“Don’t I get a lawyer? A phone call? Something?” She didn’t even know where or when she was. Who would she call?
A doctor spoke to the thug in charge. “Her catalyst?”
“Dancing.”
“I know just the thing. Nurse, prep a local anesthetic.”
Madeline tensed against her bindings. “What are you doing? What are you doing to me?”
“Don’t worry, we can reverse the procedure. If you’re found innocent at the trial.”
She lost track of how many people were in the room. A couple of the thugs, a couple of people in white who must have been nurses or orderlies. A couple who looked like doctors. Someone unbuttoned her shoes. Her silk stockings ripped.
Needle-pricks stabbed each foot, then pins of sleep traveled up her legs. She screamed. It was the only thing she could do. A hand pushed her face into the mattress. Her legs went numb up to her knees. She managed to turn her face, and through the awkward, foreshortened perspective she saw them make incisions above her heels, reach a thin scalpel into the wounds, and cut the Achilles’ tendons. There was no pain, but she felt the tissues snap inside her calves.
She screamed until her lungs hurt, until she passed out.
She awoke in a whitewashed cell, lying on a cot that was the room’s only furnishing. There was a door without a handle. She was no longer tied up, but both her ankles were neatly bandaged, and she couldn’t move her legs.
Gingerly sitting up, she unfastened the bodice of her gown, then released the first few hooks of her corset. She took a deep breath, arching her back. Her ribs and breasts were bruised from sleeping in the thing. Not to mention the manhandling she’d received.
She didn’t want to think about her legs.
Curling up on her side, she hugged her knees and cried.
She fell asleep, arms curled around her head. The light, a pale fluorescent filtering through a ceiling tile, stayed on. Her growling stomach told her that time passed. Once, the door opened and an orderly brought in a tray of food, leaving it on the floor by the bed. She didn’t eat. Another time, a female orderly brought in a contraption, a toilet seat and bedpan on wheels, and offered to help her use it. She screamed, batted and clawed at the woman until she left.
She pulled apart her elegant, piled coif—tangled now—and threw hairpins across the room.
When the door opened again, she had a few pins left to hurl at whomever entered. But it wasn’t an orderly, a doctor, or a thug.
It was Ned, still in his tails and cravat.
He closed the door to the thinnest crack and waited a moment, listening. Madeline clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out to him.
Apparently satisfied, Ned came to the bed, knelt on the floor, and gathered her in an embrace.
“You look dreadful,” he said gently, holding her tightly.
She sobbed on his shoulder. “They cut my tendons, Ned. They cut my legs.”
“They’re bastards, Madeline,” he muttered, between meaningless noises of comfort.
Clutching the fabric of his jacket, she pushed him away suddenly. “Did they get you too? What did they do to you?” She looked him over, touched his face—nothing seemed wrong. “How did you get here?”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “I used to be one of the bastards.”
She edged away, pushing herself as far to the wall as she could. Ned, with his uncanny ability to follow her where and whenever she went. He didn’t move, didn’t try to stop her or grapple with her. She half expected him to.
“Used to be.” she said. “Not still?”
“No. It began as a research project, to study what people like me—like us—can do, and what that meant about the nature of space and time. But there were other interests at work. They developed artificial methods of finding doorways and stepping through. They don’t need us anymore and hate competition. The Temporal Transit Authority was set up to establish a monopoly over the whole business.”
“And you—just left? Or did you lead them to me?”
“Please, Madeline. I’m searching for a bit of redemption here. I followed you. I couldn’t stop following you. I knew they were looking for you. I found your place right after they did. I wish—I should have told you. Warned you a little better than I did.”
“Why didn’t you?” she said, her voice thin and desperate.