truth could not be ignored. She’d failed the Ministry Seven. She couldn’t imagine what Henry and Christopher would say to her. She simply couldn’t face them.
“Go home,” she said to the boys, her voice coming out in painful gasps. “Go home.”
Before they could reply, Verity spun about and ran. They would easily find their way back to the safe house in Kensington, but she didn’t want to go back there. She couldn’t.
The events of recent months meant that she wasn’t any good for them—in fact she was just the opposite. Verity Fitzroy ran through the snow, her tears freezing on her cheeks. Her feet were carrying her somewhere that she didn’t really consciously think about. She caught a ride on the back of a steaming bus, heading towards the Thames, and found herself staring up with burning eyes at the sign, ‘Miggins Antiquities’.
It was the home of the Ministry. All the children knew where it was, but none had ever been inside. Fresh tears started on her cheeks. It had been an age since she’d cried—probably back in the workhouse. Yet her failure cut deep.
“Child, are you alright?” A female voice made Verity hastily brush away her tears. She didn’t like hearing herself called that, but the kindness in the tone soothed her somehow.
A lovely lady, dressed all in black, with a pair of spectacles perched on the end of her nose was standing by the door to the shop. A chink of light was visible behind her as if she had just stepped out from there.
“Yes,” Verity stammered out, though it was far from the truth.
“You’re one of Agent Thorne’s urchins,” the woman said with a strangely distant smile.
Verity didn’t know Mr. Thorne had shared his use of the Ministry Seven with anyone else in the organization, but she wasn’t surprised. A small smile formed on her lips. It was nice to be considered part of the agent’s world. Verity nodded slowly.
“Well no one should be standing outside in the snow—especially on Christmas Eve.” The woman pushed the door open wider and gestured Verity in.
The girl did not need further incentive. Getting a chance to see inside the Ministry was an impossible treat.
The woman shut the door behind them and guided Verity upstairs. The rows of desks were empty of people, but it looked like many clerks worked on the ground floor.
“I am Doctor Josepha Blackwell,” the woman said as they went. “I work in the research laboratory. In fact, I like to think of myself as the research laboratory. Though I have a few helpers.”
She paused and spun around. “I have some hot chocolate still warm in the lab…I think you would like that, yes?”
Verity nodded, but stayed silent least she break the spell and be cast out into the snow again. This woman worked in the very place the girl dreamed of. Was she catching a glimpse of her own possible future?
After being ushered into a lift, the doctor pushed the chadburn for up. Her eyes gleamed slightly as she examined Verity. The girl thought she had seldom been under such close scrutiny.
“So,” the older woman said, “what brings you to Miggins Antiquities on Christmas Eve, with all those tears on your face?”
Apparently all that Verity had been waiting for was an ear to listen. She found herself blurting out everything to the odd doctor—everything except what exactly had distracted her outside the house. Fresh bitter tears flowed when she got to the angry words she had exchanged with the boys. Finally, she exclaimed, “Maybe it is better that I never joined the Ministry Seven…they would be better off without me! All I do is mess things up!”
“Really?” Josepha Blackwell leaned down and peered into her eyes. “Do you really think so? How interesting…”
They had reached the laboratory, and after the doctor had spun the wheel, so that the massive iron door unsealed itself, she led Verity in. It was another kind of fairyland to the girl. Her gaze darted enviously over the long, wide benches covered with an array of machines, tools, and bubbling liquids. Her fingers itched to grab hold of things, to begin figuring how they worked and what they could do.
The ticking and whirring in her head began again, and for a moment it became such a cacophony that all thoughts were drowned out. While Verity was getting her bearings, Josepha bustled around turning on a Bunsen burner, which did indeed contain a white liquid that had to be milk.
Though the idea of drinking from a flask used in a laboratory was very strange, Verity nonetheless accepted the chocolate when it was offered to her. She warmed her hands on the glass and watched the doctor. The woman even produced a couple of rather flattened marshmallows from her bag and popped them in. When she sat back on her stool, she once again watched Verity with the intensity of a spectacled hawk.
