Reunion
As she ran down the hallway, the wound in her thigh burning and her lungs aching, Sarah grabbed at the Sky-hook hanging at her waist to stop it banging against her other thigh, clutching it tightly as she neared the door at the end. In the other hallway, this door had led to the Operating Room, but here, it was just a door.
Sarah slowed her step, then stopped as she reached the door, putting her hand on the knob and her ear to the wood.
Voices - Helena, two, maybe three others, and a odd buzzing noise. Her fist tightened around the doorknob. Helena was crying now, sobbing in pain, and Sarah’s knuckles were white. She wanted to burst in and kill them all, but instead she took a few deep breaths and gently cracked the door open.
The space beyond was large, with a ceiling that looked two stories tall and a floor tiled in black and white. But straight ahead was an area enclosed in glass and Sarah saw that, despite the lack of signs, this was still an operating room.
Helena half-lay, half-sat on a hospital gurney behind the wall of glass, clad in a long white hospital gown, her body jerking and writhing as two men in white smocks and surgical masks stood over her, watching her impassively. As Sarah stared in horror, she saw that there was something attached to Helena’s back, something metallic and snakelike, shining darkly under the bright lamps which surrounded the bed. She dragged her gaze up and saw Sister Rachel standing above the theatre on a small balcony, hands clasped on her cane. She was smiling.
Helena cried out, pulling against the fabric straps that attached her hands to the bed frame, her hair white under the harsh lights. One of the doctors crooked his head and spoke loudly.
“You two men upstairs...if she gets ornery, just hit her with the machines. She opens one tear, and there will be nothing but regrets.”
Sarah shifted her gaze from Rachel, casing the rest of the room quickly. Two other areas, one on each side of the balcony, holding two more men in white, and machines covered with buttons and levers. One of them pushed something and the buzzing sound heightened, and cracked.
Helena screamed.
Sarah shouldered the door open and shouted.
“Stop it! Rachel, what the bloody hell are you doin’ to her!” She pointed the gun at the figure in white, although chances were the glass surrounding the theatre was thick enough to stop a bullet. It felt good to have Sister Rachel in her crosshairs at any rate.
Rachel lifted her head and met Sarah’s gaze, laying one hand on the railing in front of her. The lights glinted off her one silver eye. When she spoke, she sounded almost pleased.
“Sarah. You finally made it.” Her head tilted slightly to one side. “But what is that charming American expression...a day late and a dollar short?” She watched with a small smile tugging at her red lips as Sarah looked one way, then the other, half listening to the white-coated men in the chamber.
“Can't we give her something to quiet her down?” Sarah recognized the voice as Dr Pettifog.
“Well,” answered the other - the true believer, his bald head shining like a skull under the lights, “the Prophet says half the procedure is the pain…”
Dr. Pettifog sighed. “Hmm. When the body cries out, the spirit listens.”
There were doors on either side of the glass chamber. Sarah kept her eyes on Rachel as she lowered her gun, then darted towards the door on the left. The white-clad figure merely watched her, lifting her hand in a gesture that had Helena screaming again.
“Do you hear that, Sarah? That is the sound of your interference. You have led my sister into temptation, and now…” Another choked scream. “She must be cured of it.”
“She’s not your sister!” Sarah yelled, then gritted her teeth as she skidded through the doorway, finding herself in another long, grand hallway lined with tall arched windows, and intricate Persian carpeting. There were a few alcoves containing small red velvet sofas and side tables, and a short set of stairs at the far end and -
“Oh shit,” Sarah sputtered, and dived forward to escape the gunfire coming from a turret on the stairs, sliding behind a section of wall that was just large enough to cover her. The turret was like the others she’d seen throughout Columbia, topped with metal sculpted to look like a soldier, red light shining from its eyes. She waited for the break in gunfire, rubbing her fingers against her palm, then swinging out far enough to send the green mist of Possession at the turret. The red light turned to green and she ran towards the stairs, her own gun ready, and when soldiers started to appear, she was ready to take out the ones the turret missed.
Lightning arced from her free hand, soldiers jittered and fell, but they kept coming, so she switched back to Possession and now they were fighting each other as well.
