The Land of What-Might-Have-Been

by Straightjacketed

After spending so many years wishing that things had been different, what happens when, halfway through their final meeting, Elphaba and Glinda find themselves unexpectedly plunged into the worst of all possible worlds? AU.

26. Tests Of Allegiance

A/N: (Gasp) I'm alive! Don't ask me how, but I'm alive!

In all honesty, ladies and gents, the last few weeks have been hell: every single time I've sat down to write recreationally, something else crops up - an essay, an errand, the corrections to the essay... on and on and on. It's been a bit like being knocked down by a wave, and then getting knocked over by another wave immediately after surfacing - fifteen times in a row. I can only apologise for my tardiness, and hope I can write a bit quicker with the schedule slightly cleared (the key word being "slightly")... and of course, I'd like to thank all of you who've continued following, favouriting and reviewing despite my lack of progress:

Ichibayashi: "Boq for more!" Great line there. I've always enjoyed your lengthy reviews, and this one was no exception. In regards to your speculations Lintel does have an integral part to play, as does most of the Pottery; as for what role his inventions play... you'll have to wait and see! BWAHAHAH! In the meantime, updates concerning the status of Dr Dillamond and Brr will be incoming soon - I wanted to put them in this chapter, but both the content and the time limit was getting pretty crowded, so I was forced to shuffle them into the next chapter. And I know what you mean about Chistery's disappearing act - it's been a bit of a juggling act keeping him in the story without making it feel shoed-in; I'll do my best to improve that as the chapters go on. With any luck, the Wizard's inevitable revelation will arrive swiftly and prove entertaining. Thanks again!

Nami Swannn: Well, technically Mr Heart already is Elphaba's apprentice; having been recruited to the Pottery under her guidance, Heart and all the other novices are seen as Elphaba's students until they're apprenticed to a researcher - and until then, the Director has important lessons to impart. And as for Nessa... she's not finished with Heart just yet.

Yui23: I'm glad you like the story and I'm especially happy you find it well-written and unique. As for it flying under the radar, well, I'm just happy it's gotten the attention it has - especially considering how tardy I've been lately! I must apologise in advance, because this is going to be another one of those "Mr Heart at the facility" chapters; don't worry, though - this'll be the last of them for a good long while. And to answer your question regarding Unbridled Radiance's stance on Animals, Empress Elphaba (or Alphaba, whichever you prefer) maintains Canon Elphaba's stance on Animal rights in a very twisted kind of way: for all intents and purposes, Animals are given the same rights as the human citizens of UR. Unfortunately, this means that, like the human citizens, the best and brightest of them are Purified: it doesn't make them more human - rather, it enhances the traits in them that are seen as beautiful and replaces the traits that make them "ugly" with surgically-implanted "improvements". Basically, whereas Purified humans look like eerily lifelike shop mannequins, Purified Animals look like animated hunting trophies - both examples of the Uncanny Valley made flesh. I've featured Purified Animals as background elements chapter 11, and I hope to include more prominent examples of them in the real-world chapters. Thanks once more for the review!

Caliax: I'm glad you're enjoying the story so far (and my descriptive style - something I take an absurd amount of pride in). I also agree with you that the memory segments are starting to break up the flow a bit: I was initially going for the chapter structure you suggested, but I ended up imputing so much content into the dream-memory segments that I had to chainsaw them and make them chapters in their own right. As such, I must apologize in advance for having this chapter be another memory chapter - but don't worry! For the next chapter, I'll see what I can do about blending memory segment and real world segment into one solid plot experience. I hope you enjoy this latest chapter.

So, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

---

Just over a month after Mr Heart's arrival in the Pottery, the inevitable finally comes to pass.

Ever since Miss Turnkey mentioned the possibility to him all those weeks ago, he's been wondering when Elphaba might finally explain the purpose behind the Pottery. Learning the complexities of magic and human anatomy quickly consumed most of his attention at work, but even he couldn't help but notice the invitations being delivered to his fellow apprentices. It's happened perhaps four or five times in the last month, and it always happens the same way: a guard will stride into the anarchic depths of the Pottery's cubicle maze, tap an apprentice on the shoulder and murmur "you have an appointment with the Director; finish your work and present yourself as quickly as possible," and then leave without another word. The apprentices all return from the office in varying states: some of them are confused, some are horrified, some are even happy with what they were told; one way or the other, none of them are willing to talk about what was discussed. With all these sights in mind, the conclusion is pretty obvious to Heart: sooner or later, the apprentices are informed of the purpose behind their research.

