Transfixed, Maria watched as it ambled and roamed, stumbling forward, toppling back, but never falling. Always catching itself, as if the last systems still working were the ones that kept it upright.
Then it saw her.
It pivoted, almost smoothly—and without a pause, without a hesitation of recognition, without any mindful awareness, it ran toward the door. If it knew anything, it knew only that Maria was on the other side of it, and that she was alive.
And it knew that it was hungry.
It slammed against the wood, flinging itself again and again at the barrier, as if by pure persistence it might bash its way through.
Maria recoiled in horror. When she was confident that the thing could not reach her, she stepped back to the window and forced herself to watch it. She took it all in: the smashed, bloody face with yellowed skin; those bulbous, jellylike eyes that made no true contact with her own—no understanding, no moment of knowing. The creature was naked. Its skin was loose and sagging; here and there, it split like an overripe tomato, revealing grayish tissue and oozing gelatinous pus.
The thing was lifeless, and yet it lived.
She shuddered, gagged, and turned around, closing her eyes and opening them again, wanting to wipe the image away. But in the next room was another shambling ruin of skin and bones; and in the next room down, another pair of them.
Her stomach lurched, and lurched again as she proceeded, and the dim, golden light took on a weird, offensive odor halfway between sour well water and a sun-bloated corpse.
She hugged the far wall as she walked, confident that the doors were secure, but still wanting as much distance from them as she could muster. She hurried along, knowing that the hall opened up before long—and it did, and then there was more light, and another emergency door.
Maria leaned against this door as she paused to catch her breath. She noticed that it was treated with some waxy or rubbery substance, and around its edges were flaps to complete the seal.
A big picture formed in her mind. It was horrific.
On the other side of the fire door and at the end of a corridor was a room that looked like a laboratory. When Maria found a way inside, her suspicion was confirmed. It was filled with recording equipment—advanced cameras and electrical printing devices not altogether unlike the one attached to the Fiddlehead, which Gideon Bardsley had been kind enough to show her before she’d left the District. Freshly restored and churning out its facts and figures, the machine was a marvel once more. Now it occupied a new position on the first floor of the Jefferson building—in a jumbled room full of fumes and noise, papers and equipment.
But this room was white and clean, and so was everything inside it. This was an observation room, designed to observe in a clinical fashion whatever occurred in that central space.
From what felt like a place of relative safety, Maria looked outside the laboratory and observed vents near the ceiling, connected to a system of fans, tubes, and unmarked tanks. She noted a collection of detritus in a corner that might’ve been a pile of bones, or might’ve only been trash. Dark stains spread across the floor. She did her best to imagine that they were oil, grease, dyes, or anything other than the most likely fluid, though the stain drooled in runny streaks toward a drain in the center of the room.
While she watched, a light came on, revealing that yes, the stain was an incriminating shade of brownish red.
This light had all the cold brilliance of a surgical lamp. She briefly winced against it, but there was no time to close her eyes. Along with the light came the sound of footsteps—the determined, hasty sort of someone who had someplace to be. It was not the pace of a dead thing, but that didn’t mean it was friendly.
Maria went to the observation room door and shut it. She was relieved to see that it locked from within, unlike the cells she’d passed before. She was furthermore glad to observe that it was sealed like the emergency door, for the safety of its occupants.
She returned to the window just in time to see Katharine Haymes arrive, stop, and stand beneath the brilliant overhead light. Their eyes met through the glass, and locked.
Haymes carried a carpetbag and was dressed for travel, in a smart brown suit and gloves. The bag was unfastened, as if there was one more thing she needed to stuff inside it before she was on her way. One last item she simply couldn’t leave without.
Maria broke eye contact first, but only to look down at the console before her. Lying beside it was a short stack of files. She looked up again, and this time she smiled.
Haymes glared murderously at Maria. “Open that door,” she said. Maria couldn’t hear her, but she could read the woman’s lips clearly enough.
She shook her head in response, and in doing so, she saw a button out of the corner of her eye. It was labeled, “Control Room Communication.” She pressed it, and a small panel slid open, revealing a round black screen.
