The Blunt Reaper

The Forty-Second had given them a room on one of the upper levels of Beacon Hall.

It was barely large enough for two narrow beds, a stone table and a cabinet with one door that refused to close properly. A single window overlooked the inner courtyard, though iron shutters covered most of it and allowed only a narrow strip of pale light into the room. The accommodation was intended for visiting Reapers and their contractees, which explained the absence of anything comfortable enough to encourage a long stay.

Rook had made the room considerably emptier.

Every knife, nail and sharpened piece of metal had been removed. He had taken the small mirror from the wall after discovering that its edges could be broken, carried the oil lamp into the corridor and even inspected the wooden stools for loose splinters. His coffin remained outside the door along with every weapon inside it.

Mara sat upon one of the beds with the memory marble resting in her palm. "Do you honestly think I’m going to wake up and stab myself with a stool?"

"I think you might wake up believing you’re someone who would."

"That doesn’t answer the question."

"It answers the important part."

Rook closed the door, then placed the only remaining chair near the bed. He sat close enough to restrain her if necessary, though he attempted to make the arrangement appear less deliberate by leaning back and folding his arms.

Mara watched him. "You look nervous."

"I look bored."

"You searched the room three times."

"The cabinet had a hinge."

"Terrifying."

"It was sharp."

Mara looked down at the marble. White light drifted beneath its dark surface, occasionally resolving into the edge of a table or the silhouette of someone wearing a long coat. The image never lasted longer than a few seconds before folding back into the fragment.

Rook’s attention followed it despite his apparent disinterest.

"You can still reconsider," he said. "The Remembrancer removed almost everything inside that fragment. Whatever remains will probably be incomplete gibberish from people who spent too long inside an Abomination."

"You’ve told me that six times."

"It remains true."

"And I’m still doing it."

Rook leaned farther back. "Then why are we still discussing it?"

"Because you keep trying to stop me."

"I’m making sure you understand that this probably won’t tell you anything. You’ll see half a room, hear three words and spend the next several days deciding they must mean something."

Mara closed her fingers around the marble. "You’re talking a lot for someone who doesn’t care."

"I’m trapped in a small room without my coffin. There’s nothing else to do."

She moved the marble between both palms and closed her eyes.

At first, nothing happened.

The fragment remained cold against her skin. Its surface shimmered faintly beneath her thumbs, and for several seconds Mara wondered whether the Remembrancer’s filtration had damaged it. The original sphere had reacted the moment she touched it, flooding her thoughts with screams, faces and the confused hatred of the Fourth Rank. This one produced little more than a distant vibration.

Then the room tilted.

Mara felt Rook’s hand close around her wrist before the sensation disappeared.

The bed vanished beneath her and instead white light opened across her vision.

She stood inside a laboratory.

The chamber was enormous, large enough that its farthest wall was hidden behind rows of machinery and suspended walkways. Metal pipes ran across the ceiling, disappearing into sealed chambers that released bursts of white vapor. Cables as thick as her arm spread across the floor beneath protective coverings, connecting computers, pumps and machines whose purposes she could not understand.

Dozens of people moved throughout the room. Most wore pale coats over dark clothing. Some stood before glass containers filled with colorless liquid, while others adjusted the controls of machines surrounding narrow examination tables. Their movements were hurried but controlled, guided by a routine they had repeated enough times to stop questioning.

Mara attempted to turn her head.

Her body did not respond.

These were not her eyes.

She was looking through someone else.

A pair of wrinkled hands moved across the console before her. The fingernails were neatly trimmed, and a silver band encircled one finger. Several lines of information passed across a glass screen, though the numbers changed too quickly for her to understand them.

Someone spoke beside her.

"Test subject... stability is... despite the latest..."

The sentence broke apart.

Several words stretched into meaningless noise. Others vanished as if they had never been spoken. The laboratory shuddered around her, and the memory skipped forward.

The hands upon the console changed.

