The sullen men didn't give Seiren a second glance from their cells. The cuffs and chains on their wrists clinked with each movement. Seiren took in each of their features: haggard, rough, with empty eyes. Some of them had tremulous hands; others looked a little too jittery.
They have no idea what horrible things are in store for them.
They're on death row, Madeleine. There is literally nothing worse that could happen. They're going to die.
Better to die an intact human than a monster.
Seiren's two guards stood by her side, hands clasped across the front of their vomit-green uniforms. Seiren bit back her rebuttal; Madeleine would kick up a row if she saw what Seiren wanted to do as experimentation. She focused on her options. Her approval had arrived about five days after she'd sent it, allowing her access to death row inmates and to experiment on them as she saw fit. Security had increased threefold since that permission, with personnel guarding the inside as well as outside of the laboratory and her own chaperones when she went anywhere within the facility.
They came in all shapes and sizes. Most of them were relatively young, in their twenties or thirties. A few were older; some were so wrinkled and thin it was a wonder they still had the strength to stand. They were all men; women were housed in a different area altogether. A few were fat, but most were quite slim or even malnourished-looking, so much so that a green rune would probably kill them due to their lack of body reserves.
She picked ten who were mostly of the same build and age. Ten men, ten runes to test. The guard barked out their numbers and they marched out, swaying on their feet, staring down at their feet.
That's Marko, who wanted to be a joiner when he was a teenager. He was unlucky and fell in with the wrong crowd, and he owed them too much to leave. He got caught robbing someone at knife point several times and regretted it ever since.
And here's Jiorge, who liked to whittle wood into tiny statues. His wife was sickly and he needed the money for her medications, so he broke into an apothecary and got caught. His wife is dying as we speak because he isn't there any more.
Jonny failed mage school and made do as a metalworker. He used to make big pots and pans for the kitchen but got drunk one night and was trying to protect a friend from another drunk man. He saved the friend but accidentally killed the other guy. He's a gentle giant and everyone always said what a good man he is.
Madeleine. Shut up.
These are real people, Seiren. What I said might be fake but they all have their own stories and the system has already relegated them to nothing but numbers. They have families, pasts, dreams and regrets. You can't treat them like laboratory speciâ
Seiren took off her necklace and shoved it in her tunic pocket, her mind spinning. A headache pulsed at her temple. Ever since the approval had come through, Madeleine had never stopped. She pleaded, shouted, bargained. It was only during sleep when Seiren got some peace from the constant berating, but even then the nightmares were only round the corner. She could feel the bags beneath her eyes and the fatigue tingling on the tips of her fingers. The sooner she fixed the wretched mistake from six years ago, the sooner she would get some peace and relief from the guilt.
One man, inmate Six-Four-Five, was chained to the inside of his cage when she returned to the laboratory with her two new chaperones at her side. They made themselves comfortable in the chairs propped in the corner with reading material and hot drinks, casting an eye on her from time to time. They were courteous enough to give her some privacy due to the classified nature of her research material and never asked her anything beyond the practical. Seiren liked that. Nobody interfering. Nobody telling her what to do.
She double-checked the notes piled haphazardly on her table and scrutinised the design on her paper. Yes. The gradients were spaced, the shapes overlapped. The circles were perfect.
She took a big breath. Now it was time to see what it did.
Six-Four-Five looked wary as she approached. He had a shaved head, per protocol for inmates, and he had a bruised eye and was covered in superficial wounds. One of the guards stood up and unsheathed a long knife that sat on the table. His companion followed him to flank Seiren.
"I figured it was about time it's my turn," said Six-Four-Five.
She frowned. Against her better judgement â it was better to not have any emotional investment to her subjects, or even humanise them at all â she said, "What do you mean?"
"Eh." His eyes looked as if they'd seen ten lifetimes' worth of devastation. "You hear things, being in prison. I've been there long enough before they decided to kill me."
"What things?"
"This place. That guy down the hall used to say you lot like to practise on us. Fiddle with your magic. If it goes wrong, eh, nobody's gonna fight on our behalf, right? We're better off dead as far as everyone else is concerned."
