Mechanical Hearts (Skeleton Key) (6 page)

“I’ve never seen someone without a synthetic before,” was all he said.

I glanced down at my body like it was a foreign entity. Arms with too many freckles and hands with stubby fingers and chewed up nails. The fingers in question twitched with an urge to feel my own unmarked skin.

My eyes were drawn to his chest where both parts of him were knitted together. The skin gradually turned translucent, and I swore I could make out thin blue veins underneath.

He shifted under my examination and I blinked rapidly as I glanced back at his face.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“You can touch it. It won’t hurt you.”

I looked back at his arm. “Isn’t that rude?” I asked.

“Not if I’ve given you permission. Consider it a medical examination.”

“It’s fascinating,” I mumbled, more to myself than to him. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

I started with his fingers. There was something about the fact that it was his hand, but it wasn’t exactly a hand, that made the touch seem less intimate. Or, at least, that’s what I told myself as I traced the lines of his fingers with the tip of my own.

He flexed then twitched and was still, palm up. It was soft as satin and hard as steel. I didn’t recognize the metal, and would probably never understand it without the use of a lab a several brains larger than my own, but it was enthralling nonetheless.

So much so, I gave myself permission to trace the line of his wrist. Underneath, there was a thrum, and I didn’t know if that was from the vibrations of the ship or some sort of mechanical energy he was emitting. I traced the divot of his inner elbow and skimmed over his powerful bicep until my hand came to a rest on his shoulder, hovering just over where the metal gave way to skin.

Without waiting for permission this time, I allowed my fingers to investigate the breadth of his synthetic shoulder. When my fingers reached his skin I could tell because he shuddered underneath my hands. I almost pulled back, but a quick glance at his face gave me the courage to continue.

The line where the mechanical arm began was a brighter red than rest of his skin. It almost looked enflamed, except there was no heat.

“Can you feel this?” I asked. I laid one hand on his shoulder, the hum buzzing underneath my splayed fingers.

“Yes,” he said. “But it’s a different feeling.”

“Muted?” I guessed. A normal girl would have been thinking about having a half-naked man under her hands, but not me. The thoughts racing through my head had everything to do with biology, just not
that
kind.

I wondered how nerve conduction worked.
Is this hand stronger than his normal one? Does it rust? How does it grow? The applications for synthetic body parts would be innumerable in my world. If we could re-grow organs, replace wounded limbs that had the ability to grow to the individual user …

My thoughts continued as I stroked his arm until I found his fingers clasped around mine. I lifted my head, locked with his gaze, and my heart leapt into my throat.

His voice was a growl, lips barely parted to release the choked words. “Not muted. Much more sensitive.”

Intrigued, I studied our entwined hands. “Really? I would have expected the opposite.”

“It’s not the same for everyone, some people experience much less sensitivity with their synthetics. Some have synthetic bone structure or organs and aren’t aware exactly what they have until they meet with a healer.”

“It’s amazing,” I whispered.

His own fingers were tracing the lines of my palm. Even with my less sensitive skin, a shiver coursed through me. “What’s it like to live up top?” he asked.

I unclenched my fingers from his hand with exquisite slowness, otherwise I might have spent hours studying him. Purely scientific reasons, of course. “You’ve never been?” Then I realized my mistake. “Stupid question. I guess it’s, what? Too polluted still?”

He slipped back into his shirt, and the glint of his arm disappeared behind the fabric. “No one knows for sure. The Tycoon—Mr. Fletcher—doesn’t allow anyone up there, yet. Not until we know for sure.”

Breath freezes in my lungs. “I wasn’t, I mean, I wasn’t exposed to anything when I was in the water, was I?

He shook his head as he got to his feet. “Unlikely. I can’t say for certain, but I doubt you’ll sprout a second head or a third leg.”

“I feel so much better now,” I said. Really, what could I do about it? Freaking out would only distract me, and I didn’t have time to worry about anything else other than the patients at my door and finding what I needed to get home.

“Glad to be of assistance,” he said.

“We’ll change the bandage tomorrow. Doesn’t look like there will be any infection.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“Thank you for letting me paw at you.” I nodded toward his arm. “I have to admit I’ve been insanely curious. It’s hard not to be, since everything is so different here and I have an innate need to see how things work.”