And now it's his turn: the inevitable tap on the shoulder, the fateful whisper of "you have an appointment with the director."

So, once he's finished with his latest exercise (shifting the bones in a test-subject's face by touch), he hastily changes out of his apron and gloves, washes his hands, apologises to Dr Coil and makes a nervous beeline for the office. As he goes, he can't help but feel the eyes of the other apprentices following him across the Pottery: in much the same way that he'd watched his predecessors marching apprehensively up the stairs, they're now watching him staggering along the catwalk towards Elphaba's office. These same watchers will probably be waiting for him when he returns, likely armed with the same questions that he'd asked when he was in their place. And there's other faces staring up at him from the honeycomb of cubicles, people who've probably already been through this little initiation: Miss Turnkey, currently umpiring an argument between Miss Emma and one of the resident enchanters, looks away from the squabble just long enough to smile reassuringly at him; halfway through marking the finished exercise, Dr Coil nods approvingly; some of the more agreeable researchers he's encountered over the course of his tenure at the Pottery, like Mainspring and Tinkerage, offer friendly waves; and some, like the guards and assistants he's ended up sharing his lunchtable with over the last few weeks, just offer salutes.

The route to the office only takes about ten minutes at the most, but Heart's excitement turns it into a journey in itself. It takes him along a few hundred yards of catwalk, up seven flights of stairs and into the shadowy rafters of the Pottery – where the off-duty Flying Monkeys perch, watching all that goes on below – and finally, through the open door of Elphaba's sparsely-decorated office.

And sure enough, it's there, with the rumble of the Pottery's experiments muffled by the thick walls of the office and the air scented with lavender, that Elphaba finally tells Mr Heart the truth.

It's not what he was expecting, to say the least.

After all, he's been attentive to the newspapers that have been brought down here: he's heard all about Madame Morrible's involvement in the Plague of Transformations, and he's believed every word of it up until now; in spite of all his past fears about the Wicked Witch of the West, he even believed it when the newspapers had proclaimed Elphaba the Wizard's champion. To hear that it was all a lie and that Elphaba was responsible for the plague… well, he wouldn't have been surprised if he'd died of shock right then and there.

Even more unbelievably, anger over this little revelation is somehow beyond him: as much as he'd like to lose his temper and bellow abuse at the top of his voice, to demand apologies and explanations, to storm out of the office and slam the door behind him, he can't. Shock has driven every last drop of anger from his body: he can't find it in himself to even feel the slightest bit of outrage. He can only sit and listen mutely as Elphaba explains how she created the first batch of the Plague through a formula of her own devising, how she went about hiring magicians and scientists from the Animal communities in order to mass-produce it, and how it was distributed; he doesn't even stir when she informs him exactly how he was exposed to the Plague back when he was still Boq.

Then, she explains how she eventually expanded the ragtag bunch of warlocks and inventors into a thriving group of researchers, advancing the production of Plague serum while at the same time allowing her private Think Tank to conduct experiments of their own – provided that she could find a practical use for the results. And with that, Mr Heart finally speaks up:

"The Pottery," he mumbles disbelievingly. "I'm working for the people responsible for the Plague. I'm one of the people responsible for the Plague."

"Not directly, Mr Heart; and if that doesn't put your mind and conscience at ease, then all I ask is that you understand that the Plague serves a higher purpose, as does all the research we perform down here."

"And what purpose is that?"

"The salvation of Oz."

Then, she shows him the evidence: photographs of the Wizard in human form, at the controls of a machine that looks suspiciously like the giant face he often manifests himself as; audio records of the Wizard in conversation, openly admitting to not being a Wizard even as he discusses the necessity for making the public believe otherwise; blueprints for props and special effects generators used to present the illusion of magical power; and worst of all, the footage of the atrocities that have been committed in the Wizard's attempts to cement his rule – including lurid colour photographs of the Animal re-education camps. She even allows some of the Animal guards to provide evidence of their own, rolling up sleeves and trouser legs to display horrific scars left by the camps' inventively sadistic punishments.

