the domes. When they crumbled, so too would the stone. They had to get out before that happened. Smoke gagged her and slithered into her eyes, making her cough and cry. It forced her to double over. She couldn’t see. There wasn’t enough air. Fingers wrapped themselves around her hand and she clung desperately to them so as to not drown in the hot smoke. Faust was pulling her through the dome. She kept her eyes closed, trusting him to lead her, until she felt the smoke ease back from her throat. Blinking away the burn with tears, she saw the fire and smoke part around them, as if being pushed by an invisible hand. Faust. A beam collapsed above her, its flames licking across her shoulder and searing her skin. Faust kept her going, while keeping the fire at bay at the same time.
Finally, they burst into the open air of the arena dome. The walls were alive with flames here too. But the expansive dirt floor barred them from creeping inward. The wooden skeleton of the dome was shivering and bending. Snapping and jarring. It was falling in places, taking the heavy stones with it. They made their way to a completely collapsed portion of wall, clambering over the scorching rumble and into the sand of the Cityel.
“Thank – thank you,” she coughed. She f
ell to her knees once they were a safe distance from the blazing complex.
Standing before the burning complex, Eliscity realised this had been what she’d expected the Clinic to look like when they’d approached it. Its evil walls alive with flame. Except the walls weren’t gleaming beneath the fire. They were crumbling. They were blackening, turning to ash and floating up into the air. How many patients had gotten out?
Faust’s sombre tone broke through her thoughts. “We need to go.”
He guided her to her feet and tugged her to the west. Back toward the direction they had approached the Clinic from. She let him. She assumed he was heading toward his brothers.
Light from the blazing building struck his face and she caught sight of his grim features.
“Faust?”
A pause.
“Something’s wrong.”
Panic struck her in the chest. Was it one of his brothers? Forrest? Fletcher? She had told them to get out! She picked up her pace. In the distance, near the demolished incinerator dome, she could see dark shapes moving on the Cityel. People.
When Forrest and Fletcher’s identical sweat and ash streaked faces came into view, she audibly exhaled the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. But the panic in her chest didn’t subside. What was that emotion in their eyes? It took her a moment to place it.
Grief.
Someone was dead.
It was a whisper in the back of her mind.
Someone was dead.
She slowed, tugging her hand out of Faust’s grasp. Bodies were strewn over the Cityel sand. Some burnt. Some bleeding. Some broken. Surviving patients and a few surrendering guards and doctors huddled into themselves, shaking as they watched the Clinic burn with wide eyes. But her attention was drawn to the small group of people not paying the Clinic any notice. Like it was the most unimportant thing in the world. Like it didn’t matter.