The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [144]
“This is her?” He reeled himself to a quick stop inside the door.
“What?” Quinn said. “You were expecting Al Capone?”
“She doesn’t look contaminated.” The doctor took an identical mask from his bag and handed it to Quinn. “But all the same, I need to ask you to put this on and leave the room.”
Quinn blanched. “I might be exposed?”
It’d serve him right, I thought. Every one of them, if they did contract something nasty from Thorn. Get devoured by a nightjar, or see what really lurked in the Mists. Every last stinking Proctor on earth fed to a corpse-drinker. That would be a start.
“Necrovirus is not transmitted through the air,” the doctor said. “As far as we know. But there are procedures the public health office must follow. Now please, for your own safety. Wait outside until I’ve drawn her blood.”
The Proctor scuttled out of the room, and the door slammed and locked.
“Oh yes,” I said loudly, to the door. “Watch out for the big, bad necrovirus.” Draven and the Proctors had lied to everyone. I couldn’t even begin to contemplate what their lie meant for me. For my madness. For my family. If there was no necrovirus, then … what? What made my mother believe dreams and visions over reality, even if some of them had come true? Because she certainly wasn’t normal. What had made Conrad transform, at least for a moment, into someone who’d spill my blood?
And when my birthday turned over, what in all of cold space would happen to me?
The doctor gave me a smile from behind his mask, seemingly impervious to my shouting panic. “Pretty grim in here, isn’t it?”
“It’s not a vacation to Cape Cod, that’s for sure,” I grumbled. The doctor chuckled.
“Keeping your sense of humor. That’s important.” He took out a rubber cord and a syringe. “I’m going to roll up your sleeve, since you’re shackled. Is that all right?”
“There is no necrovirus,” I insisted. “I’m not infected. Draven lied.…” I realized that my frantic denials at least sounded crazy to somebody who was a doctor, a man of science. I had to try to convince him and not sound like a lunatic. “I haven’t contacted any … any virals,” I amended. The word sounded so trite now. If there was no virus, there could be no virals.
My shoggoth bite still throbbed when I moved too quickly.
What was a shoggoth really? A monster? A thing from beyond the stars, fallen to earth? A creature that had oozed into our land from Thorn?
“I know,” the doctor said. He tied the cord around my arm and slapped the inside of my elbow with two fingers. I blinked at him, not understanding.
“You do?”
“I do.” The doctor picked up his syringe and laid it against the blue vein crawling up my arm.
“How do you know?” I pulled away as much as the shackles would allow. What did he know?
“Listen to me very carefully,” the doctor said. His eyes bored into mine, stony green as if they’d been mined from some dark, secret cave. “In fifteen seconds, the aether and vox feed for the interrogation rooms will be interrupted. Look around the room. What do you see?”
“I …” I tried not to gape. I might have a week ago, but now I just darted my gaze from the mirrored glass to the tired blue aether lamp bolted into the ceiling to the scuff marks, slimy and concentric, in the cement from a poor job of mopping.
“You’re going to have less than thirty seconds in the dark,” said the doctor, jamming the needle into my arm and filling the long glass tube with blood, ignoring me when I gasped and jerked. “Go through the vent. Go quickly.”
“Who are you?” I said. I might not be surprised any longer but I was just as bewildered.
The doctor snapped the band off my arm and zipped his bag closed. “You know who I am, Aoife.”
He backed away from me and pressed the door buzzer. I jumped from my seat, feeling like I was moving through a molten river, but I couldn’t let him leave before I’d seen his face.
I wasn’t quick enough. The doctor stepped through