It takes almost an hour and a half to get through all the evidence, and at the end, Mr Heart's trembling. As much as he'd like to disbelieve, to claim that it's all faked, he finds the evidence looking more and more convincing, until he almost finds himself calling it "proof."

"But why haven't you ever told the rest of Oz about this?" he asks.

Elphaba just looks at him, her dark eyes sad and mournful. "I did, once," she says simply. "They called me the Wicked Witch of the West for it."

The look of grief on her beautiful face is so heartfelt that he can't even bring himself to respond at first, in case he says something as stupid as the last time. Eventually, he murmurs, "But with all the proof you've got here, you might have a chance to-"

"No. The people of Oz are too infatuated with the lie to understand the truth. By now, the Wizard's propaganda is much more attractive to them than reality and all the ugliness it harbours. That will change in time… but first, we have to break their faith in him: we have to make them understand that their vaunted Wizard is just a crooked old trickster with only the barest idea of how to run the country at the best of times."

"And the Plague's part of that?"

"Absolutely."

"In other words, you're hoping that you can get people to start asking why the Wizard can't save them from the Plague, given time and a little spectacle."

"Very good, Mr Heart. I see your intellect has had time to spread its wings since you abandoned your old life. But what I want to know is, can I count on your support?"

"Me? Why me? Why am I so important?"

"Because you are an apprentice mage-surgeon. A researcher in training. One of the many soldiers in my army of liberators. A small but vital component in a machine that will free Oz from the Wizard's petty regime and purify it of all imperfection. But for this to work, I need to know can trust you to do the right thing. So, can I trust you, Mr Heart?"

"Well, I-"

"Can I trust you? Do you want to change Oz for the better, or do you want to return to a life of desperation and denial? Would you want to be remembered as a pioneering scientist who helped Oz ascend from the filth of the Wizard's reign… or do you want to be remembered as a willing slave to those unworthy of power?"

Somewhere between entering his ears and reaching his brain, the second half of the sentence undergoes a hasty metamorphosis, finally arriving as Do you want to be remembered as Boq?

Mr Heart can only wonder if anyone will remember him at all if he says no.

It takes him about five minutes to decide, and despite the unspoken death threat, it requires a lot of careful consideration. On the one hand, having grown up in a land united in adoration of the new autocrat, he can barely even imagine the Wizard being capable of the atrocities that Elphaba accuses him of, let alone envision an Oz without him. A tiny bit of his mind, the part that still bleatingly insists on being called Boq, is currently clinging to denial, accusing Elphaba of being either a fraud or a misguided lunatic, and protesting – ever so whiningly – that the Wizard wouldn't do such things, that the Wizard couldn't do such things, that the Great Oz protected them all. As a good Ozian, it's his duty to report traitors to the Wizard, the miniscule part of his brain insists.

But on the other hand, he only needs to look at the last few weeks of his life – weeks spent as part of a terrorist cell – to know that the life he spent as a good Ozian hadn't been worth living. Even on the days when he hadn't been obsessing over Glinda or enslaved to Nessarose, his existence had been pathetic and meaningless; more often than not, he'd been a sycophant and a coward, bowing and scraping to the Wizard's guards, hoping that someone in the Wizard's service might notice and uplift him.

Here, down in the catacombs of Oz-only-knows-where, he has a job he enjoys; he has work he can take pride in; he even has friends, of a sort.

And he's learning magic.

A mad train of thought rumbles through his skull: But couldn't I have all that and much more if I just surrendered to the Wizard and denounced Elphaba as a traitor? He'd be grateful enough to give me all the honours and privileges I could ask for.

Yes, and betray the woman who gave you a life worth living. You opportunistic little shit, do you really think Elphaba will let you get as far as the palace? You're not Boq anymore; stop thinking like him.

"You can trust me," he says at last, not sure if he means it or not.

