Godspeed Read online

  He stood up and moved closer to the table. He grasped hold of his nearby listening scope and applied it to my chest. His touch, even in this simplest fashion, made every emotion within me swell like shifting seas. I tried to still myself from shaking as he listened and nodded.

  “While I cannot be certain of it, because there can never be absolute certainty in something like this, I believe the time has come to try.” He roped the length of the scope around his neck and returned his eyes to mine. “Are you ready?”

  “I am ready to live or die, sir, but one thing I am not ready to do is to continue to merely exist in the nothingness between. Do what you must.”

  He nodded again, this time in approval. “So I shall.”

  He turned away and began switching, one by one, dials and levers on the panel to their off position. The whirring hum of each mechanism slowed and was finally snuffed into silence, and in the newly quieted room I could hear the sound of his rapid breaths and knew he was, beneath his calm exterior, anxious just as I was.

  Each in turn, he disconnected the leading wires on my chest from the larger machines and attached them instead to the smaller device, which was about the size of a ladies' train case but apparently much heavier, given the effort it took him to move it.

  When all was done and finished, he again wiped the perspiration from his brow and focused on me intently. His eyes questioned if I was ready to see what would happen next; his head moved up and down to convey that he was.

  I mirrored his motion and then closed my eyes.

  “Breathe steadily,” he instructed. “I know the instinct is to hold your breath, but that will only complicate matters.”

  I clasped my lower lip between my teeth for an instant, then realized I should not; if the machine should immediately fire a shock, I might impale it. I released it and inhaled as deeply as I could.

  My heart had already started to slow, and I braced myself for the charge I was certain would come the moment he turned the device on.

  Indeed the charge did come, but this one was, as he'd planned, much less abusive to my body as a whole.

  When it was over, I reluctantly opened clenched eyelids. I blinked once, twice, three times.

  I inhaled and exhaled again, and for the first time in a very long time, the act felt almost a natural thing. My eyes instantly filled with tears at the realization, and in response Quinn emphatically slammed a fist onto the top of the table beside me.

  “Yes!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I knew that you would be able to…” He stopped and suddenly glared at me; leaving me bewildered, forced to wonder what could have prompted the instantaneous change in his demeanor.

  “What's wrong?” I asked, truly terrified. He turned away. His hands moved with furious motions as he began to coil up strands of loose wire, efficiently taking up and securing the slack.

  “I…” he began, stopping to clear his throat. “I have never seen you smile before.”

  I had not realized that I had done so, and could think of nothing to say in reply.

  I watched his every motion closely as he moved, tidying everything and stowing away instruments and devices that he felt, at least for now, he would not need to use on me again. With each item's disappearance, I felt a little more human than I had the moment before.

  By the time he finally finished his work and turned back to me, we heard a single knock at the door. Without waiting, Schuyler came through it. His face registered his surprise as he saw I was free — at least more so than I'd been since the night I first arrived.

  “Success?” he gasped, hurrying toward us.

  “Success,” Quinn replied. His jaw set and his eyes took on a defiance that I had seen in him only once before, when he spoke about attempting to best Death this time.

  Schuyler suddenly seized hold of Quinn by the forearms, color rushing to his face as he gave an excited, yet incredulous laugh.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, Schuyler.” Quinn quickly extricated himself from Schuyler's grasp and took a step closer toward me. “I told you it would work.”

  Schuyler's expression soured, but he seemed to try, at least for my sake, to recover quickly. “What wonderful news.” He patted me gently on top of my head, and as he withdrew his hand his attention was drawn to his fingertips. “Good Lord…”

  I had no idea what troubled him so, until I realized that his hand had taken away a long lock of my hair as he'd pulled it back. Even as gently as he'd touched me, it was enough to snap strands that had become unnaturally brittle and cause them to fall.

  “Control yourself, Schuyler.” Quinn warned, as he locked his eyes on to mine and held my gaze. “It's but a minor side effect, purely cosmetic in nature. As lucky as you are to be alive, it should be of no consequence at all.”