Rachel’s voice echoed through the hallway, made slightly tinny by the fluted speakers high up in the corners. They were the same as the other Comstock House.
“She may not be my sister now, Sarah. But believe me when I tell you - she will be.”
The sound of Helena’s hoarse, fanatical voice on the Voxophones rang in her ears and Sarah shivered. She had made it to the turret on the stairs, now a twisted mess of metal and squatted behind it, hurriedly reloading her pistol and wishing she’d picked up a few more weapons along the way. The bottle of Salts was running low as well.
A quick glance around the turret base showed an open doorway leading into a large room...and another three - no, four, turrets. Marble columns stretched down the centre of the room, and low voices escaped from behind them, hissing instructions.
Sarah carefully sent Possession at one of the turrets, then at another. They began shooting at one another, as well as at the hidden soldiers, and she dashed across the floor and into another alcove, crouching and picking off the few soldiers that came her way. She looked behind her and realised the alcove was actually a doorway - a strange metal doorway that resembled the ones in the tower, opened with the spin of a wheel. Another opening led to a staircase and she crept up it, trying not to let her boots clang on the metal. At the top was the small area with the machines and one of the men dressed in white. He was staring down at Helena, finger poised over a button, and when Sarah came right up behind him, silently, and pressed her pistol into the back of his neck, he froze.
“If you press that button again…” Sarah hissed, digging the barrel still hot from firing into the soft flesh.
He slowly moved his hand away from the machine and it joined the other one in the air. Sarah heard him swallow.
“Please...I didn’t want…” His voice shook, then dropped to a whisper. “The Prophet..she...my...my family…” He stopped, turning his face slightly. Sarah could see terror in his eyes and it wasn’t all because of her. Her hand loosened and she stepped back, then brought her fist down on the sweet spot on the back of his skull and he dropped to the floor, unconscious.
Running her eyes over the machine and the thick cables that snaked out and down, she chose a lever and pushed it. There was a slow whining sound and the buzzing lessened. When she peered over the machine and saw Helena, her heart thumped at the sight of her face, still twisted in pain.
“She shut down one of the generators!” shouted the bald doctor.
Sarah ran back down the stairs, letting her boots clatter now.
“If we don't sedate her and she shuts down the other one…” Dr Pettifog said warningly.
She ran out into the large room with the columns, barely noticing the scattered bodies and what remained of the gun turrets, rattling the handles of a set of wooden doors to no avail, and then found the next metal door that led to the next metal staircase.
“We're not sedating her!” insisted the other loudly.
As Sarah leapt up the last step and pointed her gun at the second man in white, who sneered at her and moved his hand toward the machine and the button that was identical to the other one.
“I don’t have time for this shite,” she told him, and shot him before he could press it, covering the panel in blood and brains instead. She stepped over his body and pulled the lever, and finally the power whined all the way down. The buzzing stopped and she could hear Helena whimpering.
“Helena! I’m comin’ down!” Sarah shouted, “Don’t either of you bastards touch her!” She turned, paused, realising that Rachel had been silent through all this, and punched her thigh in anger, wincing. Had she snuck out, or was she hiding, waiting to strike?
“She shut down the other siphon!” cried Dr Pettifog.
Siphon? thought Sarah, that’s the siphon? Below her, the doctors voices were louder and filling with fear, and she turned back to see why.
“She's getting up...she's…” The bald doctor was backing away from Helena as she sat up shakily, pulling herself forward by the thin straps around her wrists, her eyes shining as she stared at both of them. The tendons in her neck stood out as she pulled harder, until the sound of fabric ripping filled the air.
Her head tilted to one side. One hand lifted.
“No!” screamed Dr Pettifog. Sarah watched, fascinated despite herself. She should get down there, but something told her Helena could handle this by herself. That she needed to.
A Tear opened. Sarah gaped. It was bigger than any of the Tears she’d seen in Columbia - it encompassed the entire space outside the glass of the chamber, like another world was rolling over this one. It was an ocean, grey-green with choppy waves that grew larger by the second. Sarah found herself shading her eyes and squinting out to sea, eyes widening at the massive waterspout that was spinning closer and closer.
