Embalmed.
He mouthed the word, and he was hit with another image. This one depicted the doctor himself stripping her down, cutting her open, pumping her full of chemicals. It was frightening, seeing him alone with her body, his gloved hands doing their blood work.
Dominik lunged at Gloeckner, his hands clawing and grabbing. At the same time, he felt his mind splitting. It was as if his body had flown off the handle but a separate part of himself was left perfectly sane. It asked him, why oh why am I hitting this man? He is not the real enemy, he is not the cause. So why? To this, he had no answer. He only knew that he needed to strike, and strike he would.
Before he could do so much as land a blow, however, Jan stepped between them. The sergeant grabbed the doctor by the scruff of the neck and tossed him back towards the path. Gloeckner stumbled and fell, barely catching himself before toppling into dirt. He pushed himself up, looking shocked and indignant. Jan held up a finger as if to warn him from saying anything further, then turned to Dominik. “Go,” he said. “Be with her. It's the only mercy you'll get in this place, and it's not much.” His eyes seemed to glow. Dominik could see pain in them and thought there was something more, perhaps compassion. Then, Jan took a step forward. “Get down there before I throw you down.”
Maybe not.
Dominik found himself stepping into the bunker before he had time to think. The door slammed behind him, squeezing his vision of the two men as if he were closing them out of his world. For all intents and purposes, he was. It was completely black, the generators not yet on for the day. He wondered if this is what the universe felt like before Creation: this feeling of nothing, and loneliness.
After a moment — or an eternity, Dominik didn't know — the lights flickered on. The universe reappeared, and he was standing in the familiar concrete labyrinth marking the place of his pseudo-employment. As he moved to the stairs and began to descend to the lab proper, he felt the weight of Zofia's loss grow heavier. There was no one here to save him, now.
When he pushed the door open, he knew what he should see. He should see… he should see Zofia on a table, the light of the heavens shining down, her form surrounded by angels. That's what he should see, even if he expected the growths to have done their horrible work. It was his fault, after all. He had failed to control them. He had broken the glass and set them free.
But as he stepped inside, he stopped and stared in astonishment. Zofia lay in the center of the room, lifeless, but as beautiful as she had ever been, as pure as she had ever been. What he saw around her was wondrous. It was not an entourage of angels, but it was truly wondrous just the same.
2
Lucja snapped out of bed when she heard her father come in. A moment earlier, she had been dead to the world, but the sound of him brought her out of sleep quicker than the ringing of any alarm.
“Father,” she whispered.
Removing his coat with the deliberation of an old, old man, Dominik came to her side. He carried a canteen with him, an odd adornment for the circumstance, but he didn't speak of what was inside it, not right away.
“You're awake.”
“I couldn't sleep. Could you?”
He hugged her, and for a moment, they did nothing but cling to each other in the darkness. When he finally pulled his head up, she could see how haggard he was. He looked shrunken, like a flower that had withered in the cold.
“I need to speak to Ari.”
“I'm here.” He was looking at them from the doorway. Though he had tried to give them some space, he had never been far. Lucja didn't think he would ever be far now, given what had happened.
Her father stood with that same, awkward slowness, then crossed the small space to his friend. He reached into his pocket and brought out a folded piece of paper. He looked at it a moment as if contemplating whether or not to hand it over. Then he did, his face looking to all the world as if the note were a written confession of murder.
Reaching for his spectacles with one hand, Ari took the paper and flipped it open with the other. He squinted at the writing.
“I want you to acquire these for me. Aside from Kriege, there shouldn't be anyone who will know what we can do with them,” Dominik said.
“Industrial steel tubing, silver, methanol… are you serious?”
Though Lucja was looking at the back of her father's head, she knew the expression on his face. Her father had a plan; it was the same look of intensity he had worn in the dark of The Adalgisa.
No, not like that, she corrected. He was different now. This would not be an ideation, not a gentle what if escape scenario. This would be iron clad. Because her father, like her, was now as cold and hard as the steel of his machines. This time, he would not freeze with the ax.
When he made a twirling motion with one finger, Ari turned the paper. Over her father's shoulder, Lucja could see a drawing of a strange machine. She could see vats and filters and tubes, all with arrows and diagrams and intricate labels. The design, no doubt, was a part of his plan.
“It works?” Ari asked. “Are you sure?”
“The substance works,” her father said. “I've seen it for myself. As to the production of it, that's what the machine and the chemicals are for.”
“But there's something else?”
“Oh yes.”
“And it works?” Ari asked again, as if not believing his partner had finally found a solution to the problem that had ailed them for so long.
“If only I'd found it sooner.” Even though she could still not see his face, Lucja knew the pain upon it. This thing, whatever it was, might have saved her sister.
“But… it's because of her,” Ari said.
“It was her gift to me. The funny thing is, when we have it, we're not going to use it on the fungus, not all of it.”
“We're not?”
“There's more, Ari. More that I would not care to write down.”
“Oh?”
And then, her father told them his plan.
When he had finished, they sat in silence for a long while. Lucja had been right in every assumption, and it terrified her.
“When it's done, I can't say for sure how we're going to get off of the island,” her father said. “The vehicles will be inoperable, so we'll have to hike to the shipyard. When we get there, we'll have to find a way to steal on board a ship. Most of the whalers will be faithful to the army, but some won't. Who knows, maybe we can bribe the others.” He shrugged. “It's a chance.”
Lucja nodded, and for the first time in months, she began to feel hope.
That night, under the watchful eyes of the guards, they buried Zofia in an unmarked grave outside of the walls, the three of them pondering the terrible things they were about to do.
3
Across the encampment, another figure jilted awake in the darkness. He hit his head on a shelf next to the bed and swore. He could not believe his clumsiness, even in a place so unfamiliar. But his hands had done their work; his Walther PPK pistol was in his grip before he was fully conscious.
Richter sat up and stared through the dark. The room was small and clearly empty, but he felt something, a lingering presence.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw immediately what it was. The door to the room was ajar. He had shut it and locked it before retiring as he always did. The fact that he could see a sliver of light from the hallway startled him. Throughout all of his years in the army, with the countless enemies he'd made, no one had ever gotten the drop on him. He was a man of good habits; he was a man who checked beneath the bed and in the closets and who always locked the door when he went to bed, even in friendly territory, even when the nearest enemy was a thousand kilometers away. And so to see the door open now, even a crack, gave him pause. Someone had opened it, and they'd done it quietly.