“Anytime,” he said, and I wasn’t quite sure if he was being serious or teasing me.

I nodded and went about putting the gauze and medicine back on the shelves, thinking he would head back to whatever it was he did that kept him busy all day long. Shouting orders. Pillaging. Ravishing maidens. Whatever it was pirates did down there.

But when I turned around, he was there watching me. “What?” I asked. “Are you hurt somewhere else?”

I couldn’t know if it was the sudden jerk of the floor that threw us together, or if he did it on purpose, but in the next second, we were smashing together, arms and legs tangling, breaths mingling. He hovered above me, his normal arm beside my head so he wasn’t completely crushing me with his weight and his other arm braced against the wall that would have collided with my head.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

I shook my head. “What the hell was that? Another one of those sea things?”

The look on his face was grim. “That was something else.”

Shouts could be heard from the hallway. Then an alarm started to squeal and lights began to flash.

“Something worse,” he added as another blow quieted all the voices and drowned out the alarms. He got to his feet and steadied me on mine. “You st—”

“If you think you’re going to lock me in this room like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum again, you’re sorely mistaken.”

“Don’t make me regret bringing you,” he warned.

I didn’t have a chance to respond, because in the next second he had my hand and was pulling me through the doorway and into madness.

I knew something was wrong the second we stepped out of my room and into the hall when water rushed up to my calves.

We were going down.

M
y feet sloshed
through the cold, dark water as fast as I could, but it still wasn’t enough to keep up with Ezra’s near-run.

I let go of his hand and shouted above the noise, “Run! Go! I’ll be fine!” He looked back at me once, but I forced him forward with a shove.

The slap of his boots against the water gradually receded in the distance, and I was left alone in what was probably a sinking submarine, God only knew how deep underwater.

For the first time, I considered, really considered, the fact that I may not make it home to Phoebe alive.

She’d be abandoned like I was.  

Never knowing what happened to me.

Never knowing I didn’t willingly leave her behind.

Left to fend for herself against Aunt Millie.

I simply couldn’t allow it to happen.

The lights went out next; something must have interrupted the engine room, and I didn’t want to think what that could be. If one of the sea creatures had wrapped around the sub or dealt it enough blows, the engine room could be flooded, shutting off the power and stalling us in the middle of the ocean.

Leaving us completely at their mercy.

I sure hoped Ezra and Tink had something up their sleeves.

It was almost impossible to see where I was going without the lights from the lamps that hung from the wall. The only meager light came from the windows, and it was an eerie blue.

Cold. It was a level of cold I’d never registered before. Even encased in the sturdy boots and thick, serviceable socks they’d given me, my toes were numb. I could barely feel anything below my calves. Chills wracked me as I trudged through the water. I could see the door to the room where Ezra was, I could hear his shouted orders coming from the other side, but the short distance seemed so far when my feet felt weighted like cinderblocks.

My ears registered the distant sound of shouts coming from the watery grave behind me. Somewhere between the trek from my room and the control room, the submarine’s landscape had shifted and became an uphill climb. In the back of my mind, I knew it wasn’t a good sign.

The cold had sucked away my capacity to focus on anything else, but even so, I realized the tail going down must have meant we were sinking even faster than I thought.

I gripped door handles as I passed them to keep from falling in the growing dark pool of water behind me. On one such occasion, I paused, even though it took precious seconds. I pressed myself closer to the door, ears straining, and heard plaintive shouts from the other side.

The doors were thick, made from the same near-indestructible metal as the rest of the ship, which also meant they were astonishingly heavy. I wedged my icy hands underneath the lever to pry the door open, but I was no match for it. No amount of heaving and pushing and yanking could make the door budge.

I grew desperate along with their cries. The water was to my thighs, and I knew if I waited any longer it would reach my waist, then my chest, then it would swallow me whole.

I was really getting sick of nearly drowning.

My vision blurred with a combination of sweat and tears. I shouted at them, telling them I was coming.
Help was coming. Just hold on.
Eventually, my throat grew so hoarse, I could barely speak let alone shout.

Soon, my entire lower body was consumed by the rising water.

