Iron Cast(78)

Ada squeezed her eyes shut, found focus deep inside herself, far away from the pain and the anger and the guilt that had already begun to take root. She found a melody from her childhood and started to hum.

“Don’t.” Corinne’s voice was a strangled gasp.

Ada made herself look at her. Tears had sprung into Corinne’s eyes. Corinne straightened up, shaking her head violently, but Ada kept humming. The melody had already begun to take hold. Ada knew she was too weak now to resist the full force of the song.

“Please” was the last thing Corinne said before her eyes began to glaze.

Ada felt tears well in her own eyes. Her heart ached inside her. It was worse than iron. It was a kind of betrayal.

It was the only way.

She hummed, weaving the music like a net over Corinne, trapping her best friend into her will. She could make people feel any emotion she wanted. She could make them trust her implicitly and even blur their memories, but she’d never been able to make people do anything but the simplest of actions. She could make a rowdy patron sit down or a cop walk past on the street, but nothing more.

With Corinne it was different. She knew her so well, every twist and turn of her mind. Convincing Corinne that she had to leave was easier than convincing herself that it had to be done. Somehow that only made it worse.

When Phillip and Dr. Knox reentered the room, Ada stopped humming and closed her eyes.

“I’ll go,” Corinne said. Her voice sounded distant, mechanical.

“Thank God,” said Phillip.

Ada heard Dr. Knox fumbling with Corinne’s handcuffs. She heard the scrape of the chair against wood and the shuffle of footsteps. When she opened her eyes, she was alone with Dr. Knox.

“Strange,” he said. He didn’t say more.

Ada was surprised that he didn’t consider all this data for his little notebook. She wouldn’t let herself think about what was coming next. Corinne was safe, and Saint would be too. Maybe down here she didn’t have any choices or recourse or power, but she could still protect the people she loved.

“There you are,” Dr. Knox said as Agent Pierce appeared in the doorway. Dr. Knox stepped into the other room, pulling the door behind him, but it didn’t latch. Through the narrow gap, Ada could see the white of Dr. Knox’s sleeve and catch scattered fragments of what he was saying.

“—tell him—I want her back—Temple—” Dr. Knox’s voice was low and frenetic.

Agent Pierce said something, but all Ada could hear was Phillip’s name.

“We’ll move them all if we have to.” Dr. Knox was speaking louder now, more agitated. “We finally have subjects who might survive the tests. I won’t let all this work go to waste.”

Pierce said something else, and the door slammed shut. Ada heard the lock slide into place. Once she was sure they had left, she inched her chair sideways until she was as far from the iron coin as possible. She leaned her head against the concrete wall and sang a lullaby that her mother had taught her. Even though she couldn’t manipulate her own emotions the way she could others’, the familiar melody gave her a small amount of comfort. Music was easier than thinking about the renewed screams outside the door, or the gnawing fear that she had just seen her best friend for the last time.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN



Corinne’s world was a haze of colors and sounds and the grip of her brother’s hand on her arm. Her thoughts were wraiths. Her emotions were blank. All she knew was that she had to leave. She had to leave this place.

The beds full of bodies in various stages of dying evoked no grief anymore. That same woman, screaming, screaming, was only a distant idea now. A vague notion of horror. Phillip was pulling her faster now, and her footsteps on the tiles seemed to drum out the only thing she knew for certain. She had to leave this place.

The corridors with their iron floors pricked at her consciousness, but even that felt irrelevant. Phillip hesitated at a junction and tried the door on the left. Cool air flooded Corinne’s senses, and for a moment her mind cleared. The room was some kind of cold storage. And it was stacked with corpses.

Phillip cursed and backed out. Corinne stumbled with him. She fell to her hands and knees. The iron rose up to meet her. Scalding pain and nausea rose in her chest, and she retched. Her mind was fogging again. There was a fading melody inside her, telling her she had to leave this place. But she couldn’t move.

Her brother picked her up, cradling her, and pushed through the other door. The stairs were in sight now. Beyond them the lobby. Beyond that the outside world. She had to leave this place. Phillip was saying something, softly.

“I can’t believe we let this happen.”

Corinne tried to reply, but her mouth wouldn’t form the words. She rested her cheek against her brother’s shoulder and recited poetry in her head until the haze dissolved, until the melody was gone.

Corinne didn’t regain her full faculties until she was at the car and buried in her mother’s arms, breathing deeply of her perfume. She swore.

“Corinne,” her mother snapped. “Watch your language.”

Corinne looked back to see the asylum waiting behind her, its brick facade unperturbed by the icicles along its eaves, by the frigid wind whipping around them. The cold cleared Corinne’s mind even further.

“Dammit, Ada,” she exclaimed into the open air. “Mother, I have to go back. My friend—”