One last time losing control of my body, she thought. It’s like falling asleep. That’s all.
*
Ōbhin hated seeing Avena on the table. She was naked from the waist up, her body anesthetized. A long tube of leather had been forced down her airway. Dualayn called it intubation. It was hooked up to a pig’s bladder and a heliodor jewelchine that kept filling it with air. The bladder was held between a pair of wooden paddles connected to a set of gears turned by a ruby jewelchine. The paddles compressed the bladder in a steady rhythm.
Her chest rose and fell with the compression.
When Dualayn made the incision down her chest, Ōbhin gripped his sword tight. He held the pommel as the blood spilled between her breasts and across her throat. Dualayn applied boiled cloths to stem the rivulets before grabbing a metal tool with teeth-like notches designed to ratchet something open.
The sounds of Avena’s ribs cracking as Dualayn spread them apart would haunt Ōbhin’s nightmares for the rest of his life.
There, nestled between lungs inflating and deflating, lay Avena’s beating heart. Dualayn brought a ruby, no bigger than the beating organ, to it. Black iron wires wrapped about it. Four leads thrust from it. The jewelchine in position, Dualayn gave the order.
Ōbhin closed his eyes then pulled the antenna from Avena’s brain, leaving it sitting in the bubbling water, kept alive by the other jewelchine. The signal to her body ended. Her heart stopped beating in an instant.
Dualayn worked fast. He pressed the four wires into Avena’s heart at specific spots before triggering the ruby. It burst with red light. Her heart beat again, pumping life through her body. Dualayn sighed in relief.
“I have done this dozens of times,” he said, glancing at Ōbhin, “but never with a death sentence should I fail.”
“Pity,” said Ōbhin. “Might be more people alive today.”
“Doubtful, since what I learned from their deaths has saved countless more.” Dualayn moved around the table and unwrapped the antenna they’d procured in Koilon. He hooked it up to her mind with the black iron wires, sliding them into her brain suspended in the liquid.
I’ll never sleep well again, Ōbhin thought as he watched the macabre experiment.
He’d prefer for Dualayn to restore her brain to her body, but he insisted there would be side-effects. Drastic ones. This was better than nothing.
Ōbhin’s anger burned.
“There,” Dualayn said. “Now to test it.” He disconnected the artificial heart.
Avena’s real one kept beating.
“This antenna should give her a clear signal. Even if she’s on the far side of the world from her mind, she’ll never have any interference issues.”
“Close her up,” Ōbhin said.
“And me?” Dualayn asked. “Will I die once I do that?”
Ōbhin shook his head. “She doesn’t want to make me into a murderer again.”
“She told you that?”
“She doesn’t have to.” He glanced down at her sleeping face. “I know her.”
*
Avena dreamed of the Shattering again. She watched the darkness warping the world, turning everything black. There must be a city somewhere transmuted to obsidian instead of ruby, drifted through her mind. Where ant-like demons were unleashed.
The vision of the past faded after a while and she entered normal dreams until she finally rose out of groggy sleep. Her body was coming awake. She fluttered open her eyes to see Ōbhin staring down at her. A smile crossed his lips. His hand stroked her brow.
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. She flexed her fingers and toes. She could feel the linen weave of a dressing gown cladding her body, and the silky caress of a few strands of hair brushing her cheek. She felt . . . different than she had earlier. There was more of an immediacy about her. A pressure in her bladder. An ache in her back from lying on the hard surface. “I have to pee.”
“That’s how you feel?” asked Ōbhin.
“Yeah,” she said. She sat up and enjoyed the sensation of the dressing gown shifting around her. “I feel solid. Real. I’m not a guest in my own body.” She looked around. She was in the lab where she’d gone to sleep. They were alone. “Ōbhin, I don’t feel weird. Not like I did after I woke up from my injury. I feel like me!”
She threw her arms around his neck. She hugged him tight. She held him and shook. Her mind lay in that jar feet away, but to her perception, it didn’t seem that way. Her thoughts echoed in her head where they belonged. His arms held her, strong, protective.
She didn’t care that she had to pee. In fact, she reveled in that simple bodily function. The fear that she might lose control had utterly vanished. This antenna was an upgrade. Dualayn was correct. She had nothing to fear from interference.
She just had to worry about the black gem being in her head. She had an obsidian mind controlling her body. What would that mean for her soul?
She should denounce Dualayn—he should be executed for his work—but who would investigate him? He had powerful allies, even when excluding the Brotherhood. Many nobles and merchants profited from his inventions. Magistrates would be bribed. His crimes would be overlooked.
No justice would be found, but that didn’t mean that Avena would just sit by. The Brotherhood was trying to destroy her country. They had killed the high refractor, orchestrated the riots, and were driving resentment against the king. Of course, King Anglon wasn’t helping with his desire for war, but one problem at a time.
Most of all, the White Lady’s intentions terrified her. The woman needed something from Grey and Dualayn. Something that would