I was beyond feeling. Beyond the cold.

In fact, it felt rather nice. Warm, even.

Eventually, the roar from the water drowned out the sound of their screams. Then a great lurch wrenched me away from the door and I floated for a while. Voices broke my stupor and I fought to a standing position, fought against the darkness that wanted to consume my vision.

When I was on my feet, I found Ezra standing in front of me, his mechanical arm straining to pull back the lever. His mouth was open in a soundless feral shout. The veins in his temple and throat stood out in sharp relief. With a great crack, the door burst open and the water, ever opportunistic, flooded the room, sucking Ezra and me along with it.

My arm caught the doorway as I went through, and I let out a cry, my mouth immediately filled with salt water, choking it off. I tumbled, churned by the water, until I managed to claw my way to the surface.

It was complete chaos. Grown men were screaming, fighting each other to the door against the constant waves of water from the hall. I tried to move, tried to swim to the exit myself, but my body had given up. I told my brain to tell my arms to move, but they hung limply by my side. The only thing keeping me from going completely under was the table I managed to stand on to keep my head above water.

Ezra was in front of me corralling the thrashing men with shouts and great heaves. One scrabbled up his back, panicked by the encroaching water, and Ezra gripped him by the scruff and threw him through the doorway. When they were all safely out and their voices started to recede, he came for me.

“Go,” I said. “I’ll just slow you down.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” he growled.

“Just go!” My shout was hoarse, and I winced at the pain in my throat.

Before I could protest, he swung me up in his arms and dove into the water. His powerful legs kicked behind and propelled us through the doorway. We broke the top, both of us gasping for air.

The water was up to our necks then, and I could feel my body starting to shut down. If we didn’t get out of there, and quickly, I feared the submarine would become my tomb.

“Hold on to me,” he shouted over the sound of the sea closing in around us.

He slipped me around his back and positioned my arms around his neck. I was careful not to hold on too tight as he powered his way down the hall. He didn’t go to the control room like I expected, but to a door off the left.

Inside, there were empty bays that reminded me of a car garage, but smaller.

“Where are we going?” I knew the question could be pointless, as Ezra had an infuriating habit of leaving most of my questions unanswered, but the filter to my mouth had been washed away along with the submarine.

“Escape pod,” he said. His neck swiveled back and forth as he strode down the walkway, checking each of the bays.

There was one pod left in the last bay, but it looked like it had taken a hit from whatever had attacked us. It was a miniature submarine—as in, it could probably fit the both of us, but it would be cramped. It rested drunkenly, almost completely on its side, and was smoking from somewhere in the back.

That couldn’t be good.

Ezra sat me down on an overturned crate as he went about righting the pod with one arm. My mouth may have dropped open from awe, but it could have also been from exhaustion.

He managed to get it somewhat straight and began working on a dashboard that was behind a panel in the wall.

I must have blanked out for a second because the next thing I knew, he was carrying me to the pod and climbing in with me in his lap. The glass front closed in around us, and then we dropped straight down the floor and into the ocean.

That was when the ship attacking us came into view.

“Bleeding hell,” Ezra muttered.

It was a sub nearly twice the size of the one we’d just vacated. And where ours had been made for travel, that one had huge cannons on every level, all pointed in our direction.

It was dark, so I couldn’t make out much more than that, but in the distance, I could see a growing light behind the attacking vessel.

Are we nearer to the surface than I thought?

As Ezra directed our pod away from the ship, I twisted my head to make out the light and found the lights were coming from luminescent bacteria growing on the armor of a whale the size of a skyscraper. It loomed just beyond the submarine like a menacing shadow.

I tapped Ezra’s shoulder with a hand. “Ezra. Look!” When he didn’t, I started to shake him. “Look!”

“I’m trying to steer this thing without—” he started as he turned in the direction I was pointing. “Bleeding hell,” he repeated.

“Is that what we were looking for?”

“Looks like it found us,” he said.

“Who are those people? Did Fletcher send another group after us? Why would he do that?”

“No,” he said. “Those aren’t his men. Too obvious. This was a quiet affair. They must be someone else’s.”

“I don’t really want to stick around to find out,” I told him.

“We wouldn’t survive it if we did.”