"Time will tell on that, Mr Heart. But you don't sound very convincing one way or the other."

"I'm not thinking of betraying you, Director-"

"I never said that you were. All I'm saying is that you haven't really made any kind of choice: your answer was meant to appease me, not to state any kind of intention on your part. But perhaps it's still too soon for you to make such a pivotal decision… in which case, I'll give you until the morning to make up your mind. After that, you will have to decide between glory for the Wizard and glory for all of Oz."

Her gaze turns sorrowful. "And for the sake of Oz, I ask that you make the right choice: the people might not know it, but a life built on lies is no life at all; forcing another decade of the Wizard's reign upon the citizens of Oz will kill them as surely as any Plague, and turn the once-proud nation of Oz into a grotesque little theatre for a hack showman."

"But the Wizard's not immortal, Director; he's going to die someday, and he's already pretty old judging by the photographs."

"Maybe so. But on some stages, the puppets keep dancing long after the puppeteer's died. Look at the people you've befriended here at the Pottery, the men and women you've accepted as tutors and colleagues: do you want living beings for friends, or marionettes swaying to the tune of a dead dictator?"

In the silence that follows, Elphaba whispers, "Think on what I've said, Mr Heart. Good night."

---

Ten minutes later, Mr Heart finds himself wandering aimlessly across the Pottery, eyes drifting randomly across the cubicles and thoughts determinedly focussed on everything but the decision he has to make tomorrow morning.

And yet, no matter how hard he tries, he keeps thinking back to the fatal choice: how can he make any difference to the fate of Oz? He's just an apprentice mage-surgeon; he can make teaspoons hover in mid-air and mould flesh as if it were modelling clay, but those aren't exactly the kind of powers that can set the world on fire. Besides, if he sides against Elphaba out loud, he'll be dead before he can set one foot outside the office; if he rebels against her in secret, he has no idea how to reach the surface (let alone the palace) through the tunnels. He's never taken part in the long spelunking trips through the passageways, he's never travelled any further than a hundred yards from the Pottery in his search for materials, and the last substantial journey through the underground was conducted with a bag over his head. Plus, the catacombs beyond the Pottery aren't exactly safe at the best of times: quite apart from the usual hazards of poisonous spiders and rats the size of terriers, there's said to be electrified floors, pipes hot enough to sear flesh from bone, and growths of fungus so toxic that only Dr Calenture and his apprentices are allowed anywhere near them. Some routes will take him over the abyssal depths of long-abandoned elevator shafts, or active sewage canals deep enough to drown in – and all too often, the catwalks that bridge them are poorly-maintained and dangerously unstable. Worst of all, there are rumours of nightmarish creatures loose in the deeper corridors, alchemical monstrosities that wander the lightless passageways and lurk in the ventilation shafts, all of them possessed of a ravenous appetite for human flesh and a bilious hatred of the Pottery that spawned them.

And even if he does make it to the surface – assuming he isn't poisoned, mauled, crushed, drowned, eaten, suffocated or starved to death in the attempt – it's doubtful that he'll get within a hundred yards of the palace without getting picked off by the assassin sent after him. After all, Elphaba's not stupid – she's as mad as a hatter crossbred with a march hare, but most certainly not stupid. Even if she doesn't have the inevitable hitman ready just yet, the Flying Monkeys overhead will be watching his movements, ready to alert Elphaba the moment he leaves the cubicle maze. Who knows? Maybe Chistery will be the one to kill him if the worst comes to the worst: he'll be able to track Heart from above as soon as he leaves the sewers and follow him until he takes a shortcut through an alley or a deserted street; one poisoned dart, one swooping grab, and Mr Heart will be officially removed from the register of unanchored apprentices.

But if he does side with Elphaba, what then? From the evidence that he was shown, he can accept the fact that she means to make Oz a better place, but what the hell does she really mean by that? How does she plan to bring this about? How does she imagine that she and the others at work donw here can stand against the Wizard? There's no telling if they'll all end up getting hanged as traitors regardless of what he says or does tomorrow morning. After all, there's about sixty researchers employed by the Pottery at the last count, plus the few dozen assistants and apprentices; even with all the magical and technological expertise gathered down here, it might not be enough to challenge the Wizard's armies. And besides, he's got the goodwill of the entire population; if they can't bring that crashing down, what do they have? Nothing.