Helena sat still as the cyclone swept around her and into the chamber, her gurney a little island of calm. The two doctors, however, were caught in the spiral of water, their screams choked by water. Lamps blew over, equipment blew sparks and the huge glass window exploded outwards. She gestured, almost dreamily, and the cyclone curled around her again and moved away, back out to sea.
The Tear closed like a blind being pulled down and Sarah let out the breath she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding in. Helena slumped forward, head in her hands, and Sarah felt panic surging through her.
“I’ll be right there, Helena,” she yelled and ran down the stairs, taking two at a time. There were no other doors on this side of the room, only the locked wooden ones, so she ran back around the way she had come, having to pick her way over broken glass and carefully step over what remained of the wall of the chamber.
Helena sat on the gurney, trying to reach the metallic tube in her spine, face pale and desperate with frustration. Torn fabric hung from her wrists.
“Helena, wait,” Sarah called as she crunched over the glass-covered floor. “Let me help.”
Helena looked up at her, blonde curls limp with sweat, green-brown eyes huge and brimming with tears.
“Sarah. You came back,” she whispered. The pink skin around her eyes was had darkened, and she was trembling. What Sarah had thought was a hospital gown turned out to be a long white dress, the back buttons gaping open to allow the tube to attach. A chill ran through her as she realised it was the same kind of dress Helena had been wearing when she had been old and the world was on fire.
The same kind of dress that Rachel wore.
She gently wrapped her hands around Helena’s shoulders and pulled her forward a little, feeling arms wrap around her waist and a head lean on her chest. The metal tube was made up of pieces slotting together like scales, and it coiled down and disappeared into the back of the room. Blunt hooks protruded from the end and dug into the flesh of Helena’s back, holding it in place. Sarah ran her fingers over it, feeling sick to her stomach at the sight.
“Sarah,” Helena mumbled into her vest, “It hurts.”
“Shhh, I’m gonna fix it, okay?” There must be something to release the...her searching hand found a catch. “I’ve got you, Helena...you ready?”
Helena nodded.
“Just do it,” she said numbly, and Sarah wrapped one arm around her shoulders, pressed down with the other hand, and the hooks released with a hiss of air.
She carefully pulled at the tube, exposing a large needle-like spike that had been lodged in Helena’s spine and she swore under her breath at length, while Helena groaned and slumped against her in relief. Sarah tossed the tube as far away as she could, watching it slither and coil against itself, and then lie inert in a puddle. When she looked again at Helena’s back, the puncture wound was red and slightly swollen, but seemed clean, and the hook indents were slowly filling back up with blood.
She softly touched the skin around it, and then the other, older looking scars that covered her back.
“Shite, Helena, what did they do to you?” she said quietly. “I’m gonna see if I can find some bandages or somethin’ to cover that up, yeah? You alright?” Her hands cupped Helena’s face and tipped it up, finally allowing herself to feel relieved.
Helena looked up at her, mouth trembling in a smile, and sat up a little straighter.
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “Yes, I am alright.” Her hands covered Sarah’s, and they shared a long look. Then she patted at Sarah’s hands, and let go.
Sarah combed her hair back, still rattled, then snapped her fingers.
“I have something for you,” she said, rummaging through her pockets, then the satchel until she found the card. “Uh, someone gave it to me.” She held it out. “I mean, you gave it to me. To give to you. Uh.” It sounded even weirder said out loud, but Helena merely took the card and studied it, brow furrowed. Sarah walked over the glass and poked around the corners of the room, prodding at things left strewn all over by the cyclone. A small medical kit turned up, and she dressed the puncture wound as best she could. Her fingers fumbled with the small buttons up the back of the dress, the thin white fabric slowly closing over the feathery scars. She bit her lip and didn’t ask.
“Your dream. Of New York.” Helena’s voice wavered. “It happens. And I’m the...I...it was me.” Her voice cracked and she squeezed her eyes shut.
“But we can stop it,” said Sarah urgently. “You...she gave us a way to get past Songbird. We’ll find another airship, somethin’, and get out of here.”
Helena exhaled and opened her eyes, continuing to stare at the card. Her fingers worried at her bottom lip.
“Sarah.” she said quietly.
