“They’re souls,” he said with a tremor in his voice. “They’re the souls of our replacements.”
“What makes you think they’re souls?”
“Come closer and hold your hand by them.”
Skeptical, because I’d seen this sort of thing on Earth, I reached my hand toward the bottles. The little lights all pressed on the glass of their bottles trying to get to me.
“I got nothing,” I said smugly.
“You have to open your heart.”
Unconvinced, I closed my eyes and pushed some of my energy to my fingertips. And that moment I almost lost my sanity. My mind filled with terror and loneliness and grief of the trapped souls in those bottles. I saw their lives and their losses and their planets as if one hundred television channels were flooding into my brain simultaneously and unchecked. My body froze as those voices called to me, pleading in grief and sorrow to end their suffering and let them live or die but not stay here.
I have no memory of how Sean saved me from that before my mind came permanently unhinged. Somehow he broke my connection from the souls and shut the cabinet doors. He held me and said my name over and over and over until my ears finally recognized his voice. When I could open my eyes again and come back to this room, I found myself in Sean’s lap on the floor of the lab. One of his hands was on my face, and when I could focus my eyes, his expression was one of alarm. And I knew that at that moment, if I didn’t love him, I would have been lost. He had pulled me from the brink of insanity.
“You’re back. You’ve come back to me,” he whispered into my hair.
I was still terrified, my mind and body still in the grip of the memory of what I had experienced in the essences of those souls. Sean and I clutched hands. At first those memories tried to push into Sean’s mind, but I wouldn’t let them. I held them aside, and using Sean’s strength, I built them a little room in my mind, shut them in, and closed the door. Waves of nausea hit me like blows, and I quaked in Sean’s arms, sickened by how these people managed to catch the essence of human beings and other species and capture them in glass bottles.
“There are so many,” I whispered to Sean when I finally regained the ability to speak. “I saw other worlds, other galaxies and planets that the Original People have conquered and destroyed. They’re mining and saving souls here. They’re evil. They have the ability to care about what they do, but they choose to turn it off.”
I wanted to run away from this swirling hell, but I was too weak to even stand up.
Sean tried to hush me with comforting sounds. “I’m a fool. I should never have let you do that. You always were more sensitive to others than I. Take my strength. Let me feed you.”
“Don’t say that to me,” I said, fighting the urge to cry. “I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. Just keep holding me. I lock up emotions really well. The Original People’s genetic material has given me that.”
I had no idea how long we lay there. It had to have been long enough for Sean’s legs to go numb on that hard marble floor, but he never complained. “The Mechanics have saved these souls like they’re a collection of insects framed and under glass.”
“Were the souls trying to possess you?” Sean asked.
“No, it was more like they wanted to be freed.”
“Let’s just break the bottles then.”
“No, no, it might kill them.” I wanted to cry. “They need a body. You and I were in there too. They made me remember when we were in there too.”
“What?”
“You heard me. We were in that cabinet, in one of those bottles.”
Sean swore. “Until we were given these bodies, you mean.”
“Yes. And Sean, they’re the ones who have made us what we are. They’re the ones who have given us these extra gifts. Not the Mechanics, but these souls inside the cabinet. I don’t know how, but they did it. You were always of the House of Beck.”
“No, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would the Mechanics of this House have a soul meant for my House?”
“Somehow it happened, whether by mistake or accidentally, you and I were together in this very cabinet.” I stared at its black doors. “Either the souls are getting stronger, or having you among them gave them extra strength. It is because of them that we’re different from the other Sworn Assets. From any other human being or Original Person too. They gave us these gifts and they want us to use them.”
“Use them how?”
“I don’t know. I pulled away before they could tell me because I was afraid. Maybe to free them. I can’t be sure.”
Sean assessed me carefully. “Let’s go back to our apartments so you can get some rest. We can come back later.”
“No. We’re here now.”
