Dark Stars by Danielle Rollins (most read books of all time .txt) 📗

this city, how the perpetual damp left everything reeking of mold and rot.

Mac Murphy had taken over the hotel’s Olympic Suite. At fifteen hundred square feet, it took up the entire top floor of the hotel and was roughly the size of a small house. Unlike the lower floors, the top floor of the Fairmont was bright, lit by sconces holding candles that dripped thick puddles of wax onto the carpet. Freaks stood to either side of the double doors that led to Mac’s suite.

Something prickled, uncomfortably, in Dorothy. “I’m to have guards?”

Eliza gave her a look and escorted Dorothy into the room. Dorothy assumed that Eliza would be going, but the other girl just stood there, one eyebrow cocked.

“What?” Dorothy asked. “Are you waiting for a tip?”

Eliza lifted a key from her pocket. “I’ve been ordered to lock you in.”

“Have you?” Dorothy asked, amused.

“Order comes directly from Mac himself.”

Dorothy released a sharp laugh. She couldn’t remember the last time a simple lock had been enough to hold her anywhere.

Reluctantly, she stepped into the room, standing in silence as Eliza pulled the door shut. And then there was a click of metal hitting metal, and she was alone.

Nerves tingled in her fingers as she turned, taking in the space. Mac had begun hoarding the items she and Roman had brought back from the past, she saw. A baseball from the Cubs’ first World Series win had rolled against his dresser. A wineglass from the Titanic sat on his bedside table, where it was currently being used as an ashtray. The bass guitar that Dorothy had stolen from the dressing room of the Beatles’ first show in Liverpool was lying on the floor near the far wall, in pieces. It hadn’t been in pieces when they’d brought it back. Mac must’ve smashed it.

Grimacing, Dorothy tore her eyes away from the treasures, telling herself that none of that mattered, now. If she’d left them in the past, they would’ve been destroyed by the ravages of time anyway. This wasn’t any worse.

And she had to work quickly.

She removed the EM from her cloak, fingers trembling as she unscrewed the top of the canister. The EM glittered inside, strange as always. She couldn’t risk losing any, not when there was such a limited supply left in the world. And she wasn’t sure how much she’d need for this little experiment. The Professor, infuriatingly, hadn’t been very specific in his calculations.

Not a good sign, whispered a voice in her head, but she quickly pushed it away. What other options were there? She’d just have to make do.

She hurried into the penthouse bathroom and pushed the door closed behind her, jumping a little as she heard it latch. She fumbled for the light switch—success. Electric lights flicked on above her, gleaming off the white marble and black tile. She should’ve known that Mac would have his private rooms set up with electricity as soon as possible.

Exhaling deeply, she placed the EM canister on the countertop and met her own eyes in the mirror above the sink.

She looked dreadful. Hair mussed from a night spent outdoors and going so long between washings, face smudged with dirt and grime. A nervous smile twitched at her lips. Was this really how she wanted to greet Ash after so long? Unwashed and filthy? Her eyes flicked to the shower stall behind her, and she found herself wishing she had time to bathe.

Footsteps outside the hotel room door made her tense. She didn’t know how long she had before Mac came up here to do . . . whatever he planned to do to her. And she didn’t know how long this would take to work.

“Here goes nothing,” she murmured, on an exhale. She pulled Roman’s dagger out from under her cloak and gathered a very small amount of EM on the tip of the blade.

It looked like something dark and dripping. Then, a moment later, it was green goo clinging to the metal. It was gaseous, vanishing into the air. It was solid, like ice.

She blinked and looked away. The constant changing was causing a nerve near her temple to pulse. She pushed her cloak aside, revealing the cool white skin of her abdomen.

The dagger trembled in her hand.

She took a breath—

LOG ENTRY—SEPTEMBER 21, 2074

08:15 HOURS

THE WORKSHOP

Over the last few days, I’ve been going over Tesla’s notes again and again to see what I might’ve missed. I have a few theories, but the most logical is that I simply injected the exotic matter into the wrong place.

Tesla posited that, in order for the EM to fully integrate with your body, you’d need to inject it directly into your aorta. This makes sense, because your aorta is the artery responsible for carrying blood from your heart to the rest of your body, so it connects with every other major artery. Its job is to distribute oxygenated blood throughout, so it would stand to reason that, if you were to inject exotic matter into your aorta, it would spread throughout your entire body in the same way that oxygenated blood does. Right?

Well, that’s the theory. I’m not a medical doctor, I’m a physicist, and I’m working well outside my comfort zone here. I know that it’s unusual for medication to be injected into arteries instead of veins, but I have to trust that Tesla had reasons for specifying the aorta as the ideal injection site, especially when it’s much more difficult to locate than a close-to-the-surface vein. The only choice I have is to try again and see if, this time, I can get it to work.

Tesla included a sort of “map” of the inside of the human body with the rest of his notes but, this time, I’m going to go off the most modern medical illustrations I can find. I borrowed one of Chandra’s books and studied the human body until I located the best place to attempt a second injection. Once again, aortic rupture is a concern. But I’m trying not to