Page 196 of Alchemised
She looked up again. Now she remembered him; he’d been at the Institute and left after receiving his certification. A guild family. Nickel, she thought it was.
“Once I’m Undying, I’m going to kill that little bitch so slowly she’ll beg me for it. Everything she does to me, she’ll get it tenfold. And then I’m going to bring her back.” His teeth bared gruesomely.
Helena’s jaw tensed, and she fought to stay focused. She was supposed to leave patients conscious. Crowther didn’t want them waking and finding themselves healed, he wanted them dreading, thinking about what would happen to them once she was done.
Once she finished, she stood and left without a word.
Ivy and Crowther reentered the room together, the door shutting. Screaming began vibrating through the door, echoing down the underground corridor.
Helena walked farther, trying to escape it, but it followed her.
She wandered blindly through the tunnels, not caring if she became lost amid them. They turned and twisted, opening into a large room lit by green glass sconces. There were dozens of tunnels leading into it. The walls were covered with intricate but faded murals. It looked almost like an abandoned church.
She’d had no idea any of it existed, buried beneath the Institute. The screaming seemed to carry along all the tunnels, magnifying and concentrating in the room. The place had a sick, eerie feeling about it.
She entered another tunnel, trying to get away, but no matter which one she took, or which way she turned, they all seemed to lead back to the same room. As if to mockingly remind her that she could not escape herself, and what she had become. This was what the war had made her.
Finally she turned slowly back, walking towards the screaming, tired of running from herself.
She’d climb over tortured bodies, sell herself, and tear out Kaine Ferron’s heart if that was what it took to win.
SHE WAS CALLED IN TWO more times before Lancaster finally broke. By the third time, Helena didn’t think he was still sane.
Waiting in the underground passages, ears plugged to try to keep from hearing what was happening in the next room, she’d reevaluated her assessment of the previous night.
Now that it was a little less fresh, her missteps felt less disastrous.
Kaine did feel some sort of partiality towards her. After all, he’d wanted her to stay.
However, whatever flicker of desire or fondness he felt was barely kindled. Too much fuel too fast would smother it. It was for the best they’d stopped when they did. That he was left wondering what could have happened.
She suspected he burned for things more deeply than he knew. Therefore, the key would lie in cultivating that spark into something beyond his control.
He was too calculating for anything else to be effective. It was all or nothing. Leave him as the threat he was, knowing that he was now infinitely more enabled by her to achieve his desires, or try to redirect his ambition and obsessive nature onto her.
People always said there was no greater temptation than the forbidden.
As for the fact that she wanted him back … that she was so willing.
She chewed anxiously on her thumbnail.
It was for the best. Everyone had always said she was a terrible liar.
The door opened, and Ivy came out. Helena looked over at her. “Again?”
Ivy shook her head, shutting the door. “Crowther’s still working on him.”
Ivy crouched down next to Helena, drawing a finger idly through the dirt on the ground. Helena watched her in silence, trying to ignore the smell of burned meat beginning to permeate the air.
“You know,” Helena couldn’t help but say, “there’s other ways to get information out of people. You don’t have to torture them.”
Ivy looked up with her sharp eyes glittering. “I like hurting them. It’s the best part of the job. The rest is boring.”
“Oh.”
There was a long silence. Finally Ivy spoke up. “Can vivimancy get rid of memories? Make someone forget something so they’d never remember it?”
Helena watched her curiously. “Is there something you want to forget?”