They were younger now, darker and considerably larger. The silver band was gone. A scar crossed the right thumb, and the person wearing these eyes was holding a metal tray containing several vials of dark blood.

"...experiment should have ended..."

Another voice responded from somewhere behind her. "...not our decision. Continue the blood draw until..."

The memory lurched sideways.

Mara found herself walking through a corridor. The hands visible at the edge of her vision belonged to a woman. Red polish covered several of her fingernails, one of which had been bitten down almost to the skin. She carried a stack of files against her chest while two men argued near a sealed door.

"We’ve already exceeded the agreed number of tests."

"...results justify..."

"He’s twenty-two years old."

"...not relevant."

The scene broke before Mara reached them.

She returned to the laboratory through another pair of eyes. Then another. Sometimes she stood before a computer. Sometimes she looked down from the raised walkways. Once, she found herself staring through a sheet of reinforced glass at something moving violently inside a white room.

The memories did not belong to one person.

She understood that before she recognized any of the faces. Every transition changed the height of her viewpoint, the shape of the hands and even the way the body breathed. Some of the people were old enough for their joints to ache whenever they moved. Others were young, nervous and afraid to touch the machines they had been assigned to operate.

None of the scenes remained stable for long.

Voices overlapped. Conversations began several minutes after they should have ended. A person standing across the room spoke with the voice of someone who had appeared in a different memory. Sometimes the laboratory lights dimmed and the entire scene jumped several hours ahead without warning.

Only a few words survived consistently.

Experiment.

Test.

Blood draw.

The last appeared more often than the others.

Blood draw postponed.

Blood draw completed.

Subject unresponsive after blood draw.

Increase the interval between blood draws.

Insufficient quantity collected.

The repetition continued until the words lost their meaning. Mara was carried through dozens of fractured moments, each recorded by a different person and preserved inside whatever soul the Fourth Rank had consumed.

Then the memories stopped changing.

She found herself standing beside an examination table.

A young man had been strapped to it.

He wore thin patient clothing that hung loosely from his body. Several broad restraints crossed his chest, wrists, thighs and ankles, holding him against the padded metal surface. He appeared to be in his early twenties, though it was difficult to tell beneath the exhaustion hollowing his face. His arms were covered in faded bruises and small puncture wounds.

Mara tried to see him more clearly.

The person whose memory she occupied looked down instead.

Gloved hands adjusted a needle connected to a large syringe. The barrel was larger than anything Mara had seen used by the healers within the Forty-Second. Several empty vials rested upon a tray nearby, along with sealed tubes bearing numbers rather than names.

The doctor pressed two fingers against the young man’s arm, found a vein and inserted the needle.

Dark blood entered the syringe.

The patient did not react.

The doctor continued drawing until the barrel was nearly full, then removed the needle and pressed a piece of cloth against the puncture.

A machine beside the table released a sharp warning tone.

The doctor turned.

Several lines upon the monitor had begun falling. The young man’s breathing slowed, each breath arriving later than the last. His heart rate dropped with it.

"No. No, stay with me."

The words emerged clearly.

The doctor placed the syringe upon the tray and pressed both hands against the young man’s chest. The monitor continued sounding its alarm. One line flattened completely.

The patient’s heart had stopped.

The doctor grabbed at the restraints, fumbling with the catches as panic replaced whatever training he possessed. The first strap refused to release. He pulled harder, swore and reached for the second.

The young man’s eyes opened.

His hand tore free from the loosened restraint.

Before the doctor could move, the patient seized the syringe from the tray and drove the needle into his forearm.

Half the blood entered beneath his skin.

The doctor screamed and struck him across the face. The blow knocked the patient’s head sideways against the table, but his fingers remained closed around the syringe for another moment.

His lips moved.

Mara heard only fragments.

"...see how... feels..."

The doctor ripped the needle from his arm and threw it onto the floor.

"Help!" he shouted. "I need assistance!"

The laboratory filled with movement.

Several people rushed toward the table. Two wore the same pale coats as the doctor, while the others appeared to be nurses or guards. They released the remaining restraints and lifted the unconscious patient onto a wheeled platform.