And why the hell does everything have to hinge on his decision? Has every researcher, apprentice, guard and assistant really been asked the same question before being accepted as a member of the Pottery's staff, or is this some fresh nightmare devised specifically for him?

Does he have the right to decide the fate on an entire country? The Wizard's undoubtedly corrupt and dictatorial, but is the Plague of Transformations really such a good start to the new and better world? With hundreds of sufferers (himself included) and over eighty people unlucky enough to die from it, is all this really justified? And if not, is tipping off the Wizard justified? Neither idea seems to work no matter how he looks at it.

Even when he mentally suggests a third option – creating his own revolutionary movement founded on justice and mercy instead of pragmatism – it automatically falls to pieces. As if he could ever start his own revolution!

So, instead, he focusses all of his attention on the cubicles around him:

Dr Mainspring's apprentice being propelled into the corridor by a piston-driven foot – only to rise again with impressive speed. Something on his back glitters mechanically, and Mainspring laughingly assures him, "This is only the beginning, my friend; there's no limits to the improvements that can be made to the human body. You'll see soon enough…"

Dr Lintel cackling over his latest creations, muttering, "You see, you see, I told you!" whilst visions of fantastical cities drift in the air above him. Just beneath the phantasmal visions, the cage of test subjects rattles violently as the mice inside writhe in pain: it's not easy to tell from this distance, but it looks as though they're sprouting additional limbs.

Dr Ailing sitting cross-legged above the carnage of her ongoing experiments, face serene and impassive even as some of the deadliest gasses known to science swirl and eddy in the glass dome beneath her. She doesn't stir from her contemplation, not even when the test subject flings itself against the wall of the dome in one last-ditch attempt to escape suffocation (among other things), splashing rabbit blood all over the glass.

Dr Coil inspecting his newest test subject, a tiny writhing shape that looks dangerously close to a newborn baby, but turns out to be a flayed monkey; apparently, Coil's continuing in his attempts to see just how long the test subjects can last without skin. Judging by the tally on the blackboard next to him, he's reached some kind of record – about seventy-seven hours.

And, as he drifts out of the Pottery and into the passage, a voice whispers "Boq!"

Unsurprisingly, the speaker is Miss Emma, racing towards him as quickly as her wheelchair can move; for some reason, Turnkey's nowhere in sight.

"Boq," the old woman murmurs, "we need to talk."

"Where's Miss Turnkey?"

"Busy. She doesn't know I'm out of bed, so let's make this quick."

"But how do you know my real name? I'm pretty sure we've never met. And why-"

"Listen, young man; if you want to survive this anarchistical mess, you'll listen to what I have to say, and if you've got even the slightest vestigations of brain in your head, you'll recognize me without having to hear me ramble through "Dear Old Shiz" or whatever."

Mr Heart blinks. Suddenly, a familiar expression can be seen amongst the wrinkles and blisters shrouding "Miss Emma's" face, and from the hoarse whispering, the strident tone of a long-vanished headmistress emerges. "Madame Morrible?" he whispers.

"Finally! A bit of brain at work! Now listen closely…"

She hastily explains everything that's happened to her over the past few months: her discovery of Elphaba's immortality, her attempts to replicate it and the accidental self-poisoning that occurred as a result; the framing, the arrest, the pacification with an anti-magical collar, the press-ganging that led Madame Morrible into the service of the Pottery under the name of "Miss Emma"; the humiliation of being reduced to little more than a research assistant, and the punishments that she incurs in her attempts to escape. She even goes into a little detail concerning the attempts at treating her increasingly desperate condition, most of which have ended in failure.

