Cherie Priest - Fiddlehead

Maria broke eye contact first, but only to look down at the console before her. Lying beside it was a short stack of files. She looked up again, and this time she smiled.

Haymes glared murderously at Maria. “Open that door,” she said. Maria couldn’t hear her, but she could read the woman’s lips clearly enough.

She shook her head in response, and in doing so, she saw a button out of the corner of her eye. It was labeled, “Control Room Communication.” She pressed it, and a small panel slid open, revealing a round black screen.

“Open the door!” Katharine said again, and this time Maria heard her. The little circle of mesh transmitted her voice quite well, passing along the enraged tone with perfect clarity.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

Haymes stood stiffly, ramrod straight, as if she were so filled with anger that the smallest movement would cause her to shatter on the spot. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what you’re playing with.”

“I have an idea, thanks to you. This is where you did the rest of your research? After Tennessee, I mean,” Maria asked coolly, gliding her fingers over the assorted buttons and making some guesses about what they did and did not do. “After you killed all those prisoners.”

“I know what you mean. And yes, this is … my laboratory.”

“You say that like you’re some kind of scientist.”

“I am some kind of scientist,” Haymes objected.

Maria disagreed. “You paid people to do your dirty work.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“ Real scientists,” she countered. “Did they even know what they were doing? Or did you lie to them?”

“Eventually they knew. Some secrets are hard to keep.” Haymes’s grip on the carpetbag’s handle tensed.

“By then, I suppose, they were in too deep to leave even if they wanted to. I understand that’s your preferred method for keeping people in line.”

“One of several. Now, open that door. I won’t ask again.”

“Good. Though if you mean that you’ll come and open it yourself, I doubt that very much. I see there’s a spot for a key,” she said, glancing over at the door to make sure. “But there’s a handy-dandy dead bolt, too. Very secure, this room. Practically a tiny, clean castle.”

“Get out of there.”

“No.” Maria sighed heavily, with great dramatic effect. “I really am tired of saying that. So why don’t you tell me where you’re going? Or where you think you’re going?”

“I’m leaving. And there’s not much you can do about it from in there, ” Haymes said smugly. “You can keep me out, but that’s the sum of it. I want the last of the research notes, but I don’t need them.”

“You’re arguing awfully hard for something you don’t need.”

“I paid for them. They’re mine, and they should come with me.”

Maria took her time responding, as if considering the possibility and then discarding it. “It’s funny … You set me up to say something clever, there. I ought to have replied that all of it—you included—would be coming with me instead. But I don’t want to take you with me. I don’t have to. In fact, the warrants for your apprehension read ‘dead or alive’—did you know that?”

“No warrant reads that way.”

“Not the usual kind, no. You were tried in absentia and found guilty, and sentenced to death. You must know that. ”

“So this is your plan? Bring me back to Washington to see my sentence carried out?”

“That’s someone’s plan. Maybe when I left the District that was my plan, but it’s not anymore. If you ride with pirates, you get ideas. ”

“Ideas?” Haymes asked, raising an eyebrow as if she sensed an opportunity.

She sensed wrong.

“You see, over the last few weeks I feel like I’ve really … gotten to know you. Uncomfortably well, if you want the truth. And if I take you back to face justice, you’ll only writhe loose, or buy your way free of it.”

“You have great faith in me.”

“Faith? Of a sort. I have faith in your bank accounts and your wiles. I have faith that you will absolutely do the most awful things necessary to have your way. I don’t know how you became such a monster, and to be frank, I do not care.” Maria’s hand settled on a checklist beside a lever.

“Then why are we still talking? You’re awfully chatty for someone who doesn’t want information or conversation.”

“Oh, you know. Just killing time while I figure out this … system.”

The checklist read:

• Activate overhead light source.

• Close control room communication vents.

• Seal observation door.

• Close emergency doors.

• Pull to release gas.

A second checklist beside it read:

• Before exiting, close off gas.

• Turn on fans.

• Wait for window to clear.

Maria didn’t know what it meant about the window clearing, but she understood everything else well enough to proceed.

“What are you doing?” Haymes asked, as Maria closed the communication portal, cutting off the last word. She said something else, but Maria didn’t hear it.

“They’d hang you,” she muttered, staring down at the controls and making sure she knew what came next. “Or shoot you. Either way, it’s better than you deserve. This is more fitting, I think.” She looked over at the door and saw that yes, it was sealed. She couldn’t close the emergency doors from within the control room, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t matter.

Katharine Haymes dropped the bag and ran to the window, hitting it with her fists. She shouted, but Maria couldn’t hear her; the glass was uncommonly thick. She wondered if even a bullet would break it. It was almost like the windscreens of a big airship, and maybe that’s what it was. Something very similar, at least.

Haymes had thought of almost everything.

Maria pulled the lever. She pulled hard, and it drew down slowly. She did not hear the hiss of gas spilling through the tubes and out of the tanks, but she could see it: a yellow jet of air, puffing, curling, and falling to the floor like syrup.

Katharine Haymes stopped pounding on the glass. She took a step back away from it, collecting her composure as the room began to fill. Stoically she stood as the gas pooled at her feet, hiding her boots and the hem of her skirt. She remained there without budging as it crawled up her thighs, and covered her to her waist, then her breasts. Her breathing faltered, but she stayed strong, holding back the coughing fit that her body begged for until the last moments, when the poisonous air flowed down her throat.

Maria could still see her through the murky air, a shadow of a well-dressed woman, standing stock-still save for clenching and unclenching her fists, until she fell to her knees, then to her hands and knees.

Then to the floor, where she writhed and twisted.

And then stopped moving altogether.

When Maria had asked the Fiddlehead how many people would die from the gas, and how many would turn into shambling fiends, the machine told her that 70 percent would die but keep walking. Maybe Haymes was in that fortunate 30 percent who’d stop for good. Maybe she’d poke her head up again momentarily, as the noxious fumes tugged at her nervous system and puppeted her into cannibalism.

Either way, Maria had a gun. Hainey said she should shoot for the head.

And she had a mask. She pulled it out of her pocket and drew it over her face, exactly the way Hainey had showed her, making sure it fit without any gaps or leaks. “When it hurts to breathe, you know it’s on right,” he’d assured her. He should know. He’d worn them in Seattle.

The air she drew through the filters tasted like mildew and charcoal, but that was better than sulfur and blood.