I hadn’t had the best encounters with Cal’s more bloodthirsty brothers, but his pack, and Cal himself, had never given me any reason to hate ghouls.
Cal snarled, and I could see his human face start to slip away. He could only “take the skin” when he wasn’t under stress or in pain, and when he started to lose control, the real Cal came out.
Distracted as we both were, it was a wonder I saw the flash of white before a doctor wearing a long coat leaped from the shadows beyond the table and slashed at Cal with a scalpel. It caught the arm of his too-big Proctor uniform and he howled in pain, lashing out blindly.
The doctor danced out of the way. He was screaming something, but it was hard to hear over the constant cries of pain, the buzzing of the current and the hiss of aether powering the whole thing.
Even shackled, I knew I had to do something. Cal was too angry and panicked to defend himself, so I slammed into the doctor from the side, using all my weight. My scarred shoulder, where the muscles had never quite been the same, gave a scream of pain as loud as the keening ghouls’.
We both went over, but the doctor had his hands free and got on top of me. When he saw my face, he blinked. “You’re—” he started, but I snapped my forehead up and into his nose. It was a desperate move, and my skull rang with pain. I felt elated, though, when the doctor yelped and fell back, dropping the scalpel.
Cal appeared at my shoulder. “Stay down,” he snarled, in a voice I’d only heard him use once before, “unless you want worse than that.”
I didn’t want to look at him, but I forced myself to. This was my friend. He wouldn’t hurt me.
I hoped.
Cal’s jaw was long, and his teeth were longer, poking over his lips. The uniform had shredded at the pressure points where his spiny limbs had changed. His eyes were pure gold, pupilless and inhuman. I held out my hands to him, in what I hoped was a slow and nonthreatening gesture. This is Cal, I reminded myself. If you don’t panic, he won’t panic.
“Can you unlock these?” I asked. “I think the secret of our daring escape is out.”
Cal fumbled for the keys, his long veiny fingers having a hard time grasping the tiny tool.
I took it from him, and our skin brushed. My shoulder throbbed, the scar reminding me that even if I trusted him with my life, Cal was still a monster in this moment.
As my shackles unlocked, the doctor sprang up again and made a beeline for me. I turned, gripping one side of the shackle and swinging the other at his head. It connected with his temple and he dropped, his body making a wet, heavy sound against the cement floor.
“He doesn’t listen,” I told Cal. He was already starting for the tables, though, and paid me no attention.
“We have to help them,” he said. “We have to do something.”
“All right,” I agreed tentatively. “But if we free them, they’re going to attack me.” I pointed at the sharp rib bones and cracked lips of every ghoul. “They’re starving.”
I wanted to help them—truly I did—but I would be no good to anyone, Cal included, if I were in pieces.
Cal ignored me, though, and I held tight to the shackles. Even though they’d eventually be poison to me, I wasn’t about to leave myself defenseless.
He freed each ghoul gently and started to unhook the steel contraption on the closest one’s head, but then stopped. He went even paler, and gripped his stomach.
“I can’t,” he said. “They’re bolted in.”
I shut my eyes, forcing myself to breathe normally, and then approached. The ghoul on the table moaned, translucent eyelids fluttering.
“No way out,” he muttered to Cal. “They tried to put pictures in my brain. Tried to make me into a killer. For the humans. Tried to make me take their orders. All of us. The pictures are in our brain.”
I looked at Cal, whose face slackened. A cloudy tear worked its way down his cheek.
“I’m so sorry this was done to you,” he murmured. “I’ll get you out of here.”
“No,” the ghoul croaked. “Nothing to be done. You have to help us.”
“I am,” Cal told him. “I am helping you. I’ll get this off somehow and you can get out of here.”
“NO,” the ghoul gasped. “You need to end it. We’re not going anywhere. The pictures, they talk to us. Tell us to kill our own kind for the Proctors.” He looked up at Cal. “You have to flip the kill switch. End it now.”
He pointed at a circuit panel with a master switch, one that I could tell would release enormous voltage if flipped.
Understanding dawned on Cal’s face, and he started to shake his head, but the ghoul on the table snarled. “You owe it to us,” he said. “We’re brothers, under the skin. We don’t want to live like this.”
I touched Cal on the other arm. “It would be the kindest thing,” I whispered, and meant it. Whatever the Proctors had done to these ghouls, it was cruel and had destroyed their minds beyond repair. Trapped as they were in this infernal machine, death would be the kindest way out.
Cal nodded at the ghoul and then at me, and then walked toward the circuit board.
“I’m sorry,” I told the ghoul. “So sorry about everything.” Was this where I’d been headed, I wondered? This room, to be brainwashed into being whatever the Proctors wanted me to be? Or tortured? Or simply to stay in that cell until I starved?
Who knew? And who cared? I’d known the Proctors were evil, but I’d never had it driven home quite so thoroughly how sick and disgusting the entire system and the lie it supported were.
Maybe the Great Old Ones coming was the best thing that could happen. Clean slate, start over. Wipe the Proctors and their ideas from the face of the world.
The ghoul grabbed my arm with his clawed hand and I shrieked, startled, as he gasped out a few words at me.
“You,” the ghoul said. “You, the destroyer. The one who walks. He knows you. His great eye sees everything. There is nothing you can hide, nothing you can do. Stay away,” he rasped. “Stay in the light, and keep away from his sign. Do not gaze upon it. Do not even speak his name.”
“Who?” I demanded. “Who are you talking about?”
“He who lives beyond,” the ghoul whispered. “The enemy of the one who walks. Never meet. Never let him gaze into your soul.”
Cal threw the switch. All six of the ghouls gasped and twitched, but they stopped after a time and, one by one, went still.
The ghoul’s grip slackened, and his hand fell away from me, but I stayed where I was, frozen to the spot, until Cal grabbed me and I realized the ghouls’ screaming had been replaced by the whoop of alarms.
“Time to go,” Cal said. He was human again, his face set into the sort of grim expression I’d hoped never to see on my happy, optimistic best friend.
We ran down the stairs and all the way to the docks. The source of the alarm was clearly the ghouls’ room, and Proctors shoved past us without taking much notice. I kept my face shielded, and Cal slung his Proctor jacket over me and gave me his hat, so we looked as if we’d been rousted out of our bunks rather than escaped from a cell.
The boat Conrad had stolen, a small Proctor launch, was bobbing at the dock, and he stared at us as we jumped aboard.
“You can never manage to make a quiet exit, can you, Aoife?” he said. “I’m just sitting here and suddenly the entire place lights up. Are we going to get shot at?”
“Not if you drive the boat,” I said. “And by the way, I’m happy to see you, too.”