"I'm dying, Boq," she wheezes. "This disease might very well be the slowest killer in the world, but it's undoubtedly getting the job done. And while I'm stuck in this chair, parroting out advice for old rivals and waiting for the last of my internal organs to give out, that little whore is wreakifying havoc upon Oz in my name, using my absenciation to manipulate the Wizard in gods only know what horrenditious ways... for all I know, Oz is already gone and it's just Elphaba's private fiefdom with the Wizard as a figurehead… unless she's already… killed… the Wizard…"

As Morrible struggles for breath, Mr Heart reflects somewhat absently on the fact that the ex-press secretary probably hasn't gotten a chance to read any of the newspapers delivered to the Pottery; quite apart from the fact that he's seen Turnkey confiscating them from her charge at least five times in the last week, he's pretty sure that there's no possibility of the Wizard having already been assassinated – unless the meeting with Elphaba was just a hopelessly complicated feint. Either that, or spending over a month and a half staring death in the face have left her teetering on the brink of insanity.

"Boq, you have to listen to me, this is important… my life depends on this – as does the Wizard's life and the lives of everyone in Oz… we can still stop this. There might still be time to save Oz."

"What do you mean?"

"We can shut this madhouse down. I've already got a few allies; a few disgruntilated workers here and there, and I've even got the ear of that fat bastard Branderstove – he might be losing influence, be he still has enough to make life difficult for Elphaba. I've even got a few spies being shipped into the Asylum as patients; once they're released, they'll deliver enough evidence to the Wizard to have Elphaba jailed for life, along with every other Animal and traitor who sided with her."

"So? With that many contacts, you shouldn't need me, should you?"

Morrible sighs furiously. "I need someone with medical training, or something similar enough to get the job done: you're the only one who might be able to do this for me. It's a small job, but it'll ensure that everyone knows the abomination Elphaba's become." She leans forward in her wheelchair with a groan of protesting machinery. "And it'll save my life," she adds, importantly.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Just sneak into Elphaba's quarters, and obtain a sample of her."

"Define "sample." I mean, do you want skin flakes, strands of hair, remorseful tears – what?"

"Anything! Hair, skin and nails are decent enough, but blood is the real prize. See if you can obtain some of her blood."

"Oh, that'll be a walk in the park, won't it? No problems with that, Madam Press Secretary; I'll just tell her we're collecting for charity. How the hell am I supposed to get blood from the most important figure in this entire complex without rousing suspicion?"

Much to his surprise, Morrible actually looks a little taken aback by the sarcasm; maybe she wasn't expecting him to be this snide… or maybe she wasn't expecting him to have grown a backbone since his days at Shiz. Whatever the case, she recovers her equilibrium very quickly: "You're a mage-surgeon's apprentice, Boq: you can claim you're conducting a study for that cheapskate serpent, or maybe conducting an experiment of your own, or even drug the uppity little bitch; I don't care what you have to say or do to get it – just get it! And if you do decide to settle on skin and hair, remember that they're nowhere near as potent as the blood, so collect a lot."

"But why? What is all this for?"

"For a start, a cure for this illness." She coughs.

"You want her immortality."

"Is that so wrong? I've got so much more to contributate to the Wizard's government than that upstart slut; all I need is time… and better still a healthy body. But this isn't just going to save my life: the biological material you bring back will serve as proof that Elphaba is an even bigger freak than she was before I drained her of pigment; we'll send it off to the newspapers and have "Elphaba the Redeemed" shamed and abominatified until Oz itself fades from living memory. Even if she manages to escape prosecutiation for what happened down here, she'll be made an outcast…"

Just like you were? Just like she was before you?

"… and you'll be a hero!"

Mr Heart blinks uncomprehendingly. "What?"

"Think about it, Boq: once word gets out about the Pottery and the role you played in its downfall, you'll be famous! Everyone will want to know your story, whether it's a harrowfying tale of the madness that the Witch brewed up down here, or a tale of your astonishing braverism and derring-do. You'll be a hero in the eyes of the public and, more importantly, in the eyes of the Wizard. He'll be able to give you anything you could possibly ask for: you'll be rich, you'll have land and titles, you'll have servants at your beck and call for the rest of your life… whatever you want, it'll be yours. I'll make sure you get what you want; once I'm back in power, I'll help spread the word – I'll reward you in person for Oz's sake. Just think of it!"

