Currents of life began to swim from my fingertips in a steady rush towards my heart. All was dark and silent, but the currents spread, breathing sensation back to my skin, inch by slow inch. 

My head was weighed down, restricted, but keeping still served me well while my senses recalibrated. My nostrils stung with the scent of metal and distant stale soup (broccoli and leak). I almost wretched, but sacrificing my nose was a necessary risk to avoid bleeding ears. Once, I had resurfaced from a blackout on a club dancefloor and seized from overstimulation. Day (boyfriend; soul-tied; ex?) had found me before I could be trampled. My chest began to hurt.   

I raised my hands to shield from the inevitable influx of sound, but my hands were coated, heavy like my head. Metal struck metal in an inglorious clang.

I flinched, and stilled again before the instinct to lash out took lead. 

The sound rang out, long and arduous, dulling until it became a hum. An incessant chorus that didn’t fade away. As if I had woken the metal casing around my head and it was letting me know it would never again slumber. Not regular metal. Crësteel. Moondust and steel. My father’s invention. 

A small shaft of light from the helmet’s nose hole turned the darkness a deep blue hue, but that was all I could see. I shut my eyes again before panic could infest.

Sounds trickled through my conscience, beyond the humming that would not cease, there was a tap, tap, tap –  water landing on concrete, close. Beyond it, on the other side of a thin wall, someone shuffled from foot to foot. The faint tang of oranges clung to them. My memory jarred. 

A journey on a boat, a guard who smelled of oranges holding chains, too tight; an old accomplice, turned traitor, whispering promises of sanctuary and conscription. ‘Keepers of the Scilla Moon,’ Traitor had said, while touching the growing swell of my abdomen.

My heart raced, drowning all focus until measured breaths caught up and swallowed dread like a scorched blade. Further away, footsteps beat stone. Further still, the gentle echoes of voices; feminine voices mostly, young voices; babies crying and gurgling.  

‘Still out?’ An elderly, laboured voice. Veil. Traitor had introduced him as something else…August…Augustin.

‘She was tossing a bit a few minutes ago. Won’t be long before she’s up, I’d say,’ Orange replied.

The hum quieted for a moment only to return in a loud, nauseating wave. The waves continued, lulling and baiting me all at once. At least my heart had quieted. I shifted, and the movement made my bladder press with sudden urgency. Had I pissed since I’d blacked out? Shat myself? I hoped so, if only it meant causing someone the inconvenience of cleaning it up. There was no bad odour to suggest otherwise. The thought of Scilla hands on me made bile take the place of despair in my throat.

‘Alright. Bring her up,’ said Veil.

‘Shouldn’t they be allowed rest,’ a second voice asked. ‘They’ll need to be strong and rested enough for the birth.’

‘She’s plenty strong,’ Veil replied and repeated his order.

I knew the other voice, had heard it, an echo of it, somewhere, sometime. She’d smelled of comfort, and her words came back to me then, I call you Blue. I had read the lie in her but hadn’t minded. It looked like you’d taken part of the sea with you. A pretty lie.

‘Good evening, Miss Blake,’ Veil said as a door scraped open across ill-fitted stone. 

A soft nudge in my abdomen held a retort at bay. The nudges repeated in little rhythmic beats, then stopped. I remembered touching my mother’s stomach when she was growing little Benn, how I had marvelled over the strength of legs so tiny. I couldn’t touch my own stomach, couldn’t reassure my own child the way I had done for my little brother.

(I’m here.) I willed the thought through the barriers of metal and despair. 

Orange arrived at my bedside, drawing a shift of air after him. Oranges, sweat and leather.

‘Come easy, alright? You can make this easier for yourself if you comply.’

(Easier?) I wanted to scrape the good-natured words from his throat. 

‘Blue?’ the soft voice I knew but didn’t know said from the doorway. ‘It’s Raeia, I cleaned your wounds. We spoke a bit yesterday.’ 

(Raeia.) Very few strangers bothered to remind me of things I’d forgotten. I turned my head. 

‘High Rector Augustin wants me to bring you for an ultrasound and some other checks to make sure the baby is okay. Is that alright?’

I tightened the hold across my stomach. 

‘I promise, I’ll keep you both safe.’

High Rector Augustin chuckled. It wasn’t a sound that came naturally to him. He choked a little and coughed afterwards. 

The guard stiffened but kept his stance by my side. 

‘You cannot promise such things, Miss Anas,’ Veil said. ‘But in this case, she is right. No harm will come to you or the child. We want no infant deaths here.’

Lies. Not the pretty kind. Mom had told me about unmarked mass graves and hundreds of lost babies. The Keepers of the Scilla Moon were savages hiding behind piety. 

The skin on my face began to itch. Absently, I raised my hands to scratch away the sensation, but metal clanged on metal and a frustrated gasp ripped from my throat. Panic swelled until it melted to fury.

‘Get out,’ I rasped, too tender from the fresh return to consciene. Everything was off-kilter, jumbled up inside and hyper-intense, waiting to implode. Orange was in danger. ‘Out. Now.’

‘You should–’

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered before surging upright and catching Orange’s head between club-like fists, then yanked him close. His face met the metal of my helmet with several crunches and a shattering cry. Each reverberated around my head, startling me more than I’d anticipated. Without the use of fingers, I couldn’t hold on as momentum drove him away, but I followed the scent of him downward, forward. 

He was crawling like a crab towards the doorway, but my feet found his and I managed to use the mess of chains to my advantage. I snared him into captivity.

‘Send for the soulmaster.’ Veil’s voice beat across the edges of my conscience. Measured, too calm. ‘And someone from the morgue.’

Orange put up a valiant effort to break free, but in another three awkward manoeuvres, I had the chains twined around his throat. It took only one twist for the cartilage to snap. I let go, head whipping up at a gasp by the doorway. 

 ‘Go, Miss Anas. Fetch the soulmaster.’ Veil’s words were a throbbing echo against my skull despite the layers of metal between us. 

Footsteps receded. Raeia’s. I tried to remember her from before but was only met with darkness. 

‘I think you will enjoy our soulmaster,’ said Veil.

I pushed myself away from Orange. The drip in the corner had changed tone. It no longer slapped concrete, but sputtered on something softer; skin. 

‘I don’t think I will.’ 

‘She will help you remember the instances you call blackouts.’ 

‘I don’t want to remember those.’ The mention of blackouts brought back a sharpening to the hum around my head. My heart felt fit to puncture through my chest. ‘All those bring are ruin.’

Ruin was a quiet hug I returned to when the world told me I was too much. Again and again it reeled me in, cradled me in mist and promise. But the hugs were lies and the promises were poison. There was a reason I forgot. I turned into something heartless when I blacked out. Humanity leached away. 

‘I think it’s best you do. It will be beneficial to all of us,’ Veil said with a finality I didn’t have the energy to rebuke.

I had to save and curate what little energies I did have left. I didn’t know how I had arrived here or why or whom to blame, but one thing I knew for certain. 

I needed to get us out.