His head rolled toward Mara as they moved him.

For a moment, she almost saw his face.

The memory distorted before his features became clear. His eyes disappeared beneath a band of white light, and the lower half of his face stretched into a blur. Only his thinness, dark hair and the bruises surrounding his throat remained visible.

He looked too thin and too haggard. For a second she almost thought that it was Rook on the table, but this man was far too skinny and unhealthy to even be Rook.

The platform was pushed toward a large machine occupying the far end of the laboratory.

It had been built around the shape of a human body. A narrow compartment stood open at its center, surrounded by metal arms, glass tubing and several heavy mechanisms mounted behind the frame. The staff transferred the patient into it and locked restraints around his biceps, legs and waist.

Someone attached cables to his chest.

Another fitted a breathing mask over his face.

The doctor who had been stabbed remained several steps behind them, clutching his injured arm beneath one hand. The injury was minimal so no blood seeped out, but it still made his heartrate beat at incredible pace.

"Begin stabilization," someone ordered.

The machine closed around the patient.

Locks sealed the compartment. A terrible grinding sound began somewhere behind it, low enough to vibrate through the laboratory floor. Pumps activated. Dark fluid moved through the tubes leading into the machine, and a series of numbers climbed across the surrounding monitors.

Most of the staff withdrew once the process began.

The doctor returned to a nearby computer and started typing with one hand. His other remained pressed against the wound.

He looked around.

Nobody was watching him.

The panic in the memory changed. It was no longer fear for the patient strapped inside the machine. The doctor pulled back his sleeve and examined the puncture. The needle had entered deeply enough to leave a bruised hole in his arm.

A trace of dark blood remained inside it.

He wiped the injury with a cloth, looked around again and pulled his sleeve down. Someone called his name from across the laboratory, but the memory corrupted the sound before Mara could hear it.

The doctor answered that he was fine.

The laboratory disappeared.

Mara found herself inside a small house.

The walls were painted a dull green, and weak daylight entered through half-closed curtains. A jacket lay across the back of a chair. Several unopened letters had been pushed beneath the door, suggesting the person inside had not left for some time.

The memory belonged to the doctor.

She recognized the hands as he lifted a telephone receiver and entered a number. The puncture on his arm had darkened. Thin black lines spread outward from it beneath the skin, disappearing under the rolled sleeve of his shirt.

Someone answered.

"I won’t be coming in today," the doctor said.

A voice responded, but several days appeared to pass between one word and the next.

"...still unwell? You missed..."

"I said I’m sick."

"...need to report the exposure..."

"There was no exposure."

The doctor ended the call.

The scene skipped.

He stood in the bathroom with both hands against a sink. Strands of hair covered the porcelain basin. More came loose when he touched his head, clinging to his fingers in uneven clumps.

The mirror showed only part of his face.

His skin had become pale and grey, drained of the warmth visible in the laboratory. Dark veins surrounded one eye. Patches of hair were missing above his temple, leaving irritated skin exposed beneath them.

The doctor leaned closer to his reflection.

"No."

The word emerged quietly.

He touched his cheek, then pulled at the skin as though expecting it to belong to someone else. A section near his jaw had become discolored. When his finger pressed against it, the flesh remained indented for several seconds before slowly returning to place.

"No. Not me."

His breathing accelerated.

"This isn’t happening."

The memory jumped again.

The mirror was cracked now. Blood covered one side of the sink, though Mara could not see where it had come from. The doctor’s reflection appeared thinner and less human than before. Something moved beneath the skin of his neck, travelling upward before disappearing behind his jaw.

He gripped the basin until his fingers trembled.

"Not this way."

The lights went out.

Mara fell through darkness.

She opened her eyes upon the bed inside Beacon Hall.

Rook stood over her.

One hand hovered several inches from her shoulder while the other was raised toward her throat, prepared to restrain her if she moved suddenly. His posture made it appear as if he had been moments from throwing himself on top of her.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!