“These are Father’s personal keys. The only one with the King’s College crest is for the smoking room upstairs.”
“We haven’t many options.”
To our surprise, the fourth key twisted in the lock. My stomach knotted with foreboding worries about why the King’s Club would need a secret room so deep in the belly of the university.
Montgomery drew his pistol. “Stay behind me, just in case.”
The door creaked open. We stepped inside, at first seeing only worktables and rows of cupboards in the flickering candlelight. But on the far wall, Lucy’s candle reflected in what looked like mirrors. The smell grew stronger. In the faint light I began to make out the shapes of a half dozen identical glass tanks, which upon closer inspection were filled with water. We exchanged uneasy glances. Lucy hung back, but I took a step closer to peer into the murky water.
“Juliet,” Montgomery’s voice came with a warning. “Not too close.”
Something roughly the size of a large cat was suspended, unmoving and silent, in the water. As my eyes adjusted to the low light, I could make out the vague shape of a half-formed creature not unlike a large rodent with only a hint of limbs. It was hairless from the tip of its jaw to the suggestion of a curling tail. The mouth was further developed than the rest of the body, powerful and wide like a reptile with a gleaming set of teeth.
Recognition dawned on me. “They’re the creatures from the island. Father’s ratlike creatures, only much bigger.”
Montgomery came to peer within the murky water. “It’s your father’s design, for certain,” he confirmed. “Although I’ve never seen one created in this fashion. They haven’t been stitched together. It’s as though they’re growing them here, using these tanks as artificial wombs, made from various animal components. Rat and opossum, I would guess, given their physical traits, with something to account for their large size.”
Memories returned to me of a glass jar in Father’s laboratory, a strange living thing pulsing the water. Is that what Father had been doing with those glass jars I’d smashed on the island? Could this be how he’d created Edward? My stomach shrank to think of Edward in a tank like this; he was too real for such things, too much a person like me.
“There’s more!” Lucy said. She shone the candle against the opposite wall, which had a dozen more half-formed creatures in tanks.
“What are these things?” Lucy asked.
“Experiments,” I said, glancing at Montgomery. “This is where the King’s Club does their experiments. They’ve already begun.” The horror of it crashed into me, and I leaned against the wall, afraid I’d be sick. Lucy’s face had gone white as the walls.
Desperate to know why, I grabbed the candle from Lucy’s hand and went to the cabinets lining the walls. A stack of journals sat on one end with a bundle of loose notes. Flipping through the pages, I recognized Father’s precise handwriting. This was the research he’d sent, in exchange for them funding his expenses and supplies. I pored over it quickly, but as well trained in anatomy and physiology as I was, little of it made sense to me. Highly detailed explanations of cellular replacement and something Father kept referring to as “hereditary transmutational factors,” with complex pen-and-ink blueprints of the water tanks and creatures within.
“See if you can make some sense of this,” I said, handing the pages to Montgomery, who took them and pored over them with careful attention. I started in on the notebooks, which were all in the same hand, but not Father’s. I called Lucy over, who said it wasn’t her father’s handwriting, either. The notebooks contained dated records of their experimentation. The most recent was on top, the latest entry just this morning. I read it with stilled breath.
DECEMBER 22, 1895, 7:10 AM.
Provided the specimens with a nutrient-rich compound. Rate of growth is 29/38, even faster than we had anticipated. By all projections, specimens will be full-grown within one week of receiving the cerebrospinal fluid replacement. With an estimated 2000 ml of cerebrospinal fluid from the host, we will have enough for a minimum of 200 cellular replacement therapy procedures.
I let the notebook tumble from my fingers as I turned to study the half-formed creatures in the water tanks. This wasn’t the vivisection I had witnessed in Father’s laboratory. This was something new, the procedure he’d designed to create Edward. And now they just needed Edward’s spinal fluid—the host—to finalize their development and bring them to awareness.
“Father’s letters outlined the process for them, blueprints for these tanks and the fluids to use and how to grow the creatures. But his letters could only take them so far. It’s one thing to build a body, quite another to give it life. For that they need Edward and the transmutational code in his spinal fluid. If they can insert that code into the host bodies, they’ll replicate and make life possible.”
Lucy put a hand over her mouth.
I flipped back through the notebook quickly and saw that the attending biochemist came twice a day, morning and evening. All the evening entries were dated between eight o’clock and eight-thirty at night.
“Montgomery, what time is it?” I asked quickly.
He drew a watch from his vest pocket. “Ten till eight.”
“The King’s Club’s doctor will be back soon. Blast, he can’t find us here.” I replaced the notebook in a hurry and arranged the stacks to give no sign that we’d been there. “It’s time we told the professor about this. I wish we didn’t have to involve him, but he knows these men and can give us information.”