Dr. Amerson
The sun has set and Sam is long gone by the time Dr. Erin Amerson steps out of her apartment and heads down to her car. It is a breezy night and, for a moment, the woman pauses at the bottom of her complex’s stairwell to savor a bit of wind.
She has done this since she was a little girl. On her parents’ balcony, she would close her eyes and stretch out her neck and let the wind tickle her, sense her soul stirring with delight at the feeling. She hadn’t known it at that age, but the feeling of her soul in her chest was a wondrous thing, big and bright, an energy that could barely be contained within her body. She cried easily and was sensitive to everything—the texture of different foods on her tongue (she was a picky eater), the feel of fabric sliding against her skin, the temperature of the air, the decibel of sounds, the intensity of light. Everything seemed like too much. She had an unusually powerful soul and it overwhelmed her senses, and sometimes she felt so alive that she wanted to shout, would explode into tantrums because she couldn’t bear it.
What had that been like, to have a soul intact? It is a distant memory. Her soul now is a beaten thing in her chest crusted with scar tissue, thick and blunt, dying if not dead. When she carves a fragment of it away for a transmutation, it doesn’t even hurt anymore. She didn’t shed a single tear when she came upon Sam lying there in the street, her young body broken, people stepping around her in disinterest, life ebbing away in the rain.
And yet Will had been right to alert her in secret about what would happen to Sam, because he had known that some soft corner of her would still stir for the dying girl.
You know what will happen to you,she told him.Should Diamond find out.
If you’ve ever hurt for me,Will had answered,you will save her.
Will had known what her answer would be. That, for him, she would do anything.
These days, when Amerson feels something, she responds to it. It won’t be long before her soul dies entirely, and then she’ll go with it. She has met senior alchemists near the end like this, their eyes dulled and flat, their smiles mechanical. They go about their business and continue transmuting, the brightness inside them dimmed from abuse. And one day, when they have finally used themselves up, she’ll hear about their funeral, will pay her respects. Alchemists, on average, live twenty years less than those with intact souls.
Amerson opens her eyes and keeps walking in the direction of her parked car. She has always been willing to pay the price of an early death in exchange for the gift of alchemy in her life. Diamond discovered her while she was still at Harvard Medical School, offered her more money than she could have ever dreamed of even as a surgeon. And the first transmutation she performed, when she saw a patient’s wound healing beneath her hands as if stitched back together by some divine power, the pain that bloomed in her, hot and alive… she has never forgotten the wonder of it.
In spite of everything, she still thinks alchemy is beautiful. Why, just look at what it has helped create. In her own lifetime, sand’s influence on the scientific community has aided in the advancement of cancer therapy and the Human Genome Project and the cloning of animals, the discovery of gravitational waves and liquid water on Mars and artificial intelligence. It has transformed society. So Diamond Taylor is not at fault for who Amerson became. She went willingly, became obsessed with alchemy, delights in its endless possibilities.
She admits she is a monster, of course, just as much as the rest of them. She healed Diamond’s little son over and over during his brutal childhood years, came to love that boy almost as her own, and yet she’d never had the moral strength to save him because she was so addicted to the beauty of performing alchemy. Over the years, she has accepted her waking nightmares, where sometimes she’ll just stop in the middle of the street, paralyzed by a sudden memory of young Will sobbing weakly in bed, tears streaking his face, the poor child beggingno, no,of his raw screams as she performed yet another excruciating round of healing on his small, sand-ravaged body.
Is monstrosity what it takes to progress civilization? Why else was mankind given this capacity for unspeakable cruelty?
She reaches her car. The night has settled evenly. Tomorrow, she has been instructed to go to the estate instead of one of Diamond’s varioushospitals throughout the city. Maybe the prisoner exchange tonight will end without further drama. Most likely, she will have injuries to tend.
She clicks her car’s keys. The car hums to life. She climbs into the front seat and shuts the door. And right as she does, she knows something is wrong.
Nothing is misplaced in her car; she just feels the tingling at the nape of her neck. Her eyes dart briefly from the windshield to the rearview mirror. There, she sees Sebastian’s dark, dull eyes.
“It’s a shame, Demeter,” he says.
Hades.
She has just enough time to know she’s going to die before Sebastian presses his hand against the back of her head. It is true, what they say about your life flashing before your eyes. She sees the girl craning her neck up to the breeze and the hall of her medical school. She sees Sam sitting up in her bed, drinking soup. She thinks to herself, this is a good final act.
Then she feels the chemicals in her brain change, transmuted into hydrochloric acid. The pain is all-consuming, reminds her of the very first time she’d performed alchemy. And even as her mouth opens in a silent scream, she experiences a twinge of freedom too. The ability to feel something. The stirring of what remains of her soul. Oh, what a sensation, to be alive enough to know you’re dying.
Then the pain cuts off. The world disappears. And at last, she feels nothing at all.
[…] EDWARD SINCLAIR swears under penalty of perjury that the facts expressed by him in this Search and Arrest Warrant and Affidavit, and in the attached and incorporated herein Statement of Probable Cause, are true and correct and that based upon his experience and expertise that he has probable cause to search for and arrest the person described below pursuant to Penal Code § 817 and § 1524(a)(6), and does believe that the person is now located at the location(s) set forth below. […]
Excerpt: Affidavit of Edward Sinclair for Search and Arrest Warrant of Diamond Taylor
