The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge (31 page)

A cold spike of certainty shot up Phoebe's spine.

She leaped into action, tearing at her laces with wild hands. A third head started to leak. Then five. And eight. The water sputtered and spilled onto the floor, puddles shimmering as they bloomed toward her.

The water stopped all together. Silence. A low shudder beneath her feet.

She fumbled with a knot, almost had her boot off.

Her breath died in her throat. All at once, water exploded from the twelve heads above her, torrential blasts like open hydrants. The sound was deafening. Phoebe was bowled over by the deluge. She tried to get to her feet but slipped. There was nowhere to run from the churning flood. Frigid swells smashed down relentlessly. Debris spewed out from the pipes and battered her. Mehkan fingers. Joints and hinges. Fractured skulls thinned by eons of rust.

The water rose to her knees. She coughed and spat, blinded by the vile spray. It was so cold that she felt her flesh go numb. Still it climbed. Her frantic breathing was shallow. The violent pool crept higher, eager to choke her, to douse her lungs and weigh her down. The water screamed in her ears, promising to swallow her into its icy, nightmare depths.

The surge hit her thighs. She sloshed around in a panic.

It reached her waist. Then her chest.

Her shoulders.

By the time it frothed around her neck, she was crippled by fear. The water buoyed her upward and she flailed, treading wildly to stay above the surface. The floor of the vat dropped away beneath her. Her vision swam with madness. Everything began to smear and run like an ink drawing in the rain. How long did she have before the chain pulled tight and she could float no higher? How long would she last after that?

The torrent clawed into her mouth. Was that the bitter taste of seawater?

No. No, it couldn't be.

She drifted up, closer to the snarling sculpted mehkans that spewed out the jets of dismal water. Footsteps clattered on the catwalk a few feet overhead.

Goodwin. He chose this torture. He knew her fear.

“Help! Please!” Phoebe shrieked, reaching out for him.

The Foundry Chairman was devoid of emotion. He ignored her, speaking to the group of people he was with. She couldn't make out his words over the snarl of water. As she rose, the others came into view. It was Kaspar and a pair of Watchman soldiers, dragging a figure whose head was hidden beneath a black hood. Kaspar tore the fabric away.

“DADDY!”

He was battered and bandaged. Their eyes met. His knees buckled as if the life was ripped right out of him. But Kaspar held him up, wrenched his hair, and forced him to look at his drowning daughter. His face contorted, his mouth parted, and out poured a wretched moan that she could barely hear.

Her father sobbed. He was saying something to Goodwin. She wanted to insist that he not give in, that whatever he was hiding was more important than her life. He had endured too much to surrender now.

But the fear won. She gargled an inarticulate shriek.

The churning flood buried the gushing gargoyles, muffling their roar.

The water continued to rise, forcing her ever higher.

“Please!” her father cried. She could hear him now, hoarse and agonized.

She thrashed, treading wildly.

“Who was it?” demanded Goodwin flatly.

The weight on her ankle was painfully heavy.

“Stop this, James. I'll talk, but just stop!”

Her mouth dipped into the water, her strokes weakened.

“Who have you been working for in the Quorum?”

The chain clinked taut. She could float no higher.

Her father's eyes filled with shredding, unimaginable pain.

Phoebe's cry bubbled. Water filled her mouth. Still it rose.

He broke. “None! None of the Quorum!”

“Then she dies.”

“I've been working for the Covenant!”

The water took her. Droning silence filled her ears. She fought. She strained. But the chain was stretched to its limit. The water closed over her head. She hadn't gotten a big enough breath. Her lungs already felt like they were going to burst. Something was dragging her down.

The undertow.

Phoebe could struggle no more. Her muscles gave way. Stifling brine filled her body. She sank into the murk. She saw seaweed, the rocks of Callendon's shore. Just before her vision went black, a slender white shadow drifted toward her from below. It reached out, welcoming her into death.

There was no malice in it, but neither was it smiling.