“London,” Sarah kept on babbling, “London, Helena, remember, you wanted to go to London? You can meet my foster mum. And we’ll - “
“Sarah,” she said louder, and stood up, still looking at the card. “We’re not leaving. We need to. Find Rachel.” Helena sounded calm now, and resolute. Sarah knew that voice and knew she wasn’t going to be able to change her mind. But she took a stab at it.
“Why? Why don’t we just leave her behind?” She avoided looking at Helena as she said it. “Just - go.”
Helena shook her head.
“You saw...what I become. What she turns me into.” She looked up from the card, her mouth set in a thin line. “I will not let her.” Her eyes were steady on Sarah’s.
‘And, what then?” Sarah said, crossing her arms. “Kill her?” There had to be an end to the death somewhere, she thought, but Rachel was dangerous. Not just to Helena, but all of Columbia and by extension, the world. And we can’t just leave anyway, because of whatever she did to your head. And I promised Daisy...
Helena tilted her head and gazed at her unblinkingly.
“Are you moralizing, Sarah? How many people have you killed today?” She didn’t say it accusingly, just as a matter of fact.
Sarah shuffled her feet, looking down at the floor.
Exactly, she thought, I already have plenty of blood on my hands. And I can’t let you get any more on yours.
“I won’t let you kill her, Helena.” She shook her head, and glanced up at the blonde girl, who frowned at her.
She lifted a hand.
The ocean was still there, the cyclone twisting on the water and turning back towards them.
“And how will you. Stop me?” Helena asked in an emotionless voice.
Sarah felt a chill run up her spine and she held her hands up.
“I won’t.” she said. “‘cause I’m gonna kill her for you.” She held her breath and watched Helena steadily, pushing down the stab of fear in her gut.
Helena gazed at her a moment longer, eyes searching Sarah’s face, then dropped her hand and the ocean disappeared again. She nodded.
“Together,” she said seriously, before grabbing Sarah in a tight hug and whispering, “I missed you.”
Sarah smiled tightly into her hair.
“Missed you too,” she replied, trying to shake the memory of the other Comstock House, the other Helena, the one she failed, from her mind. When she shifted her weight, the pain in her thigh flared, and she let go of Helena and dropped onto the gurney, pulling the medical kit toward her.
Helena helped her untie the makeshift bandage and clean the cut, which had stopped bleeding at last, rebinding it with fresh linen. She’d propped the card up next to Sarah, darting glances at it, her forehead crinkled.
“This symbol…” she tapped at the drawing of the birdcage.
“The cage?” Sarah said, sliding off the gurney and testing her weight. The leg still hurt but not as much.
“Mmm,” Helena agreed, and pointed. “The writing is a cipher. Easy. But the cage...” Her shoulders lifted. “Did she...I...say anything?”
Sarah screwed up her face, thinking, then shook her head.
“No...just that you’d understand it.” She checked her gun, reloading it before sliding it back into the holster. “Bet the bloody Luteces would know,” she added resentfully. “Damn useless for a pair of geniuses.” As she patted her pockets and checked the satchel, she remembered one of the voxophones from the future. “Although…” she said slowly, “I think they helped you...later. Somehow.”
but can we trust them here and now, Sarah wondered.
“Mmm,” Helena hummed and looked at the floor.
Sarah followed her gaze and blinked at the shattered glass everywhere, then looked back at Helena’s bare feet.
“Piggyback?” she said, her mouth curling up at the corner. Helena’s mouth did the same. She nodded.
Sarah’s boots crunched over the floor as she made exaggerated groans about how heavy Helena was, and Helena breathlessly laughed into her ear, arms wrapped loosely around Sarah’s neck. She dropped onto the carpet in the hallway lightly, still grasping the card in one hand.
“I miss my coat,” she sighed, and passed it to Sarah, who slid it into a pocket. As they walked up the hallway, the white dress trailed behind her.
“Oh, bugger,” Sarah groaned, “Your coat! Your lockpicks.” She rubbed her face in annoyance.
Helena tilted her head towards Sarah.
“Your bag,” she suggested, and when Sarah opened the satchel and rummaged through, she found a few loose picks and whistled in relief.
“There’s a door around here - it should get us where Rachel was. Pretty sure she’s scarpered off, but there might be something useful?”
