Out of the breast pocket of his coat he retrieved a pencil and pad of paper. He flipped to a clean sheet and set it on the table.
Agent Wilkey unbuckled Corinne’s gag first, dropping it on the table in front of her. When he freed Ada from hers, she let loose a string of Portuguese on him so fierce and fluid that Corinne was a little in awe. She hadn’t understood a word of it, but judging from the tone, there was plenty of cursing involved.
“That’s enough of that,” Dr. Knox said. He took something else from his pocket and set it on the table between them. It was a piece of metal, the size and shape of a nickel. Despite the assault on her senses from the other sources in the basement, Corinne could tell that it was pure iron.
“You should probably work on your intimidation tactics, Doc,” Corinne said.
Without the gag she felt more like herself. Not being able to speak—and give derisive commentary—was like missing all her limbs. With effort, she pushed all that she had just seen to the back of her mind. From the corner of her eye, Corinne saw Ada raise her chin slightly.
“A gun might be more effective,” Ada said. “Or a knife.”
“Hell, even a pair of pliers will do,” Corinne said. She turned to Ada. “I liked the Portuguese, by the way. Very incisive.”
“Thank you,” Ada said, falling easily into the rhythm of their familiar banter.
It was as if they’d made the decision together. Dr. Knox and his HPA cohorts clearly wanted them terrified and compliant—a pleasure that she and Ada would deny them.
“You going to teach me some of those curses anytime soon?” Corinne asked.
“Not a chance.”
“How about just the translation for ‘Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood.’?” She looked at Dr. Knox and smiled innocently. “I have a feeling I might need it tonight.”
Dr. Knox did not appear to be perturbed by their exchange. He only scratched the tip of his nose, checked his watch, and sighed.
“If you’re quite through,” he said, “I would like to get started.”
“By all means,” Corinne said.
“There’s only one simple rule,” Dr. Knox said. “You do exactly as I tell you, or Agent Wilkey will hold you down and shove this iron down your throat.”
Corinne’s breath caught in her lungs despite herself. Suddenly the small iron coin on the table seemed enormous, crowding every corner of her vision. When she was thirteen, only a year after she had manifested as a hemopath, she had taken a dare from one of Carson’s boys to hold an iron fishing sinker in her closed fist for five minutes. She’d made it forty-seven seconds before the pain became unbearable, radiating through her body until she lost touch with the world around her, until she had dissolved completely and nothing but the pain existed.
When she tried to imagine what it would feel like to have the iron inside her, she couldn’t help but think that she would rather die.
In the corner, Agent Wilkey was chuckling. “We had a slagger once try to claw open his own chest. What a mess.”
Dr. Knox cleared his throat. “Yes, well, he brought it on himself.” He eyed Corinne and Ada. “And if you have any ideas of escaping, you should know that Agent Pierce is on the other side of the door, wearing earplugs, and he does have a gun.”
Corinne wanted to look at Ada, but she was afraid of what she would see in her best friend’s eyes. If Ada had given up, then Corinne wasn’t sure that she could go on.
Dr. Knox nodded to himself, seemingly satisfied that they had grasped the gravity of the situation.
“Now that we have that nasty business out of the way, we can begin.” He waved Agent Wilkey over. “You can take your seat.”
Wilkey moved from the corner to sit next to the doctor. His expression was benign, almost bored.
“Some of the methods for conducting our research are unfortunately crude,” Dr. Knox said, taking up his pencil. “But I assure you it’s for the greater good.”
“That’s what they said when they mutilated slaves in the name of science,” Ada said. Her voice was low and trembling.
Dr. Knox ignored her and continued. “Tonight will be a very straightforward experiment. You’ll simply be using your hemopathy on Agent Wilkey here, who is one of our best natural-born resisters. We’ll determine exactly how long he is able to resist each of you. Once we have a workable measure of the hemopathic pathogens in your blood, we’ll be able to move into the next phase of experimentation.”
“Is that what you’re calling your torture chamber out there?” Corinne asked, concentrating on keeping the tremor out of her voice. She almost succeeded.