Iron Cast(14)

“And what’s my mother supposed to do if we’re both carted to the asylum and never seen again?” Ada asked.

“We won’t get caught,” Corinne said. “Not as long as we’re together.”

Ada didn’t say anything more, and soon her breaths deepened into sleep.

Corinne tried to calm her own mind, but to no avail. She pulled her grandfather’s pocket watch from the wooden crate that served as her bedside table. Clutching the cool brass to her chest, she laid her head back on the pillow. Her fingertips searched out the familiar grooves of the inscription inside the delicate timepiece, lulling her mind into a blank peace. She fell asleep still cradling it.

Ada couldn’t fall back asleep. She forced a steady rhythm into her breathing, trying to trick her mind into rest. It was no use. No matter how many times she told herself that she was free, that she was home, whenever she closed her eyes, she was back there. Gray walls around her. Fear like acid in her throat.

Her first day at the asylum, she’d thought it was going to be a breeze. The corridors were dreary and the cells were cold, but there were no instruments of torture, no prisoners being dissected. The rumors must have been exaggerated by gossiping regs and paranoid hemopaths. Ada knew that Corinne would come for her. All she had to do was wait.

On the second day, they brought her into an examination room for tests. She remembered with clarity the framed diploma on the wall and the black-and-white tiles—not unlike the Cast Iron’s dance floor. A porcelain washbasin sat in the corner, pristinely white and draped with a soft cotton towel. As touted to the public, the facility was iron-free, so she had succumbed to their poking and prodding. They had checked for lice, rashes, symptoms of influenza. Nothing that wouldn’t happen in any ordinary doctor’s office in Boston.

When the Dr. Knox who was heralded on the diploma came in, he seemed so harmless with his spectacles and warm smile that Ada found herself smiling back.

“Family?” he asked a nurse, who handed him a chart.

“Father, in prison,” said the nurse. “Mother, address unknown.”

Dr. Knox nodded thoughtfully, and Ada felt the first twinge of worry in her gut. She was sitting on a wooden exam table, her legs dangling. Suddenly she felt exposed. Helpless.

“She’s a songsmith?” he asked as he thumbed through the chart. “Are you any good, my dear?”

Ada stared back at him, unsure how to answer.

“According to the agency, she’s one of the hemopaths involved in that scam on the bridge,” said the nurse. “The one with Councilman Turner and the elephants?”

Dr. Knox’s eyes lit up with new interest, and he scratched his chin.

“One of Dervish’s girls then?”

“Will that be a problem, sir?” the nurse asked.

Dr. Knox was studying Ada like she was a slab of meat in the butcher’s shop.

“I’ll need her in the basement for the second phase,” he said at last. “We’re still disposing of the failed subjects, so it will be a few weeks yet.”

“We can keep her upstairs for now,” the nurse said. She took back the chart and made a note in it.

“The second phase of what?” Ada asked.

Dr. Knox seemed surprised that she’d spoken. He frowned slightly, then turned to the nurse.

“Let’s take some blood samples while she’s here. Give me a syringe.”

When Ada saw the gleam of metal in the nurse’s hand, she scrambled off the table. She tried to run for the door, but the doctor was in the way. She shrank back into the corner. She could feel the stinging presence of the metal only with concentration, which meant it was some sort of iron alloy. Probably steel. The only thing she knew for certain was that she wouldn’t let them stick that needle in her.

“No,” she said, and was pleased with the vehemence in her voice. It was a strength she didn’t feel.

“None of that,” Dr. Knox said sharply.

He snatched the syringe from the nurse and reached for Ada’s arm. Her body was tense and coursing with adrenaline. She sidestepped the doctor, leapt onto the table, and rolled to the other side. Then she flipped it on top of him.

All the rest was a blur in her mind. The nurse screaming. Others rushing in to help. Ada tried to run, but someone pushed her down. There was a lancing pain in the back of her shoulder, and then she fell unconscious. When she awoke, she was in her solitary cell, with nothing to do but await the basement. And wonder what Dr. Knox meant by “failed subjects.”

She hadn’t told Corinne any of that yet. She wasn’t sure if she could.

Corinne would have a thousand questions. She would want to figure it out, solve the mystery. Ada didn’t want to know what was happening in the basement, though. She wanted to ease back into her comfortable life and forget the asylum even existed.

After an hour or so, she did manage to drift off. But the screams of the woman from the next cell over followed her into her dreams.





CHAPTER THREE



The next morning Ada slipped out early to go see her mother. Corinne considered joining her but fell back asleep before she could decide. After another hour of sleep, she pulled on the first dress she could find from a pile on the floor and trudged upstairs to the bar for breakfast. The tables were populated with the morning crowd of those who worked daylight hours for Johnny. Most were groggily clutching white mugs of coffee. A few were eating from the breakfast spread on the sidebar.