Iron Cast by Destiny; Soria

gates, they never came back out.
    Ada hadn’t spoken, though Corinne could tell by her breathing that she was still awake.
    â€œI don’t think we should go tomorrow,” Ada said at last. “The HPA will be looking for me.”
    Corinne stared at the dark ceiling, trying to pick out the images from the magazines that she and Ada had pasted up there. For her side of the room, Corinne had chosen castles on the moors in Europe and poems and reviews from the
Literary Digest
and the
Atlantic.
    â€œBoston’s a big city,” Corinne said.
    â€œNot that big.” Ada’s voice was soft and slurred with sleep. “I don’t want to go back there, Cor.”
    Haversham Asylum for Afflictions of the Blood had been a looming presence at the edge of Boston since its construction thirty-six years ago, but it was only in the past year—since the new law had passed—that stories had started trickling through the hemopath clubs about what its true purpose might be. The theories ranged anywhere from lobotomies to ritualistic slaughter. Corinne chewed on the inside of her lip and thought about the man the two HPA agents had brought to the basement. She knew that there was something comforting she was supposed to say to Ada, but she also knew she had never in her life managed to say the exact right thing.
    â€œWe don’t have a choice,” she said. “The Cast Iron can’t stay open without us. And what about your mother?”
    She rolled onto her side and squinted through the darkness. The walls on Ada’s half of the room were an eclectic mix of foreign landscapes and clippings from
Garden & Home Builder
of the “Picture-Perfect Kitchen!” and “A Rose Garden Fit for a Queen.” Pasted in the center of it all was an old, wrinkled picture of her parents. Her mother was perched neatly on a fence, her hair wrapped in a scarf, trying to keep her skirt from blowing in the breeze, while Ada’s father stood on tiptoe, one hand on his hat, leaning in for a kiss.
    â€œAnd what’s my mother supposed to do if we’re both carted to the asylum and never seen again?” Ada asked.
    â€œWe won’t get caught,” Corinne said. “Not as long as we’re together.”
    Ada didn’t say anything more, and soon her breaths deepened into sleep.
    Corinne tried to calm her own mind, but to no avail. She pulledher grandfather’s pocket watch from the wooden crate that served as her bedside table. Clutching the cool brass to her chest, she laid her head back on the pillow. Her fingertips searched out the familiar grooves of the inscription inside the delicate timepiece, lulling her mind into a blank peace. She fell asleep still cradling it.
    Ada couldn’t fall back asleep. She forced a steady rhythm into her breathing, trying to trick her mind into rest. It was no use. No matter how many times she told herself that she was free, that she was home, whenever she closed her eyes, she was back there. Gray walls around her. Fear like acid in her throat.
    Her first day at the asylum, she’d thought it was going to be a breeze. The corridors were dreary and the cells were cold, but there were no instruments of torture, no prisoners being dissected. The rumors must have been exaggerated by gossiping regs and paranoid hemopaths. Ada knew that Corinne would come for her. All she had to do was wait.
    On the second day, they brought her into an examination room for tests. She remembered with clarity the framed diploma on the wall and the black-and-white tiles—not unlike the Cast Iron’s dance floor. A porcelain washbasin sat in the corner, pristinely white and draped with a soft cotton towel. As touted to the public, the facility was iron-free, so she had succumbed to their poking and prodding. They had checked for lice, rashes, symptoms of influenza. Nothing that wouldn’t happen in any ordinary doctor’s office in Boston.
    When the Dr. Knox