And to his surprise, Mr Heart finds himself doing exactly that: after all, this isn't the first time he's wondered what kind of rewards he could earn from siding with the Wizard, and now that Morrible has a plan in mind it seems all the more tempting. Once again, unpleasant parts of his brain are clamouring for attention, somehow drowning out the evidence that Elphaba displayed back in the office: what does it matter if the Wizard's a fraud? The nasty little voice at the back of his head whispers. Who cares if he's responsible for crimes against Animals? He might be the only way you can succeed in this lifetime; you really think you've got it in you to become a researcher? You don't even have any real skill with magic – you've a few tricks up your sleeve, and that's all. You'll never be anything better than an apprentice down here. If you want to get further than that, you'll have to side with the Wizard: he'll make you rich and powerful, and he'll make sure you're safe from Elphaba. Besides, Morrible could find someone else to help her, and then where would you be? When the guards come down here looking for traitors, you'll be first on the chopping block. You need insurance; you need to make it clear that you're on the winning side; you need to accept this deal.

For eight dreadful seconds, there's silence in the corridor: as much as he hates these twisted little thoughts, he has to admit that his selfishness – the part of him that seemed most particular to Boq when he still went by that name – has a point. He's already noticed just how easily most of decisions could kill him in the not-too-distant future: maybe he should try and play this safely; as attractive as becoming a full-fledged magician and a researcher seemed, getting too ambitious could very well land him in prison for the rest of his life, assuming it didn't just send him straight to the gallows. And yet… he can't just abandon Coil and Turnkey to the same fate, can he? And what about Elphaba? After all that she's done for him, helping Morrible destroy her all over again might just be the single most contemptible thing he's ever done.

And yet... He sighs, imagining the hedonistic lifestyle he'd be rewarded with – the titles, the money, the power, the mansions and properties; maybe, just maybe he'd be doing the right thing in the long run if he helped Morrible. After all, Elphaba gave proof that the Wizard had committed crimes against Animals in the past, but not that the atrocities were continuing; from what little Heart can recall of world outside the Potter, the Animal communities were thriving and more rights were being extended to them every month. Maybe the Wizard had changed; maybe Elphaba's crusade wasn't necessary…

"And what about Glinda?"

Heart blinks, startled out of his reverie. "What?"

"Don't look so surprised, Boq: you've wanted her since the day you laid eyes on her. Once she sees what a monster her friend's become, she'll be looking to congratulify the man who brought the Wicked Witch Reborn to justice."

"And what about Fiyero?"

"What about him? There's never been any real intimacy between the two, not since their days at Shiz. He's just something to tide the public over, a convenient lump of muscle for her to latch onto and keep the people of Oz from imagining that their perfect woman might live a less-than-perfect life. As her teacher and superior, I know for a fact that she does everything can to avoid him behind the scenes: no kissing, no hugging, and certainly no spreading of the legs for the dandified bastard; she's not drawn to his type – her affections lie with the truly heroic. Why do you think she spends so much time around Elphaba? Why do you think their friendship's so intense? Heroism draws her like a moth to a flame… and once she gives up on Elphaba and discards Fiyero once and for all, she'll choose you." She smiles encouragingly, exposing rotten teeth and purulent black gums. "Think about it Boq: a few strands of Elphaba's hair, a drop of her blood, and Glinda can be yours."

For a time, she carries on talking, elaborating on everything that Boq could earn if he betrayed Elphaba to the Wizard. But Boq is not listening to her, and neither is Mr Heart: all the happy fantasies of the Wizard rewarding him have quietly dissolved, along with any hope that Morrible might have been telling the truth. Oh sure, there's no doubt that she wants immortality and a return to her place at the Wizard's side, plus a chance to see Elphaba behind bars, but as for rewarding him for getting the samples, she's lying through the rotten stumps of her teeth. If he accepts this deal, all he's going to get out of it is execution or life in solitary confinement – and that's assuming that Nessa doesn't request that his sentence be commuted to indentured servitude.

Worst of all, Morrible thinks he'll accept the whole ghastly lie so long as she keeps waving the promise of Glinda under his nose. And the infuriating thing is, a few months ago, she'd have been right. Now, though, the only thing he can think of through the overtures is the sight of Glinda and Fiyero, bodies entwined in the throes of passion. And yet as far as the ex-press secretary's concerned, he's still the same pathetic little functionary, obsessing over a woman who'd never even glance in his direction unless specifically asked.