Pearl-pale skin. Black bobbed hair.

Her mother was waiting.

 

  roar.

A rush. She was leaving her body.

Her spirit was being tossed. Tumbling, caught in a cyclone. She was pulled one way, then another. Around and around in the relentless vortex.

Vomit.

Profound darkness.

She shivered, clammy and foul with the stink of the drowning tank. Phoebe could hear her own faint pulse, like the ticking of some worn-out clock. She clung to it, the feeblest of silken threads, threatening to snap at any moment.

It meant that she was somehow alive.

There was another sound too.

A steady rhythm. Pulling her toward the light. She rose up through the void. Phoebe was wrapped in something warm. The strong beat kept her aloft.

It was him.

Her eyes cracked open, wincing against the glare. She was in her father's arms. Her ear was on his chest. A smile lit his face, tears glistened on his cheeks. He stroked her hair, just like when she was little, folding it ever so gently behind her ears. She didn't want to awaken. If she did, he would be gone.

Phoebe remained still for a long while, praying that time would wait. She couldn't bear to feel this moment fade into a desperate, empty dream.

It didn't.

She could feel the warmth of his arms through her damp coveralls and clung to the sensation. A wet cough rattled her violently, thick with the tastes of bile and foul, rusty water.

“Cricket.”

His voice was a hollow scrape. She opened her eyes at last.

They were in a murky gold cell no more than ten feet across, with curving sides and a low pitted ceiling. Across from them was a flat barricade of Foundry steel, its slick sheen a dramatic contrast to the rest of the rough chamber. A glaring tube of electric light was mounted on it, just above the barely noticeable outline of a hefty sliding door. Aside from that, the cell was barren.

“You came for me,” he croaked.

She nodded weakly and focused her eyes on him.

Her father was barely recognizable, dressed in the same worn-out clothes, though they now looked far too big on his emaciated frame. His white button-down shirt was stained with dried blood, hanging in tatters and barely concealing the dark red bandages that patched his sunken chest. Dingy gauze bound his head as well, sweeping down to cover one eye. He still wore his glasses, but the lenses were cracked.

“What did they do to you?” she whispered in horror.

“I'm fine,” he said. His tone was soft but urgent. He glanced up at the door. “I don't have much time. They'll be back for me any minute now.”

“No. You can't go,” she said, and clutched him closer.

He held her with all his strength and kissed her cheek.

“I'm here now,” he whispered.

She broke into another hacking cough and expelled more water from her lungs. He held her until the fit subsided.

“Is it true?” she said at last, looking up at him.

“What?”

“The Covenant.”

“But how do you…” He looked at her, astonished. “You never should have come here. This wasn't supposed to happen. Back home, I would have had you aboard a Galejet bound for Trelaine within the hour. Everything was arranged.”

It seemed like a lifetime ago. In the manor, her father sweeping up to her from the shadows. His desperate face. Her lone suitcase. How different her life would have been. How simple. And blind.

“You were never going to come with me,” she said, realizing what he meant.

“It would have put you in far too much danger.”

“You were going to send me away.”

He sighed heavily and looked deep into her eyes.

“I'm not asking you to understand what I have done. I can ask nothing more of you. Not even your forgiveness.”

She studied his battered face, wrought with regret.

“So it is true,” she said. “The Covenant is real?”

Her father nodded slowly.

She imagined the look on Dollop's face. Poor Dollop.

“How? I mean, who are they?” she wondered. “What's their plan?”

“I wish I knew.”

His gaze flickered almost imperceptibly over her shoulder. She realized at once that he was trying to tell her something. Phoebe faked a cough so she could steal a glance. In a corner of the ceiling, an Omnicam surveyed the scene, its fanned lens array glinting in the shadows. They were being watched.

The sight brought back raw memories of the Marquis.

“I thought they were made up,” she continued, realizing that she couldn't risk asking him any more revealing questions.