“Open the door!” Katharine said again, and this time Maria heard her. The little circle of mesh transmitted her voice quite well, passing along the enraged tone with perfect clarity.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so.”
Haymes stood stiffly, ramrod straight, as if she were so filled with anger that the smallest movement would cause her to shatter on the spot. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what you’re playing with.”
“I have an idea, thanks to you. This is where you did the rest of your research? After Tennessee, I mean,” Maria asked coolly, gliding her fingers over the assorted buttons and making some guesses about what they did and did not do. “After you killed all those prisoners.”
“I know what you mean. And yes, this is … my laboratory.”
“You say that like you’re some kind of scientist.”
“I am some kind of scientist,” Haymes objected.
Maria disagreed. “You paid people to do your dirty work.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Real scientists,” she countered. “Did they even know what they were doing? Or did you lie to them?”“Eventually they knew. Some secrets are hard to keep.” Haymes’s grip on the carpetbag’s handle tensed.
“By then, I suppose, they were in too deep to leave even if they wanted to. I understand that’s your preferred method for keeping people in line.”
“One of several. Now, open that door. I won’t ask again.”
“Good. Though if you mean that you’ll come and open it yourself, I doubt that very much. I see there’s a spot for a key,” she said, glancing over at the door to make sure. “But there’s a handy-dandy dead bolt, too. Very secure, this room. Practically a tiny, clean castle.”
“Get out of there.”
“No.” Maria sighed heavily, with great dramatic effect. “I really am tired of saying that. So why don’t you tell me where you’re going? Or where you think you’re going?”
“I’m leaving. And there’s not much you can do about it from in there,” Haymes said smugly. “You can keep me out, but that’s the sum of it. I want the last of the research notes, but I don’t need them.”
“You’re arguing awfully hard for something you don’t need.”
“I paid for them. They’re mine, and they should come with me.”
Maria took her time responding, as if considering the possibility and then discarding it. “It’s funny … You set me up to say something clever, there. I ought to have replied that all of it—you included—would be coming with me instead. But I don’t want to take you with me. I don’t have to. In fact, the warrants for your apprehension read ‘dead or alive’—did you know that?”
“No warrant reads that way.”
“Not the usual kind, no. You were tried in absentia and found guilty, and sentenced to death. You must know that.”
“So this is your plan? Bring me back to Washington to see my sentence carried out?”
“That’s someone’s plan. Maybe when I left the District that was my plan, but it’s not anymore. If you ride with pirates, you get ideas.”
“Ideas?” Haymes asked, raising an eyebrow as if she sensed an opportunity.
She sensed wrong.
“You see, over the last few weeks I feel like I’ve really … gotten to know you. Uncomfortably well, if you want the truth. And if I take you back to face justice, you’ll only writhe loose, or buy your way free of it.”
“You have great faith in me.”
“Faith? Of a sort. I have faith in your bank accounts and your wiles. I have faith that you will absolutely do the most awful things necessary to have your way. I don’t know how you became such a monster, and to be frank, I do not care.” Maria’s hand settled on a checklist beside a lever.
“Then why are we still talking? You’re awfully chatty for someone who doesn’t want information or conversation.”
“Oh, you know. Just killing time while I figure out this … system.”
The checklist read:
• Activate overhead light source.
• Close control room communication vents.
• Seal observation door.
• Close emergency doors.
• Pull to release gas.
A second checklist beside it read:
• Before exiting, close off gas.
• Turn on fans.
• Wait for window to clear.
Maria didn’t know what it meant about the window clearing, but she understood everything else well enough to proceed.
“What are you doing?” Haymes asked, as Maria closed the communication portal, cutting off the last word. She said something else, but Maria didn’t hear it.
“They’d hang you,” she muttered, staring down at the controls and making sure she knew what came next. “Or shoot you. Either way, it’s better than you deserve. This is more fitting, I think.” She looked over at the door and saw that yes, it was sealed. She couldn’t close the emergency doors from within the control room, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t matter.