By now they were in front of the door in question and Helena looked at it thoughtfully, placing her hand on the wood.
“Yes. I think so too.” She crouched and begin to fiddle with the lock, occasionally twitching her shoulders as if to shake something off her back. The thimble on her little finger glinted.
Sarah looked around, studying the bodies of the soldiers. They weren’t clad in the blue of the Authority, but a kind of off-white - apart from the red that now stained it - with slightly fancier looking embellishments.
Must be the her special guard, what they called - the Founders? She smirked. Not that special.
The lock clicked and the doors opened.
Stairs led straight up to a lofty-ceilinged room, containing only a desk in the centre, and a filing cabinet against one wall. The small round balcony where Rachel had stood was empty.
“S’pose it was too much to hope she’d be cowering away in here,” Sarah muttered, scuffing a boot against the floorboards. Pushing her hair back, she began to rifle through the desk. Next to her, Helena looked at the wood-paneled walls. She tugged at her lower lip.
The desk drawers yielded some Salts, a sheaf of papers with scribbled notes and sketches of the device used on Helena, and a voxophone.
It was unlabeled but when Sarah pressed the lever, she recognised the voice of the bald doctor, the one who had looked like a skeleton.
The procedure should help immensely with the...issues we've had with the girl. Once the device is implanted, any efforts on her part to...alter the state of things will emit a most painful electric shock. Pavlov made a dog salivate. We'll make this one weep .
Helena’s shoulders twitched again, her lip curling in anger, and Sarah took a few steps and pitched the small machine over the balcony to join the broken glass below. The sound it made as it smashed only made her feel a tiny bit better.
“Those bastards,” she snarled, turning and kicking the desk. “Got half a mind to drag dear Sister Rachel back here when we find her, and stick that...that thing in her back!”
Helena hummed, still staring at the wall. Sarah followed her gaze, frowning, then looked back at her, eyebrow cocked. When Helena walked over to the corner and started trailing her fingers down the paneling, Sarah joined her.
“What we lookin’ for?” she asked, running her own hands down the wall. Without answering, Helena pressed on a tiny knothole and there was a whirring sound.
The wall slid open.
Behind it was a wrought iron staircase that spiraled up into the shadows.
Sarah whistled.
“How did you know it was there?” she asked, squinting upwards but unable to make out anything.
“I think...I’ve been here a while,” Helena answered softly.
Sarah stiffened, her stomach dropping.
“How long?”
Helena walked forward, her hair and the white gown almost glowing in the shadows.
“Long enough,” she murmured evasively, and started making her way up the stairs, her bare feet silent on the metal stairs.
Sarah followed, watching the train of Helena’s dress slipping upwards in front of her as she chewed on her lip. There was no sound coming from the darkness above, and Sarah tried to place her boots carefully so as not to warn Rachel - or anyone else waiting and listening. Helena moved like a ghost above her. She seemed stronger now, after appearing close to collapse from the strain of the ‘treatment’, and then opening that huge Tear.
A shiver ran up Sarah’s spine and the letters on the back of her hand prickled. Absentmindedly rubbing her hand against her leg, she kept turning upwards, wondering how fast Rachel could have made it up this tight spiral with that ivory cane. When the hand stopped itching, she dropped it onto the hilt of her gun, and made ready.
The white dress in front of her stopped moving and Sarah stepped on the train, grabbing the bannister as her foot slipped a little on the silky fabric. They’d reached the top of the stairs, and Helena was standing on wide wooden floorboards at one end of a long, bare room, with a high ceiling of exposed beams and rafters. The simplicity was in stark contrast to the opulence in the rest of the mansion, and Sarah found it almost homely. Until she saw what Helena was staring at, and she muttered what the hell?
It was a statue of an angel - that in itself wasn’t so strange, not in this place, but it was an exact copy of the tower where Sarah had first found Helena. Plaster wings stretched out either side, and her arms reached towards them. Helena’s face (Sarah’s face), with a beatific expression gazed back at them with blank eyes, curls frozen in place.
But it was what was inside the angel that both of them stared at.