“You should see yourself. You really aren’t fit to be walking—”
“No, we’re staying.” I took a deep breath to fortify myself. “When I touched those souls, I felt the sheer mindless terror and sadness all those beings experienced when they watched a virus or some other catastrophe killing nearly everyone they knew. We can’t let the Mechanics do that to Earth. We can’t let that happen to the people we love. I will find that virus if I have to drag myself on my belly like a snake through every room in this building. You feel me?”
Sean smiled and lifted me up. “All right then.”
Sean didn’t let me go until he was sure I could walk on my own power. Just having a mission strengthened me. Sean opened the door and once again we went into the hallway.
“It’s the next set of double doors,” I said. And I knew I was right, though I didn’t know why. I wondered if one of the spirits in the glass jars had given me a memory.
We opened the double doors into another long narrow room with an island that stretched down the length of the room, its gleaming top reflecting back the light and looking too fine to ever be used. Sean became grim, opening every door and cabinet, one right after the other. Then he jumped back with a gasp. He held his chest as if he were about to have a heart attack.
Gemmee climbed out of a cabinet. “Forgive this one for scaring you, my lord.”
“You almost killed me,” Sean said, annoyed. “Who are you? What are you doing in there?”
“Forgive this one, my lord,” Gemmee said. “This one couldn’t risk being found in here by the First Mechanic. This one had to wait for your ladyship and lordship to get here.”
“How thoughtful,” Sean said, still clearly peeved.
“The virus you search for is in there, my lord.” Gemmee went to the island and opened a cabinet. Inside was a red device shaped like a flashlight that had a small readout on the end. She made a series of movements, as if casting a spell, then stepped away, backing toward the cabinet she had emerged from. She pulled a container from her sleeve exactly like the one that was holding the virus. “My lady, this false container is empty and will keep the Mechanics from discovering the virus is missing.”
I took the empty container, turned it over in my hands, and opened and closed it. I wanted to make sure it really was empty and not filled with another, even more lethal virus. My sense of trust had been seriously shaken by the souls’ memories.
Sean glared at Gemmee, his face hard with suspicion. “Who are you and why are you trying to help us?”
“I am of the lowborn, my lord. We lowborn will fare poorly when the Protocol is started. This one hopes that your lordship and ladyship will delay the departure from this planet. That will allow us to have our lives much longer.”
Sean’s eyes narrowed. “You’re subject to the Approvals. You would be happy to die if it meant the Original People will live.”
“My lord, not all of us received the Approvals. There has always been a small group that has escaped the oversight of the highborn. The highborn knew that and tolerate us because they don’t really believe anyone with our undeveloped intellect and lack of education could be a true threat.”
“Your energy is different,” he said.
“That’s because I didn’t receive the Approvals, my lord.”
Sean didn’t seem convinced, but he turned back to the cabinet that held the virus. “There’s a force field around it.”
I saw the telltale shimmer of the energy in the air.
“So, any ideas about how to get around it?” Sean asked Gemmee. “This force field looks way different than the other one.”
Her response was to flee into the cabinet and disappear into a space in the wall.
“Don’t worry about us. We’ll get it out,” Sean called after her sarcastically.
“We can take that as a no,” I said. “Let’s try getting around this force field the same way we got the door open. We got lucky before.”
Sean and I put our hands together, waited for the energy bubble to form, and moved toward the force field. The closer we got to it, the more my skin hummed. I started to feel a sensation that reminded me of the shock I had once received from an electric fence on my cousins’ farm. I gritted my teeth against the pain.
“We’re going to get zapped,” Sean grumbled, but he didn’t let me go.
The force field wavered and bowed as we got closer. We both stopped within an inch of it, and I willed my energy into the tip of my finger. The force field trembled and parted. Our hands penetrated the barrier and slowly we caught the container between our fingers and withdrew it. Even though I knew it couldn’t be possible, I swore the virus container burned my palms. Sweat broke out on my brow as I forced myself not to drop it. The force field felt like it was breaking my arm. Without Sean, I knew I couldn’t have done this. Then, using the same process, Sean and I put the empty container in its place. By the time we were done, my knees were knocking together and a trickle of sweat streamed down my back.