“Everyone does. Who knows, maybe they are,” he explained. “Perhaps it's another group of mehkans who have adopted the legend for their own. Whoever they are, I failed them just as I have failed you.”

“You didn't. It's not your fault,” she insisted. “If Micah and I hadn't followed you, if we hadn't gotten caught, then you never would have—”

“No. This is my burden. Not yours, not Micah's.”

“We can help. We want to save Mehk, just like you.”

He considered her for a moment.

“Phoebe. I'm just trying to make amends.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was the Chief Surveyor for over twenty years. I led a team that made bio-analysis assessments of subjects for potential market applications.” He let the clinical words sink in. “That's the Foundry way of saying I decided which mehkans were worth killing. Countless died on my orders.”

“But…” Her eyes burned. “How could you? I thought you were different.”

“I am. I'm worse. More guilty than most. Because I did it with pride. I shared the Foundry's bold vision—building a better, brighter future.”

“No. You're better than that.”

He laughed, but not dismissively. His unbandaged eye misted over.

“That's exactly what your mother said,” her father intoned softly, “only with a few more punches and kicks.”

“She…knew?” her voice crackled.

His nod filled her with sickening outrage.

“It was too much to bear alone. I ignored the consequences. I went to great lengths to bypass the Foundry's extensive surveillance to tell her.”

Phoebe could taste the vomit in her throat again. She tore away from her father's arms and got to her unsteady feet.

How could she? Beneath every giggle she had shared with her mother, behind each conversation, looming over all of their carefree shopping sprees, was Mehk. She had known the truth all along, and yet she had been compliant.

Even her own mother had been guilty.

“Don't hate her,” he said, staring at her back. “She was disgusted with me. She almost left me because of it. Almost took you away.”

“She should have,” she spat.

“Maybe,” he agreed, limping over to her. “She made me promise to quit.”

“But you didn't.”

“It would have been suicide. No one quits the Foundry.”

“Then she should have told everyone!”

“Do you really think they would have allowed that?”

He reached out to touch her, but she pulled away.

“I know you're confused, Phoebe. I don't blame you. None of it's easy. Nothing true is black or white.”

“You're pathetic!” she screamed, spinning to face him. “You sound just like Goodwin. You knew it was wrong, and so did she.”

“Yes. Of course. And yet she chose to love me anyway. She put us above all else.”

“Neither of you did anything about it!”

“But we did. Together, we tried to find a better way. It wasn't easy, avoiding detection as she pushed me to change the Foundry. But I did everything in my power to make our operations more humane. When she died, I…The little things weren't enough. She—” He heaved a shuddering breath. “She knew I could do more, and I vowed to, no matter what it took. I went searching. But the Covenant found me first.”

“You should have told me,” she said, jaw clenched. “I could have helped.”

“No. I almost got you killed. If your mother had known you were involved, she would have never forgiven me.”

“I came here on my own,” she insisted.

“How I wish you hadn't. She loved you more than anything, Phoebe. More…more than her own life.” His voice cracked. “I do too.”

She threw her arms around him, and he stumbled back.

How skeletal he felt, how frail. Her heart strained.

“What happens now?” she whispered to him.

“We wait.”

Would they put her back in that wretched tank? Or did they have something even worse in mind? Micah. Dollop. What would their fates be?

“They're going to kill us, aren't they?”

“No,” he said, his voice hardening.

There was a series of digital tones and a reverberating thunk as the heavy steel door unlocked. It slid open to reveal a pair of Watchman soldiers.

“We are going to make it through this,” her father said as he pulled away.

He was leaving again. She held on, refusing to let go.

“I…I don't believe you.”

He stopped.

Behind his broken glasses, his good eye flashed.

“You must.”

She couldn't make this any harder. She would be strong for him. For her. Phoebe nodded and let her father go. He turned and limped out of the cell.

The door clanged shut with ringing finality.

She knew she might never see him again.

“I…” she rasped. “I forgive you.”