The torso was open, hollow like a dollhouse, with a tiny copy of Helena standing stiffly in a small room where the angels ribs would be, if angels were wrought of such earthly things. Under that, the angel’s hips enclosed miniature struts and framework, leading downwards to little doorways, and surrounding tiny copies of…
Sarah frowned as she recognized the strange drum-like objects she’d seen in the lower floor of the tower, and the glass-and-metal machinery that had zapped with electricity.
“The siphon…” she breathed, the memory of the warning signs rushing back into her head. That thing they’d stuck in Helena’s back wasn’t the siphon, but a scaled-down version of...whatever those machines in the tower were. She hadn’t understood what they were then- hell, she barely understood it now - but it somehow kept Helena...subdued? She rubbed her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to remember everything she’d seen and heard about it.
“Siphon…” said Helena slowly, moving closer to the model tower, her fingers grazing their metal counterparts.
“Yeah,” Sarah answered, pushing her hair back behind her ears as she tried to find the right words. “You… the other you, she talked about it on these voxophones I found. Called it a leash. And all this - “ she had moved up beside Helena, and squatted in front of the small tower, pointing at the contraption at the bottom. “This was some kind of machine I saw when I went through the tower…” she wriggled her fingers, letting a few sparks fly. “...all electrified? And these things were making these sound , like some kind of deep humming?”
She stood and crossed her arms.
“There were all these labs and...stuff. Deserted. Warning signs everywhere. And then...you.”
When she looked back at Helena, she was still staring at the tiny copy of herself, trapped in one tiny room. Sarah wondered if she’d heard a single word. Then she gave a slight shiver, and stepped back.
“Yes,” she said, “This is why - ”, her hands crept together and tugged at the long sleeves of the white dress. “I remember...opening Tears...and then. It got harder.” Her shoulders drooped. “Rachel must have…” she added softly.
mysister put it on me. Sarah nodded.
“The Tear you opened down there was huge, though…” Where are those bloody doctors now?
Helena’s mouth twitched.
“It took...everything I had. To open it.” She twisted a finger into her curls and tugged. “I was. Angry.” Her eyes skittered away from Sarah’s.
It took all I had left in me...just to bring you here…
“They bloody deserved it!” she snapped. “And Rachel - she’s scared of you. If we could, I dunno - “ she stared at the model tower again, shrugging. “Destroy the siphon?”
Helena darted a glance at her.
“The whole tower?” Her hands found each other again, twisting and turning. “Sarah. How?”
“I...shite, I dunno. If only we’d...the Vox could have helped, maybe.” Sarah kicked out at the base of the model, jarring her leg as the tower refused to budge. “Ow, shit!” Then she sighed, and took her gun out of the holster, checking the chamber. “Look, let’s just concentrate on sorting Rachel out first. She ain’t bulletproof.” She cocked an eyebrow at Helena. “Is she?”
Helena looked up at the ceiling, sadness washing across her face.
“I don’t think...I have any idea. What Rachel is.” She continued to look up, not at the ceiling anymore but beyond it. "Sarah," she said softly, "Are you afraid of God?"
Sarah snorted in surprise.
"Nah," she answered easily. But I think I'm afraid of you. She wondered if Helena had heard her thoughts somehow when she looked even sadder, before she stepped around the tower.
Behind it was another wall, as plain looking as the one down below in the office. Helena regarded it for a brief moment, then moved forwards, ran her fingers down and pressed another knothole.
The wall hummed aside.
Sarah peered around Helena, then looked up. The skin on the back of her neck crawled.
There was the atrium, with the elevator, the corridor and balcony squared around it, the curved glass-paneled ceiling above. It was the mirror image of the Comstock House she had already passed through - but here the windows were whole and the ceiling intact and the walkways free of debris. There were thick, soft rugs instead of snowdrifts on stone, and gilt-framed paintings adorned the walls.
She shivered.
The other place was feeling more and more like a nightmare that she’d had, although the silence behind the opulence here gave her a different kind of uneasiness.
“Where do you think she’d go?’ Sarah asked, stepping forward into the corridor cautiously. Helena slid the wall shut behind them and joined her, sliding her hand into the crook of Sarah’s elbow and pulling her forwards until they stood at the window that overlooked the inner balcony. She looked upwards and pointed at the top floor.
