Roberta. She had sent her people to keep an eye on me, and she didn’t care if I knew it.
A burst of resolve had me tipping the contents of my backpack on to the floor, searching out my oxygen mask. Despite the injury it had suffered during the scrimmage, my gift had sharpened over the past few months. I might be stronger than I thought. There was one way to find out.
I had learned a hard lesson at the warehouse, going in without any evidence but what Danica had overheard. This time, I would make certain that we weren’t walking into a trap.
I knew the physical location of Establishment B, but it took a while to find it in the ?ther. When I was sure I had the right place – crammed with weakly flickering dreamscapes, enfeebled by fatigue – I took hold of the first person I encountered.
A warren of machinery surrounded me. Everything was washed in the inimical glow of a furnace. The smell was beyond atrocious: a hot, iron stench, as strong as if the walls were bleeding. And the noise: a deafening cacophony of gears and mechanisms, a soulless heartbeat that vibrated through my teeth. I was a morsel in the mouth of hell. My host, who I had managed to keep on her feet, was soaked in sweat and hunched over a tray of metal sheets. Hands moved on either side of her, combing through them with quick fingers.
This was a real, working factory, at least – not another dummy facility set up by Vance. I cast my eyes around for any hint of Senshield, any trace of ethereal technology. It always took a while for my vision to clear after a jump, but I could just see an armed Vigile standing guard in the doorway.
‘Password.’
I flinched at the rough voice. A second Vigile, with a face concealed by a respirator, moved in front of the workstation. I was so taken aback, I could think of no more eloquent response than: ‘What?’
‘Password, now.’
The other workhands cowered. When I only stared, mute with shock, he said, ‘Come with me.’ The other Vigile’s head turned sharply. ‘Commandant, suspected unnatural infiltrator.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said faintly. ‘I just – I’ve forgotten it.’
He grasped my host body by the shoulder and shoved her away from her workstation. Panic had me scrambling for the ?ther – I threw off my borrowed flesh and soared back into my own body. My fingers clawed at the oxygen mask and I rolled on to my side, gasping.
Scion had found a way to stop me accessing their buildings. I should have expected this, after I had walked straight into the Archon in a stolen body, bold as brass, and threatened the Grand Inquisitor. Now they had patched that weakness in their armour. All they had to do was be vigilant. If anyone behaved strangely, they could ask for a password, which would have been agreed upon earlier. If the person couldn’t give it, they were identified as a possible victim of possession.
I felt naked. My gift was the one weapon I had known I could use to hurt them.
This had to be Vance, with Jaxon as her advisor. He knew I couldn’t access memories – that I wouldn’t know a password. He knew the signs to watch for: the vacant eyes, the nosebleeds, the jerky movements. I hadn’t yet learned how to act natural in a host.
I pulled off my sweater and breathed, letting the sweat cool on my skin. The workhand would have fainted when I left her; they might not guess it had been me. Her forgetting the password might be put down to the heat or exhaustion.
It still meant we had to act quickly, tonight.
I joined the others in the kitchen, where they were sitting around the table, making short work of one of Hari’s homemade butter pies. As soon as Eliza clapped eyes on me, she was by my side.
‘You’ve been dreamwalking.’
I nodded and took a seat, setting off a throb in my temple.
‘I want to release Catrin Attard. Hear me out,’ I added, when Tom grimaced. ‘We need help getting into Establishment B, and I’ve just discovered that I can’t dreamwalk inside.’
Eliza frowned. ‘Why?’
‘They almost caught me doing it just now.’
Maria hissed in a breath. ‘Shit.’
‘I don’t think they realised it was me,’ I said, ‘but they’ll be suspicious. We need to go ourselves, and fast.’
‘Right. I take it you have a plan.’
‘Establishment B is guarded by Vigiles. We know that Catrin Attard has friends among them. This is our moment to try for their support – if ever they were going to rebel or offer us assistance, now is the time. I’m going to make Catrin an offer: if she helps us get into the factory, I’ll let her out of prison.’
‘You’re lucky Glym’s not here,’ Tom muttered.
‘I never ruled out working with the Vigiles. I said that if we needed them, we’d reconsider. And we need them now.’ I sat back. ‘If anyone has any other ideas, let’s hear them.’
Tom and Eliza both stayed quiet, as I’d known they would. This was the only lead we had.
‘Burn it down?’ Maria said hopefully.
This was what I got for trying to build an army out of criminals.
Spinningfields Prison, like all places where death was common, was easy enough to find. While my spirit was still supple, I jumped into the guard in the watchtower, who was midway through his cup of tea when I occupied his dreamscape. The hot drink spilled over his thighs.
The interior of the prison was designed to resemble a clock, with the watchtower at its heart, surrounded on all sides by five storeys of cells. I heaved my new body from its chair, panting with the effort of doing this for a second time today, and descended from the watchtower, careful to avoid the guards on patrol.
The stairs to the gangways quaked as I stepped on to them. I walked past voyants and amaurotics: malnourished and silent, like the harlies in the Rookery, many with visible symptoms of flux poisoning. A whisperer was rocking on his haunches in the corner of one cell with his hands over his ears.
As I searched, I tried to make my stride more fluid, my expression more alive, but I could see just from my shadow that I was moving about as naturally as a reanimated corpse. Something to work on.
I stopped when I sensed a capnomancer. A woman lay on the floor with her feet up on the bed.
‘I thought I got a last meal,’ she rasped.
When there was no reply, the prisoner rolled her head to the side. Her skin was tinged with grey, and she had flux lips.
‘Ah, you’re probably right.’ Her laugh was sharp. ‘Wouldn’t want to throw it up on the gallows.’
A down of dark brown hair covered her scalp, short enough to expose a small tattoo of an eye on her nape. When she pushed herself on to her elbow, the light from the corridor reached her face. That face was all I needed to confirm her identity. A tress of scar tissue stretched from her hairline almost to her jaw, obliterating her left eye and hardening what I imagined had once been delicate features. The remaining eye narrowed.