The girl sipped nervously at it, and almost jumped when the doctor spoke. “You say you’d be better to have never met your friends?” She leaned forward, her eyes huge behind her spectacles. “Are you willing to find out if that is the truth?”
Verity thought of Jonathan, Jeremy and Colin’s faces, the hurt and resentment there. They would be better. The words choked her throat, so she just nodded.
“Then let’s be scientific about it,” the doctor said, tugging Verity over to an object in the corner with a large sheet over it. When Josepha yanked it off, it was revealed as a large wire ball standing over six feet at the highest point, and made of a strange metal, that looked like it might be a silver alloy. The doctor let out a sigh. “I’ve been working on this beauty in my lunch time. Axelrod thinks it will never work, and I’ve never been able to find anyone willing to give it a try.” She turned to Verity with an open face of expectation.
The girl swallowed hard, but her brain was burning with curiosity. “How does it work?” Verity enquired, wondering for an instant if her brain was in danger of frying.
“Oh,” Josepha waved her hand. “It is quite on the sharp edge of latest developments. It is patterned on something we like to call the aethergates, but instead cutting through space, this one delves into the majesty of the mind.”
Verity stared at her.
“Come, come,” the doctor frowned. “Where is your sense of adventure? Surely, those tears and horrible feelings inside you are worth investigating?”
The ticking began again, repetitive, and spurring Verity onwards. Curiosity bought her up to stand next to the doctor. Josepha beamed at her and opened a cunningly contrived lock on the side of the sphere.
Verity stepped in and closed the gate behind her, while the older woman went to a control panel only a few feet away. “I suggest you close your eyes,” she said in a very spritely tone. “Things may get a little bit…bright.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, Verity thought, and did as she was bid.
Immediately she felt the hum and whir of the ticking replaced by something else, the smell of hot copper, and the caress of electricity on her skin. For a moment she was afraid to open her eyes.
When she cautiously levered them open, it was immediately apparent she was no longer in Miggins Antiquities. She was on the streets of the East End, or rather in an alleyway. The smell was powerful, and she remembered how it had hit her palpably when she first arrived in London.
Grey water trickled under her feet and distant sobbing could be heard nearby. A child’s sobbing. Wrapping her arms around herself against the cold, Verity followed the sound. Leaning against a wall was Jeremy, his face smeared where tears had cut through the dirt on his face. He was leaning over his brother, Jonathan, who had his hand clenched on the side that was bleeding. Scarlet blood was pooling on the cobblestones—the only brightness in the drab scene.
Neither of the boys seemed to see her, and when Verity leaned down to touch them, her hand passed right through them.
Josepha’s voice reached her, and whispered things she could never have known otherwise. “Remember when you saved Jeremy from the Elephant gang? Without you this is what would have happened. He’s not going to make it I am afraid.”
Verity felt the clench of despair at the sight of the little boys, but there
was nothing she could do, and deep down she knew that there was more to see. The girl trailed on down the alleyway and out onto the street. It looked just as it had on that first day she saw the twins, but a dire knot was forming in her stomach.
She passed another alleyway, and observed a group of man drinking gin. However, they were not all men…some were boys, and two she recognized instantly. Young Christopher was leaning against Henry, his eyes half-lidded a tilted grin on his face. Henry looked pale and grey under the eyes, somehow older than his sixteen years.
“Without you, without meeting Harrison Thorne, which you did, Henry never had a purpose.” Josepha’s voice sounded almost sad. “So much potential, and he washed it all away with gin.”
“I don’t want to see more,” Verity said, shaking her head, horrified by these images of those she loved. Yes, loved. She understood that now.
The electricity smothered her again, until she was standing once more in the laboratory of the Ministry inside the gleaming wire cage. Josepha’s wide eyes were the first things she saw.
“Well?” she enquired softly as she opened the door to the sphere, but her fingers were twitching nervously.
Verity was so glad that it wasn’t real, that she hadn’t been swept off to some strange other world that she didn’t exist in. Yet, neither could she bear to answer questions like some laboratory creature. Instead, she bolted from the