Chapter 6 - Shadows at the Shop
The basement clinic was small, sterile, and smelled overwhelmingly of iodine and rubbing alcohol.
Dr. Vance and I managed to haul Orson onto a padded surgical table. The moment his back hit the vinyl, Orson's eyes rolled back, his consciousness slipping into the dark delirium of the thallium toxicity.
"His pulse is thready. One hundred and forty beats a minute," Dr. Vance muttered, tearing open Orson’s shirt and fixing an automated blood pressure cuff to his left bicep. He turned to the right wrist and let out a horrified hiss. "What in heaven's name is that discoloration?"
"It's a mercury-thallium compound," I explained rapidly, dumping the contents of my pockets onto a metal tray. "Encased in an alloy of silver and palladium. It's been in his arm for nine years, Dr. Vance. But the casing fractured during a fight tonight. The toxic core is leaking directly into his radial nerve and bloodstream."
Vance adjusted his glasses, staring at me with sudden, sharp scrutiny. "You're Peter Fenomore's granddaughter."
I froze. "You knew my grandfather?"
"Peter brought me the medical specifications for nerve-dissolving toxins twelve years ago," Vance whispered sadly, washing his hands furiously at the sink. "He was terrified. He said a man named Dante Moretti had kidnapped you from your high school parking lot and held you in a basement for twenty-four hours until Peter agreed to manufacture three rounds."
The room seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
*My high school parking lot.*
I remembered that day. When I was sixteen, I had been cornered by two men who forced me into a van, blindfolded me, and kept me in a cold room with water and a sandwich until dawn, then dumped me back near my house. My grandfather had held me, sobbing hysterically, telling me it was a case of mistaken identity.
He hadn't told me the truth to protect me from the terror.
He had forged the bullets to save my life.
"Dante Moretti," I whispered, the name tasting like ash. "Not Kellen."
"Price was Moretti’s errand boy back then," Vance said, pulling an old fluoroscope machine toward the table. "Moretti wanted Orson dead because Orson was consolidating Chicago's independent unions. But Orson survived the shot. So Moretti adapted. He planted Price at Orson’s side to keep him docile."
Vance turned on the fluoroscope. The green phosphor screen buzzed to life, revealing the interior structure of Orson’s wrist.
The image made my breath hitch.
The metal shard had worked its way between the radial and median nerves, surrounded by a dark pocket of fluid. Tiny microscopic tendrils of silver alloy had feathered out, embedding themselves like fishhooks into the surrounding fascia.
"I can't operate on this," Vance said, his hands beginning to shake. "Look at those barbs, Miss Fenomore! If I go in with standard surgical forceps, I will tear the median nerve to shreds. He will lose all motor function in the arm permanently, or the shock will trigger a massive cardiac arrest from the sudden surge of thallium entering the vena cava."
"Then what do we do?" I cried, looking at Orson’s pale, chiseled face. His chest rose and fell in ragged, shallow gasps. His hand was freezing to the touch.
"We need the original metallurgical blueprints," Vance said urgently. "Peter kept an exact formula of the alloy's thermal expansion coefficient and its chemical binder. If I know the exact dissolving rate, I can flood the wound with an EDTA chelating agent and extract the shard with an electromagnetic clamp without tearing the nerve."
"The ledger," I said. "It's inside my grandfather's shop."
"You can't go there!" Vance warned. "Moretti’s men will have that building watched!"
"They don't know who I am yet," I lied, though in my heart I knew Kellen had already connected the dots. "Even if they do, they don't know where the ledger is hidden. It's beneath a half-ton steel anvil. You can't see the floor compartment unless you release the hydraulic lock."
I looked down at Orson.
His eyes cracked open. Through the haze of fever and delirium, his gray gaze found mine. His fingers—stiff, trembling, blackened by the venom—slowly reached toward me.
I took his hand. Despite the poison, his grip possessed a desperate, pleading strength.
"Rosie... don't," he whispered, barely audible. "Too dangerous... let them have the city... just run..."
A tear escaped my eye and slipped down my cheek, landing on his scarred knuckles.
"You told me earlier that I had to be a wolf, Orson," I whispered softly, leaning down until my forehead rested against his. "Now it's my turn to protect you."
I turned to Dr. Vance.
May you like
"Keep him alive for one hour. Pump him with whatever saline and broad-spectrum antitoxins you have. I'm going to get that book."
***