“It’s like I put my arm in a ringer,” I whispered. Though I didn’t want to look weak in front of Sean, I couldn’t help but sink down on the floor and take deep breaths. “That force field seemed to be squeezing us.”
Sean was rubbing his shoulder. “For a few seconds I wondered if we wouldn’t end up with broken arms. Are you okay to walk? This place is giving me the creeps. I want to find the lava and get out of here. Do you know where it is?”
I did know. I had a distinct picture of the room in my mind. The necessity of destroying the virus fortified me as I struggled to my feet. My legs wobbled as Sean and I walked the length of the building and down three flights of stairs. The last stairwell was narrow and dark. We could feel the heat wafting up from below. Sean went first, moving cautiously. At the bottom of the stairs we found a still, windowless room lit only by the cold blue torches. Sean and I began exploring the room. On the wall opposite the staircase stood a row of silver tanks. Near the steps on the wall was a handle under a small cage.
“This place is like an oven,” Sean said with distaste. “And it smells like rotten eggs.”
“Sean, over here,” I said and pointed to a place in the floor where the tiles were round when the rest were square. “What about that? I think that’s where the smell and the heat are coming from.”
Sean hesitated. “It could be some kind of trapdoor. I’ll bet it opens to the lava. It could be connected to the lever on the wall over there.”
I was about to check it out when Sean pointed frantically at the steps. Someone was coming. We hurried to hide behind the tanks. They were burning hot, and I gasped when I brushed my arm on one.
“Is your mental acuity decreasing, my lady?” asked a man who was making his way down the steps.
“Yes, I am afraid it is, my lord.”
The first person down the steps was a young woman who seemed befuddled. She made her way slowly, moving her feet from tread to tread with great care, as if she were going by feel in the dark. After what seemed like an inordinately large amount of time, the young woman reached the bottom. She looked around her as if she didn’t recognize anything. She wore the clothes of a Mechanic, but hers lacked the embellishments of the man who followed her. She started fiddling with her sleeve as if it fascinated her. My first thought was that she had been drugged, but then I noticed her faded aura. She had been drained. The blue torches turned the top of her bald head gray.
“My lady, stand over here, if you please,” the man said as he urged her forward.
She allowed herself to be directed to the place on the floor where Sean and I had noticed the different pattern in the tiles. Looking both vacant and childlike, she watched the man walk over to a lever that was under the cage. The diamonds in her eyes were huge, dilated, giving her a vacant, heavily drugged appearance. Without turning back to face her, the man lifted the cage and pulled the lever. The floor vanished beneath the young woman and she dropped gracefully into a current of lava that flowed beneath the room. A hot blast and roar came from the inferno to mask my cry. I clamped my hands over my mouth. The door in the floor shut and some noisy fans started, clearing the heat and fumes from the room.
I kept my hands over my mouth to silence the screams of horror that were trying to tear from my throat. Sean pulled me into his chest, and I could feel his thumping heart and rapid breathing. The Mechanic went back up the stairs, but I couldn’t look. The horror of seeing that innocent girl dropped so blithely to a fiery death overwhelmed my consciousness. Sean held me tightly, rocking me for a long time. My self-control and tolerance had been severely depleted by the souls in the bottles and seeing the girl die didn’t help. When Sean sensed that I had finally calmed down, he loosened his arms and took his finger to tip my chin up to him.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’re all right.” He got to his feet and pulled me up next to him. “From now on if someone tells me to wait somewhere, remind me to check what I’m standing on.”
“What could she have done to deserve being executed like that? She was a Mechanic, and they’re supposed to be the smartest of all the citizens.”
Sean pulled the lever that opened the trapdoor and started toward the fiery maw with the virus. “She didn’t need to anything to deserve death. All she needed was to become inconvenient.”
“You’re right,” said Naomi as she stepped out of an opening in the wall, a panel that fit so tightly we hadn’t seen it. She put her hand on the cage that covered the handle that opened the lava door. “I’ll take that virus now, Lord Sean, if you please.”