Sarah grimaced.
“Guess we better find some stairs. The lift is too bloody noisy.” She tried to remember the layout, but she’d taken so many twists and turns due to cave-ins...if this was the first floor...her forehead pressed against the window and she peered down. The metal stairs were there, leading from the balcony around the elevator to the next floor.
Grabbing Helena’s hand, Sarah led the way through the hallway out to the balcony, up the stairs, then through a series of rooms- one lined with books and dotted with soft-looking velvet armchairs, the next adorned with ornate silver and gold wallpaper, but containing only a white grand piano. The piano stool had feet carved to look like lions claws, Sarah noted as they passed quickly and quietly. The dead silence had been replaced with the faintest sound of stringed instruments playing melancholy airs that always seemed to be coming from the next room, but would fade when the door opened.
The windows they passed showed a starry moonless sky with the faintest tinge of dawn light.
There seemed to be an endless supply of what Sarah supposed were sitting rooms - chairs and sofas and chaise lounges, delicately carved side tables and elegant ladies writing desks. Rachel lived here?
As much as the other Comstock House was an asylum, this one was a museum.
When they walked into a long room that had walls crammed with framed paintings of all sizes, they both drew back, Helena automatically taking Sarah’s hand, at the sight of the life-size and full-length portrait of Rachel that was the centrepiece of the wall ahead of them.
At first Sarah was distracted by the clothes she was wearing - there was a lot less of them, for a start, and then by the fact her left eye matched her right in colour. But when Helena’s hand tightened almost painfully around hers, the background of the portrait drew all of her attention.
“The green place…” Helena said wonderingly, and Sarah saw that Rachel stood in front of a window - an oddly-shaped window that looked out into a deep green ocean, tiny jewel fish glowing in the distance.
The sharp pain that stabbed through her temples made her drop Helena’s hand to grab her own head. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking down at spots of blood on the carpet, staining the thick ivory pile.
“Sarah?” Helena patted her back gently as Sarah leaned forward, hands on her knees.
“‘m fine,” she mumbled, and straightened up, slowly. Her eyes skittered over the other walls, lingered for a bemused moment on a group of paintings depicting women and swans - then glanced back at the portrait. “What the hell is that place? Why is it so…”
“Familiar?” Helena asked. She studied Sarah, fingers at her mouth.
“Yeah. And how does she know about it?” She rubbed her forehead, then pulled her hair back until her scalp burned. There was a kind of theory swimming around in her mind, and she suspected in Helena’s as well, by the speculative look on her face. But she felt like it might split her head right open, so she kept it submerged, for now.
There was a set of doors in the wall to the right of the portrait, and Sarah strode over to them, expecting them to be locked, but the handles turned easily and the doors swung open to reveal wide wooden stairs, immaculately clean, polished bannisters stretching upwards. The same stairs that had led to the Warden’s Office before. Her hand automatically moved to rest on the hilt of her gun.
Sarah started up the right side of the stairs, Helena up the left, the only sound the hushed swishing of her dress train on the steps.
The room at the top didn’t contain any desks or viewing screens - just large french doors that opened out onto a long, wide balcony. The sky was lighter now, that slightly washed out blue tinged with gold all around them, causing the golden angels that loomed either side of the doors to cast deep shadows behind them.
It was quite pleasant in the cool morning air - there were large stone tubs containing deep red rhododendrons and white oleander at either end of the sandstone paving, and some wrought iron garden furniture of the type with ornate curls and spindly legs - or it would have been, if not for the circumstances.
The two of them walked to the edge and looked down.
Columbia was below them, stretching downwards and outwards, the fairyland of lights somewhat diminished by fire and smoke. A few of the smaller individual islands were completely dark, tipping dangerously, and seemingly adrift. Monument Tower looked no bigger than the model in the secret room below, the broken wing and missing head seemed far less incongruous now against the backdrop. Something nagged at the back of Sarah’s mind but she ignored it, raising a hand to the scarlet sash she still wore across her chest.
The war had raged on while they had both been lost inside Comstock House, and she wondered if Daisy was still down there, if the Vox was winning, if it was all over bar their own part in it. She sighed and turned to Helena, whose brow was furrowed.