  “You have never been a young woman, Quinn,” Schuyler rebuked him, and then took hold of my hand and squeezed it. “We'll deal with this, do not you worry your pretty head a bit about it.”

  I nodded, wondering when the end would come to the indignities that illness had wrought.

  “We have much more important things to do,” Quinn replied, folding his arms. He rocked his weight to and fro upon his boots. “How would you like to sleep in a real bed tonight?”

  “Really?” I could hardly believe it was possible.

  “Really. Your own bed, in your own room.” He moved toward me and my heart nearly stopped again as I realized he was about to pick me up and carry me, just as I had earlier wished he would.

  Something in my eyes, however, or perhaps the change in Schuyler's expression, gave him pause, and he stopped before his arms closed around me. “Schuyler, if you would be so kind as to pick her up, I will carry the box.”

  I was certain my face betrayed my disappointment; Schuyler's a relief so pure that if spoken, it would have been screamed.

  CHAPTER 10

  I FOUGHT TO HOLD MY HEAD UP as Schuyler carried me onward, up several flights of stairs.

  He teetered at times and struggled to keep his balance as he navigated the turns of the spirals, climbing steps that seemed to grow steeper and narrower with every curve.

  I can only describe my experience at that time as a battle, because as soon as I was disconnected from the complicated machinery in Godspeed's laboratory, my entire body withered and rebelled against my every attempt to control it. I felt weak and useless. Every part of me protested being severed from the artificial energy that had replaced natural propulsion. It was impossible for me to remember, by now, how it ever was that my heart once ticked along without notice and using no power save its own.

  My body ached, my chest burned, my eyes refused to stay open. My head lolled and snapped around as I tried to keep it up.

  “It's all right,” Schuyler assured me, placing a gentle kiss on the crown of it. “You don't have to fight. Rest.”

  By the time the last few steps were in sight, I finally allowed my head to fall onto his shoulder, but not before seeing him clench his teeth and utter an irritated growl at Quinn, who was taking the steps two at a time ahead of us despite the weight of “the box” he carried.

  “Slow down, man, for God's sake. I'm trying not to jostle her around too much but the wires only reach so far.”

  “Maybe you should start running some of the errands you send the boy on yourself, Schuyler,” Quinn replied. “You're old beyond your years.”

  “Aren't we all.”

  I opened my eyes again as we moved at last across the surface of level ground. Schuyler's fine boots drew groaning squeaks from tired floorboards. Quinn's steps were, like the man, much more restrained, and so created no such racket despite the cumbersome equipment he carried.

  We reached the end of a short hall and Quinn set down his burden, trading the handle instead for the overloaded key ring in his pocket. He worked the lock, opened the door, and revealed at last the space that would be mine.

  No royal retreat in any grand castle tower could have possibly pleased me more.

&nb
sp; The room was small but felt larger than its measurements due to the height of the ceiling, which vaulted high above and boasted dormers. These features confirmed that this place had been converted from mere attic into this much more welcoming, habitable bedroom.

  A fire burned in the diminutive hearth. The mantle above was absolutely breathtaking, wood treated white with small flowers intricately carved into it.

  An antique oil lamp with roses painted upon the shade assisted one narrow window in lighting the space.

  A single bed with a wrought iron headboard, white as snow, was angled into the corner across from the door. Tucked in another corner sat a lovely little vanity table, cream-colored wood with glass drawer pulls that glimmered like diamonds.

  A mirror folded into thirds rested upon it, along with a silver tray that held a fine hairbrush, a comb, and a smaller hand mirror.

  Beside the vanity stood a dressmaker's dummy in feminine form — displaying the entire outfit that Schuyler had made for me. It had been pressed and so carefully constructed of such fine materials that I felt it much too elegant to be worn by someone like me.

  The last furnishing of note was a rocking chair, simple and pretty, dressed in fresh linen cushions and so inviting that I wished I had the strength to sit in it.

