“Captain Goode wanted you to know he picked this pain personally,” the torturer said above me.
My breath left me. I choked and coughed and gasped for air, but there was never enough. The tight passage seemed to close in even tighter. It was like being smothered, suffocated, drowned, and then given just enough air to experience it again.
“Who first, Miss Quinn?” Through the blur of panic, I could only make out the torturer’s boots approaching.
“The healer,” the ice guard said. “I get the one with the big mouth.”
I felt my head lifted up and my neck bared, somewhere distant between all the pain. Tears streamed down my face and my body twitched uncontrollably. I wondered if this would, at least, put an end to my torture.
And then I heard Rose’s voice. “Evelyn!”
Startled, our torturer looked up at my sister emerging from her compartment. She cried out in pain from his attack and collapsed to the ground next to me.
“Oh no, no, I’m sorry.”
Did I say that?
No, the torturer had. All of a sudden I could think clearly again. The pain had stopped.
I seized the moment of hesitation, taking advantage of his guilt from hurting Rose. I charged straight at him. The pain hit me again, but I had the momentum. I tackled him, low and hard, straight out the hole in the side of the train.
We fell for a brief, breathless second and then more pain struck me, every imaginable type from the torturer along with an extra dash of bruising and cutting as we slammed and bounced and rolled across a brick roof just below the train tracks. The edge was so close, perhaps this really was death—perhaps I would not heal from this fall.
And then a great tethering sensation yanked me back upward, my stomach flipping, the streets and the torturer falling away from me in a dizzying rush, and I was pulled into the train, landing on the floor beside Emily.
I gulped down a heavy breath. “Thank you,” I managed to groan to her as Sebastian helped me up.
With Laura’s help, Emily climbed to her feet by the hole and gave me a shaky nod, still wincing over the pain she just experienced. In fact, everyone seemed to be rather slow and shaken, save for Mr. Kent.
He had his still-metal hand over Miss Quinn’s mouth and was bombarding her with questions.
“So this metal won’t go away on its own?” he asked.
“Nmph” was her muffled reply.
“Can Captain Goode remove it?”
“Nmph,” she said again, shaking her head.
“Is there another man or woman with this poorly thought-out power who can reverse it?”
“Nmph.”
“My hand will be metal forever?”
“Mmph.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Mr. Kent said. He turned to the rest of us. “Is everyone all right?”
“No” was the unanimous response.
“Well, you all responded, so I will say that’s a victory. Miss Wyndham, do you heal … metallic afflictions?”
“I don’t know. I promise to try later,” I said, hobbling over to them, ignoring the dull pain in my limbs. “Is anyone else hurt?”
Everyone shook their heads. Despite the horrible pain, there had been no real injuries. The two witnesses, however, were petrified. The railway guard kept one eye on us and one eye on the carriage door he shakily managed to open. He leaped over the rail into the next carriage, shouting for help. The ice guard’s hostage, meanwhile, had crawled back into her compartment and was huddled against her terrified mother.
“Stay in there. It’s still dangerous out here,” I told them, shutting the compartment door.
“We should find a way off,” Catherine said. “We’re lucky no one else saw us.”
“We will,” I said. “But first, Mr. Kent, ask her where the tracker is.”
Mr. Kent removed his hand and aimed her in the direction of a broken window, away from us. “What tracker?”
“The one from the Society,” I answered.
“The man who led us to you,” Miss Quinn helpfully corroborated.
“Ah, thank you, yes, where is that specific tracker?” he asked.
“Second-class compartment,” she answered, huffing out mist and squirming against Mr. Kent’s hold.
“Good,” I said. “Put her on the next carriage quickly, and Miss Chen, can you sever the line?”
Miss Chen helped Mr. Kent move the ice guard to the other end. “She could still damage our carriage from there.”
“I’ll ask her a question with a very long answer,” Mr. Kent said.
With Emily’s help, they lifted Miss Quinn over the gap and threw her back into the next car. Miss Chen eyed the connectors for a moment until they snapped and exploded apart.
“In order, what are my most attractive features and qualities?” Mr. Kent shouted over to Miss Quinn.
With fury in her gaze, she answered. “Cleverness. Your eyes. The sharpness of your jaw. Your confidence.”
Her voice faded as our half of the train pulled away with a burst of speed.
Mr. Kent tut-tutted to himself. “Perhaps that was too harsh. She’s going to spend the rest of her life answering that.”
“Would have been a mercy to throw her off,” Miss Chen muttered.
Rose clutched my arm as I turned around. “Ev, what are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” I said, pulling her along with me. “But they are going to keep finding us if we don’t attend to this tracker.”
I led the way back into the second-class carriage, where another railway guard stopped us, demanding to know what happened.
“There … was a row and a … a man with a gun,” I stammered. “Please help us. I just want to get my sister somewhere safe.”
My half-truth along with a look from my sister was enough. He squeezed by us and ordered us to take shelter with the other curious passengers peering out from their compartments. He left the carriage to investigate the next one.
The moment he was gone, Mr. Kent gave up all pretenses of subtlety and began repeatedly shouting his question, “Tracker! Where are you?”
We got no response in the first carriage, but when we crossed over into the next one, a muffled voice answered. “In this compartment—oh goodness me!”
We found a nervous young man in his twenties, his face round and skin a deep umber, with a fidgety energy about him. He was standing by the other door to his compartment. It was open, leading to a long drop onto the London streets that he did not look too excited about experiencing.
“Mr. Adeoti,” Miss Chen said, looking at him warily.
Recognition crossed the tracker’s face, and he held his hands up in defense. “Miss Chen, I’m sorry, these were Captain Goode’s orders. Please don’t—”
“Do you know him?” Mr. Kent asked Miss Chen.
“Yes. From Society missions,” she answered. “He was the one who found people before Miss Grey.”
“Did Goode take control of the Society of Aberrations?” I asked. Mr. Kent repeated my question.
“Yes,” Mr. Adeoti answered, his large eyes darting between us all as though he was trying to figure out who among us would be killing him.
“And what is he planning?”
“He—he said he is going to protect everyone with powers.”
I hesitated, the answer throwing off my line of questioning. It wasn’t just revenge he wanted, then.
“And uh … what did he say about the rest of the public?” Mr. Kent asked.
“He said they’re going to be enlightened tomorrow.”
The train lurched violently and a loud squeal filled the air as the brakes were put on. The conductor must have noticed first class had been left behind. The carriage rumbled and shuddered to a stop, and the compartment fell silent. I was sure we were all picturing the same thing in what Captain Goode considered “enlightened.”
Mr. Kent looked at our group and then out the window at the surrounding rooftops. We had not even gotten out of central London.
He sighed. “Well, I take it this is our stop, then.”
Chapter Four