“What about the others?” I asked to distract myself from the pinpricks and heat ravaging my aching feet.

“They’ll have made it to their own escape pods.”

We hope.

“What about the whale? Tink mentioned they were rare. We can’t just let this one go.” I watched as the whale was swallowed by the ocean the farther we went in the other direction.

“You wanna try taking them on, go ahead, princess,” Ezra said.

“There has to be some way.”

“Look, all we can do now is get somewhere safe, find my men, and then we’ll get another ship and start over.”

When the last of the whale was blackened out by the dark water, I turned back to the front to find nothing but empty sea in front of us.

No other pods. None of his men.

There was nothing.

“Take off your pants,” Ezra said.

“I don’t think so, buddy.” My brain may have been fuzzy with exhaustion and my body may have been numb with cold, but I hadn’t lost my good sense. Yet.

“If you don’t want to die,” he explained as he tugged at the button on my pants, “then you need to warm up. Staying in these wet clothes is guaranteed to kill you.”

There wasn’t much room in the small pod for me to move around let alone undress. “I can barely move,” I admitted. “My fingers feel numb.”

He muttered a curse underneath his breath. With quick fingers and efficient motions, he undid the clasp at my waist and worked my pants down my legs. He undid the knots on my boots, pulled them off along with my socks, then tugged my pants the rest of the way off. It felt better to not be surrounded by the freezing material, but the hell if I was going to admit it.

The interior of the pod was cramped. There was barely room for his long-limbed body, let alone the addition of mine, but what it was good for was heat. The small space warmed quickly. The tingling in my extremities grew more painful.

“It’ll pass. Here,” he said, and then his hands were on my legs, rubbing and massaging the life back into them.

My response strangled in my throat. “W-What are you doing?”

“Warming you up,” he said all too simply.

“Right,” I said.
Because what else was I supposed to say
? “Don’t you need to drive this thing?”

“Auto-pilot,” he said.

“Where exactly are we going?” My voice turned out to be much scratchier than I would have liked it to be, so I cleared my throat. “Back to Arliss?”

He studied a readout on the dash as he massaged my legs absently. “No, we’d never make it in this heap. There are some test capsules along this way, so I hope we can find one before we run out of juice or run into more assassins.”

My limbs and eyelids were heavy. “Other ports like the one you mentioned before?”

“Hmm? No, these were abandoned ages ago, but at least it’ll provide some protection for the night until we can figure out a way to signal a passing ship.”

I must have fallen asleep because the next parts were hazy. I remembered bursts of light and vibrations. For a while, I thought maybe Port Arliss and Ezra were all a dream and I was still caught in the storm. The thought ignited an intense ache in my chest and pulled me from the darkness.

The pod spun wildly out of control. Lights flashed and Ezra cursed above the sound of sirens, but there was something different about it: his voice was faint.

I glanced back at him and gasped. There was a deep gash on his forehead that I didn’t notice before. His eyes were heavily lidded, and he blinked rapidly to keep the blood from dripping past his lashes.

“You’re gonna have to take the wheel,” he said. He nodded toward his hands, releasing when mine took position. The wheel jerked wildly underneath, and my already sore muscles strained to keep it level. “Auto-pilot gave out.”

“Now what?” I asked as I looked back at him. I wished I had my medical kit so I could bandage the wound on his head, but there was nothing inside the barren pod.

“See that shape up ahead? That’s the capsule we’re aiming for. You’re going to line up with the locking plate and go in slowly. Hover beside it until it seals. Hopefully the damn thing still works.”

Alarm pierced my chest. “And if it doesn’t?”

“We’ll worry about that later.”

“Sure,” I said, “that sounds like a
great
plan.”

When he didn’t respond, I turned back toward him. His eyes were closed, and if I didn’t feel the rise and fall of his chest against my back, I would have thought he was dead.

The thought bothered me more than I wanted it to.

Focus, Caroline, or you’re going to crash right into the damn thing.

The shape of the capsule in front of us grew more and more clear as the pod hurtled toward it. I pulled out on the wheel, which only served to aim the pod upward, then I jerked it back down, which sent us rocketing toward darker water. It went like that for the next few minutes until I managed to regain control.