  I marveled in silence at my surroundings as Schuyler gingerly placed me atop a pile of quilts stacked high upon the mattress. It was a room so much prettier than any I had ever been able to call my own — a room I could not believe was actually being called my own, at least for now.

  “There,” Schuyler frowned, taking note of and misunderstanding my expression as I took in the lovely, pale pink blossom-embroidered curtains that adorned the room's only window. “What's the matter, don't you like the pattern? I can change them for you. Anything here you dislike can be changed.”

  How I wished that could apply to the state in which I now found my physical body.

  My eyes traveled to the mirror across the way, and though the angle of dimming light did not clearly allow me to make out the features of my own face, in that moment I caught sight of even a fraction of my reflection for the first time since I had departed the Argents' home.

  It was not at all the person I remembered that I saw there now; a complete stranger stared back at me.

  My skin had turned a ghostly blue-white. There were inflamed, swollen spots above my left breast, incision sites still healing from my many ‘procedures’. I was at once repulsed and transfixed by these newborn scars. My hand elevated to and brushed over the terminal points of the leading wires that eerily snaked from my chest.

  Just as quickly as I'd done it, Quinn's hand bolted toward mine, and he gently but insistently tugged my fingers away. His eyes flashed in the glass that warning look of disapproval that made my throat constrict and all wisps of breath escape my lungs.

  I looked away, ashamed, and attempted to push what I'd seen from my mind as he allowed my arm to fall back to my side.

  I managed to speak at last in answer to Schuyler's question, though it was not easy, as overcome as I was with gratitude to be in these new surroundings.

  “Dislike, sir? How could anyone possibly dislike a single thing about a room so beautiful?” Tears spilled down my cheeks, and Schuyler brushed them away. “It is too good for me.”

  “Nonsense.” Quinn cut Schuyler off, answering for him. He situated the box on the floor beside the bed, and dropped down to one knee to make note of the readings on its meters. “As hard as you've worked, you're more than entitled to something far grander than this little room.”

  “Worked?” I was puzzled, first by his use of the word, and second by the thought he believed I could still deserve more. “I've done nothing to earn it, sir.”

  “Sometimes surviving is the hardest work of all.”

  I did not know what I could possibly say in response, so I said nothing. My eyes shifted again and Schuyler gave me a smile and a wink; in that way that he did when he was trying his best to reassure me that everything was going to be all right.

  Still, my mind raced ahead to the lingering questions I had no answers for. How long would I be allowed to stay here? If I did recover to anything near a normal state, could I gather the strength necessary to really find my own way in the world? I lacked, I was certain, the stamina now to take up the servant's work I had done before. I possessed only a basic education — though at least I was literate — and I worried. What could I do to earn my continued keep in a world constructed to challenge the fortitude of the strongest of men?

  “You look like you've just lost your best friend, child!” Schuyler clucked his tongue, his brow furrowed with concern. “What is the matter with you?”

  “Where… will I go when…” I could not say any more; I was too much at the mercy of my frantic emotions. I trembled, wracked with fear, and beyond that the dread of ever having to return to a world devoid of the presence of these two men, who had taken responsibility for my life when no one else would and become my unlikely, unexpected earth-bound saviors.

  Specifically, I dreaded the idea of beginning or ending a single future day without looking into a particular pair of bright blue eyes; of never getting to know, to truly understand, the workings of the mind that ticked on ceaselessly behind them.

  Seeming to ignore my question, Quinn rose again and nodded with something close to satisfaction. “Those readings will do, for now. If there are any issues though, we may need to revert to the larger charges now and again until I can complete what we need to take the next step.”

  He moved toward the door, and I was frightened, suddenly, of being left alone. “Until then, Doctor Godspeed?”

  He paused as if this was the first time he considered the question.