"My lot."
"Aye. Mages. All you's researching stuff but can't practise, right? So you need something to show your stuff works. Well, we're as good as dead anyway, so get on with it."
She hesitated, wrestling internally with her curiosity.
"What other mages have been doing these to you?"
"Eh? Not me personally. Nobody did nothing to me yet. I know others who had, though. One of them was particularly nasty, wanted to test on ways of torturing people without killing them. He had a lot of fun with those lot."
"I'm nothing like that. I'm testing to heal. It's good magic."
"Oh, aye. Everything is good magic until someone decides to blow people up with it."
Six-Four-Five turned away with disgust. The guards opened the cage. Six-Four-Five was still chained within by the neck, wrists, and ankles. The second guard reached in from behind and yanked Six-Four-Five's head back by his ear; Six-Four-Five grunted. The armed guard rammed his knife just under the man's sternum and dragged downwards before withdrawing.
His screams echoed around the room, making Seiren's ears ring. She scrunched up her eyes, reaching forward with her rune and slapping it on his chest, just above the wound. The man wrestled against his restraints, eyes rolling. Blood spurted from the opening. The guards stepped back, out of the projectile's range, but still close enough if Seiren needed assistance. She snapped her fingers. The rune glowed green and violet, engulfing the man in its light. She moved back; the guards locked the cage at once and retreated.
Six-Four-Five continued to scream and thrash against his restraints. Loose bowels plopped onto the bloodstained marble floor. Gradually, the light reached his opening and sank in. The man sucked in a breath. Seiren held hers, watching the scene unfold. The glowing rune stayed lit on his chest; the paper remnants fluttered away. The wound knitted, leaving the escaped bowel loops still exposed.
Six-Four-Five gurgled. He spasmed against the restraints. The metal clanged. Inhuman noises emanated from his throat. His eyes rolled. Before Seiren's eyes, those loops of bowel dissolved away, sucked back into the half-sealed vertical abdominal wound. She edged forward, her eyes and mouth going round. The wound was still there, but nothing more than an old scar, purplish and thick. The blood soaked the front of Six-Four-Five's trousers and also lay sticky and wet on the ground.
It... worked? It worked!
Seiren reached out to Madeleine with excitement, only to find tranquil silence. Of course. Madeleine still sat in her tunic pocket. She reached in, eager to share the news. Her fingers grazed the string of the pendant.
A scream and a smash of metal on metal made her jump out of her skin. The two guards stepped in front of her at once, runed guns drawn and pointed at Six-Four-Five â except it wasn't quite him. His eyes rolled in all sorts of directions. He snarled, feral, saliva flying from his mouth. Veins popped up all over his shaved head. He tore his ragged prisoner's clothing off, his muscles straining against the flesh.
"Sit down, I say!" hollered the guard. Six-Four-Five paid him no heed. "I said sit the hell down!"
"He's not understanding anything," said the second guard, uneasy. Six-Four-Five threw himself repeatedly against the cage, but it was reinforced metal and sealed with runes and held firm. His head connected with the bar. It knocked him back and dazed him for two seconds, the skin splitting and blood pouring down his face. The wound sealed almost at once. He growled, scraping his nails with a nauseating screech on the bars. The wounds he sported an hour ago were gone. His skin was intact, the bruises vanished, and what would have been a mortal abdominal knife wound completely sealed.
"But it's worked!" Seiren leaned in. He was wild, all the shrewdness in his eyes gone. All the damage he inflicted on himself in his fruitless frenzy to escape healed within seconds. This rune worked, at a cost. Seiren was sure nobody had managed this degree of healing before her.
She let them take Six-Four-Five away, turning to her runes. The first one was a semi-success. She slid Madeleine back round her neck. The three subsequent runes branched from her first one, similar in most of their structures and gradient placements. Perhaps she could isolate the combination that allowed the remarkable regeneration.
What happened?
Seiren walled off her recollection of what happened.
Where's the man? What did you do with him?
Madeleine pummelled against Seiren's silence.
Tell me at once, Seiren Harred!
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