Caitlin Kittredge - The Mirrored Shard

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it.

Washing off and getting a drink sounded like heaven, but I let Cal go first, to spend a little time in a cool room without any windows. I was sure he needed it more than I did.

“You all have an accident?” the ticket girl asked.

“You might say that,” I said. “We had a long walk, that’s for sure.”

“Sometimes folks come in’ll give you a few cents for toting their luggage,” she said. “Fare to Folsom is only fifty cents, and they have a wire office where you can have someone send you money.”

“Thanks again,” I said. If carting suitcases was what it took to get moving again, then so be it. I wasn’t some snooty rich girl too good to work.

The ticket taker shrugged.

“Just hate to see folks in a bad situation,” she said, and went back to counting receipts.

Cal came out, clean of dirt except for directly around his hairline, and I slipped into the washroom.

I stripped to my underwear, washed and then took a long drink. The ticket girl was right—the water was earthy and bitter but cold, and I gulped it down.

I was getting dressed again when I heard a commotion from outside, and Cal shouting. “Aoife, run!”

Fists landed on the washroom door. “Bureau of Proctors!” a male voice bellowed. “Open this door or we’ll break it down.”

I shut my eyes, leaning my head back against the tile wall. I felt so stupid—kindness of strangers was something that existed only in cheap romance novels and morality plays. In reality, strangers were willing to turn in their own mothers for a favor from the government, or a few dollars for an informant’s fee.

“Miss, you hearing me?” the man bellowed. “Come out of there!”

“All right!” I shouted. “I’m coming. Don’t shoot.”

I opened the door and two Proctors with shock pistols stood outside, business ends pointed at me. I put up my hands.

Sure enough, the ticket girl was peeking over the shoulders of the four-man squad, two of whom had Cal restrained.

“You—” I started, but she silenced me with a look.

“Save it,” she said. “This isn’t like some fancy city. Out here, you do for yourself or nobody will.”

“Dammit, Sadie,” her mother snapped. “They weren’t doing anything. Just being a nuisance.”

“And if they’re wanted, we might actually make rent this month,” the girl snarled.

“I thought you said you wanted to help me,” I told her, meeting her eyes. If I could instill some guilt, so much the better.

“I’m helping myself,” she said with a serene smile. “I told you, I hate seeing people in bad situations, especially me.”

“You’re horrible,” I told her as the Proctors handcuffed me. The bite of iron caused a flare of pain in my mind, but I tried to push it away.

“Hey!” Sadie shouted, ignoring me. “Is there a reward for them, or what?”

“Somebody will be in touch,” the Proctor grunted, and dragged us out, Sadie squeaking indignation the whole way.

I didn’t bother protesting my innocence. As far as I knew, I was still a wanted terrorist in the eyes of the Proctors, and I’d be on my way to a dark hole unless I thought of something fast.

Cal caught my eye as we were loaded into a jitney, one Proctor sitting across from us.

“If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear,” the Proctor said. “If you’re wanted, you’ll be processed and sent to a central facility. Understand?”

“Better than you know,” I muttered as the jitney lurched into motion.

We rattled and shook over the road until we reached a brick building, bleached nearly the same color as the desert around it by dust, wind and time.

Cal squinted as they hauled us out into the sun, but when he started to say something I shook my head. I didn’t want to incriminate us any more than I had to.

Maybe everything would be all right. Maybe the panic in my guts wasn’t a harbinger of what I knew was coming but a natural reaction to being grabbed by the Proctors.

Maybe, but I knew I was in denial. This was about as bad as things could get, short of us having plunged to our deaths in that nearly destroyed airship.

I couldn’t let it paralyze me. I had to stay alert and figure out a new plan. Adapt. That was what my father had tried to teach me, and now that I couldn’t rely on him anymore, I had to rely on myself.

The Proctors separated Cal and me, and I was thrown in a holding cell occupied by two other women, both clearly smugglers or thieves of some sort. They were dusty and tired-looking, and I tried to sit well clear and look only at the floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the Proctors move beyond the cells.

These weren’t the sharply dressed, brass-buttoned Proctors of Lovecraft. Their uniforms were patched and often had pieces missing. Nobody wore a cap or carried the protective goggles, masks and truncheons the street patrols back home used to break up riots. But they were still organized, unlike the ones in Lovecraft. Still clearly upholding the mission of the Bureau: hunt down and punish anyone they considered a heretic or a criminal. All things considered, my day could have been going a lot better.

An aethervox droned about contamination levels in the Mojave Desert, and it caused an odd sensation in me to think that there were still people who believed every strange thing in this world was caused by the necrovirus, the Proctor’s fable to explain what happened when humans touched other worlds, and when creatures from those worlds came into the land of Iron.

A placard on the far wall read GREY DRAVEN, BUREAU DIRECTOR, but someone had torn down Draven’s portrait, leaving only a lighter spot on the brick where the photograph had hung.

Thinking about how furious Draven would be made me smile in spite of myself.

“You,” a female Proctor said, gesturing at me. “Up.”

She took me to a room lit by a single aether globe, patted me down, made me strip to my underwear and put on a scratchy gray uniform shirt and skirt and then dragged me into an interrogation room and sat me in a hard wooden chair eerily similar to the ones in the headmaster’s office at Lovecraft Academy.

After a time, a Proctor wearing an unbuttoned black jacket and a gray undershirt came in, and regarded me wearily.

“I know who you are,” he said, passing a piece of vellum across the desk, “so don’t bother denying it.”

My face stared back at me, a blowup of a class photo from the Academy. AOIFE GRAYSON. WANTED FOR TERRORISM, SEDITION, SABOTAGE AND ACTS OF TREASON.

It was an impressive list. I sighed and looked up at the Proctor, who appeared as if he wished he was doing anything else.

“So?” I said. “What now?”

“Now you’ll be transported to San Francisco to stand trial,” he said, and formally arrested me.

I was made to change again—this time into dark gray coveralls bearing a prisoner number, and along with Cal, boarded a jitney filled with other silent and similarly gray-suited convicts.

When the Proctor who’d searched me stopped at my seat, she grinned. “These others are mostly headed for San Quentin for detention,” she said. “But not you, missy. You’re going straight to Alcatraz.”

She kept talking, droning off the rules of the transport, but I wasn’t listening. I was too busy feeling frantic. I’d heard of Alcatraz, the island in the San Francisco Bay where the great Engine turned below the rock, powering the entire city. Where eerie blue lights were said to emanate from the compound built atop it, and where if you went as a prisoner, you never returned.

It was the greatest Proctor stronghold in the country, and I was barreling directly toward it.