  “Until then, I suppose we try to build up your strength as best we can and make you as comfortable as possible.” Raising his eyes to the ceiling above, he took note of rain beginning to pound upon the roof above it. “I hope we're making the right decision, using this room, Schuyler,” he mumbled.

  Schuyler shuddered. I tried to make sense of Quinn's meaning, but was too tired to understand his concerns.

  “We'll have to mind the weather,” Schuyler agreed.

  By the time the second man spoke, the first had already left the room. A final question formed in my mind, and I called out as best I could.

  “Doctor Godspeed, please. How will I bathe?”

  His head alone reappeared in the doorway. He glanced to Schuyler, who now wore a weary, resigned look on his face, as if he already knew the answer to the question.

  “Very carefully,” Godspeed replied. “You will have to be disconnected from the box before, of course, and…” He stopped, waving a hand and seeming suddenly angry, though I had no idea what I had done to make him so.

  He disappeared again. His voice boomed behind him as his hurried, uneven steps now evoked those same mournful, whining cries from the wood beneath his feet as I'd heard before. “Schuyler knows what to do.”

  I looked at Schuyler apologetically. He had apparently, in this instant, become my nurse, without ever volunteering for the duty. I was as embarrassed at the thought as I was concerned. I'd never seen him touch the wires or the machinery they attached to without being scolded by the doctor for doing so — now he was to help me care for my wounds?

  “Don't worry, little one,” Schuyler assured me. His eyes shone in the last of the daylight as it streamed in through the room's solitary window. Emotion clearly took hold of him and refused to let go. “Don't worry,” he repeated. “I know just what to do. Tomorrow.”

  “For now?” I clutched at his sleeve, desperate not to be left alone here, farther and farther from the doctor by the moment as his steps carried him away.

  “Soup,” Schuyler answered. “Soup, and then sleep. And do not you worry for a moment, my girl, if anything should go wrong in your sleeping hours between dusk and dawn, Quinn will know it. He will materialize at your side before you are even aware of the problem an
d make all things right again.”

  “How can that be?”

  “Because he is something more than mortal,” Schuyler replied, not meeting my eyes as he laid another blanket upon me and began stirring up the fire. “He is something much more akin to the Divine.”

  I knew it, I thought. I knew he was more than the stonework statue amidst mankind he would have us believe him to be.

  “At least,” Schuyler's voice dropped. His eyes seemed to trace a line across the floor where Quinn's feet had last fallen. “I believe him to be so.”

  “As, good sir, do I.”

  He shifted with obvious discomfort, fidgeting his fingers together one hand against another before he sighed and prepared to take his leave of me. “I will return shortly with a tray. Soup, and tea.”

  The door closed, but I barely heard the click of the lock. Comforted by the softness of the bed, the warmth of the room and the promise of his return, I swiftly completed the descent into sleep.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE CREAK OF THE DOOR and plaintive squeals of floorboards announced Schuyler's arrival before he spoke a word. “Good day, Miss. Would you like to feel human again?”

  I tried to sit up to greet him but found the wires too taut and my energy too low to complete the motion.

  “I would, sir.” My tone was melancholy, and revealed to him that I doubted anything he could do for me today would accomplish that impossible task.

  “Well, at least we can clean you up. Come now.” He knelt down beside me and began to disconnect wires from terminals upon the brick-like box: the anchor which now weighted my soul to this world. “I've drawn the bath, everything is set.”

  He folded the blankets back and, seeing I was still clothed in the sheet alone, did what he could to acknowledge my modesty and honor my dignity. “I've brought this ancient dressing gown. It closes in front, so we should be able to slide it over you, just so…” He elevated his eyes to the ceiling as he tilted my unsteady form forward against his waiting shoulder, and then in one amazing slight of hand trick, swept the sheet away and the robe along my arms and up over me. I tried to help as he pulled it together at the waist, but my fingers only seemed in the way. I was grateful, though embarrassed, and hoped one day I might have the opportunity to show him how appreciative I was for his kindness, and his discretion.