Page 363 of Alchemised
She squeezed the plunger. Helena heard it spatter onto the floor.
Then there was the sound of paper tearing as Mandl ripped a form off a clipboard, crumpling it. For a moment she could make out the number at the top, 19819.
Without that form, there would be no record that Helena was there. She’d vanish. A clerical error.
Mandl combed her fingers through Helena’s hair. “While you’re waiting, I want you to think about all the things I’m going to do to you when I come back.”
Mandl turned away. “All done here. Put her under with the rest.”
Helena was lifted onto a cart that went rattling across the floor into a second room. It was bitterly cold. Helena could see the rows of sectioned tanks from the corner of her eyes. The photographs from the raid flashed in her memory, all the bodies floating inside them. All dead.
The guards, wearing large rubber gloves to their shoulders, lifted one prisoner after another and slid them into the tanks, hooking the tubes and wires into a row of machines that ran along the far end.
Helena’s heart was pounding harder and harder as she was picked up and the cold fluid closed around her.
She couldn’t move. She was trapped inside her own body, like a cage sealing her within her mind. The cold seeped into her, slowing her heart, dropping her metabolism. It felt like forever and like no time at all before the light vanished, too.
Helena was left in darkness and silence.
Her heart was pounding in unadulterated terror. The lid was inches from her face, but she couldn’t see it. Freedom so close but utterly beyond reach.
She tried to breathe slowly but couldn’t. She started panting, heat and steam filling the mask over her face.
She tried to scream, but all that came out was a weak uneven whimper. Her body grew colder and colder, and her lungs spasmed as her panic used up the limited oxygen coming through the mask. Her chest began aching and burning for air. She kept trying to breathe, but there was nothing to breathe.
She was relieved when she passed out. It was better than being awake.
Something burning hot jolted her back to consciousness.
She’d forgotten where she was and panicked as it all rushed back. The tiny, enclosed space beneath the surface, in the dark. Not enough air, and she couldn’t move.
The burning came again, cutting her panic short as she tried to place where the sensation was coming from. She knew that feeling.
Her hand. Her left hand was burning. The ring. Her heart stalled.
Kaine. He’d come back and found her gone. She’d told him she’d be waiting, and she wasn’t there. The ring burned again and again and again.
He was looking for her. He’d come for her.
He always did.
But she could not think about it.
She had to forget. If she remembered and was interrogated, Kaine could not be found.
She couldn’t think about him. Trapped, frozen, without use of her hands, she could only draw her resonance inwards. She was used to pushing it out for combat. Now it was like a net she closed around her own mind.
She could feel the faint texture in her mind of her manipulations, altering her thoughts, bending them around all the things she must not think about. She followed the new paths, over and over, wearing new grooves into place, teaching her mind to settle there and look no further. She counted. She made routines. She tried not to remember.
If Kaine found her, he’d understand.
She could wait.
Hold on. You promised you wouldn’t break.
CHAPTER 66
Maius 1789