“She should be here,” she whispered, “I could. Feel it…” Her fingers flexed and the air briefly smelt of salt water, then her hands dropped.
“Struggling against the prophecy will only exhaust you further, my dear,”
Rachel’s voice rang out in the cool morning air, and the two girls jumped. Sarah drew her gun, pointing it at the wide open french doors but the doorway and the small room beyond was empty. The gun traversed the length of the balcony, but found nothing...except small fluted trumpets mounted high above the angels, which crackled to life again, words falling with a slight tinny echo.
“She will keep failing you, Helena. How many times must she abandon you before you come to your senses?”
“Where are you, you bitch!” Sarah shouted, keeping her gun raised as she stalked along the balcony, boots angrily scuffing at the marble. Helena kept her wide eyes on the doors, trembling slightly.
There was a noise that could have been a chuckle if it had contained any humour.
“Oh, Sarah.” Rachel murmured through the speakers. “Must you fight me every step of the way?”
Sarah snarled at the air.
“You sent your bloody army after me! You could have just let her go!” She turned around in a tight circle, wondering if Rachel would just appear out of thin air, or...she paused as she noticed Helena’s eyes flitting back and forth, still staring towards the doorway. Sarah followed her gaze.
Oh shite
“No. No, I don’t think I could have. You don’t set a trap, and then let the bait go free.”
The gold angels flanking the doorway.
The gold angels with the panpipes that called the Songbird.
Helena seemed less panicked than thoughtful, though, and when Sarah mouthed what? , merely motioned Sarah over and then rummaged in the pocket of the jacket, pulling out the note from the other Helena and studying it with renewed interest. Rachel’s words caught up with Sarah and she spun around again, shaking her head in confusion.
“Trap? So it was you that hired me to come here and..and find her? Some sort of sick joke, hey?” The Luteces really were working for her this whole time, then, those backstabbing -
There was a pause that went on for just a little too long. Then Rachel began to laugh - a laugh that sounded bitter and delighted at the same time.
“What’s so damn funny?” Sarah shouted, so angry the gun was shaking in her hands. Helena was ignoring the both of them, still staring down at the card, lips moving.
The laughter stopped. Now Rachel’s voice was witheringly condescending.
“You really don’t understand a thing about...any of this, do you, Sarah?” There was a sibilant sighing sound through the speakers. “I was under the impression - mistaken, I see - that you came to Columbia of your own accord, in search of your long lost...well. Need I spell out every little detail for you?”
Sarah looked at Helena, who had finally looked up halfway through Rachel’s last words.
“Don’t know what the bloody hell you’re talkin’ about.” Sarah blustered, staring at Helena and the face so inexplicably identical to her own. The sick feeling that Sister Rachel was the one who could tell them everything they wanted to know was growing in the pit of her stomach.
“Clearly. You never used to be so...obtuse. Hmm. I was rather hoping for more of a challenge.”
Sarah snorted.
“Sorry to disappoint, Sister Rachel,” she retorted in a voice heavy with sarcasm. Her feet couldn’t stay still and so she took another wide circle of the balcony, head spinning with questions. why would she want me to come here what did she know who was helena who was rachel who am i
As she passed the golden angels again, she eyed the panpipes warily, but they remained fixed in position, and silent. Her trigger finger twitched. There was something...not right. Less right than before. Something was different.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up and for a brief moment all she could hear was the blood thumping through her ears.
Then Helena made a loud, delighted sound and smacked the card in her left hand across her right palm.
“Cage!” she said, and grinned. "Songbird!"
“Huh?” Sarah turned towards her and took a step before an arm slid around her neck. She froze, then tugged at it with both hands, but it seemed as ungiving as marble.
Another arm lifted a hand in front of her, snapped its fingers, and flames appeared with a whoompf to dance over the pale skin. Sarah felt the heat drying her eyes, and the long, loose hairs around her face floated upwards, threatening to sizzle. Beyond the flames she was dimly aware of Helena’s face, seeming a million miles away.
She felt a mouth move against the shell of her ear.
“It’s a new day, Sarah,” purred the voice of Sister Rachel, “Don’t you think it’s time we had a little chat?”