And that's why she's been hoping for a moment alone with him for the last month, why she trusts him without having to confirm his loyalties: to her knowledge, she still has the perfect means of bribing. And that's the way he's always been seen, hasn't it? To the world beyond the Pottery, he's a zero, a nothing, a nobody: a faceless servant with only one recognizable personality trait – one that just makes him easier to control.

A marionette with strings labelled for easy usage, he reflects absently.

Somewhere at the very back of Mr Heart's mind, hatred blossoms.

"Time's running short, Boq. Do you want to end up facing treason charges like everybody else in this godforsaken institute… or do you want to be set for life with the girl of your dreams? It's your choice, young man."

But Boq still isn't listening, and indeed has never been here to listen.

So, it falls to Mr Heart to take a deep breath and make the decision for him.

---

"Well," Elphaba remarks. "That was much quicker than I expected."

Mr Heart offers a faintly embarrassed smile; in all honesty, he hadn't been expecting to make a decision so soon either – up until Morrible rolled over with her unexpected offer. If he'd been a tad more paranoid, he might have been inclined to think that Elphaba had set the whole thing up just to help him make up his mind. Of course, Heart had tossed the idea out almost immediately: after all, why go to so much effort to persuade just one apprentice? Why bother to sweet-talk the legendarily self-interested Morrible into playing a bit part in a con when she could just wait a few short hours? Besides, Morrible's illness – and her response to it – seemed just a little too real for a fakery.

"And she told you everything?" Elphaba inquires.

"Not literally everything. She's clearly not stupid enough to trust me with all the details, no matter how trustworthy she thinks I am. She mentioned some of the people she's been working with for the last few weeks: Levitro, Gemydes, Branderstove-"

"You're certain of this? She actually mentioned Rostov Branderstove by name?"

"Well, she didn't call him by his first name, but I have to assume it's him: she did call him a fat bastard, after all."

"Hmm. Most intriguing… I've had Morrible under observation for some time, long enough to get some inkling of her attempts to disrupt our work down here, but I never imagined she'd have access to the Asylum patients. True, some of the guards have day jobs as orderlies, but most of them are Animals – hardly the kind of people who'd be willing to side with Morrible."

"She told me that she had some money stashed away; maybe she bribed them. Anyway, she also let slip that she only had about nine people working for her in total."

"Hmm. Tell me, did she mention where she was hiding all the contraband?"

"Better than that. She actually showed it to me: there's an alcove carved in the wall of access corridor #9375c, hidden behind a "do not enter sign." From what I could see, she'd been stashing a lot of things stolen from other researchers: machine components, bottled potions, powders, capsules, a set of power tools… oh, and a portable icebox, the kind Dr Coil and I use to store harvested flesh and organs – she obvious means to use it for the samples that I was supposed to take from you."

"A fair assumption. Of course, wether she'd actually be able to obtain immortality from these samples is another thing altogether."

"You don't think she can extract anything from them?"

"She might be able to acquire something from my blood; as to whether its immortality or not, I have no idea. Glinda told me all about Morrible's experiments and the conclusions she drew from them, and while I concur that her use of the Grimmerie altered my body to a certain extent, it's very doubtful that I've been made immortal as a result. If anything, it sounds like wishful thinking on Morrible's part. But that's a matter for another day; in the meantime, you've done more than enough to prove your loyalty this evening, and I think you've definitely earned some relaxation time. And a more concrete reward, I should imagine."

Mr Heart ponders this for a moment, wondering what he could have possibly earned; permanent residents don't receive pay – generally accepted given that most of them are on the lam – except in the event of extraordinary circumstances, in which the reward is generally decided on a case-by-case basis. So, how would Elphaba decide to reward him?

But when asked, the Director remained as elusive as was possible without actually refusing to answer at all. "You'll receive it tomorrow morning, once you've finished sleeping off your additional recreation hours. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have appointments to schedule… and I think after two hours of playing along with Miss Emma's delusions, I think it's definitely past your bedtime. So, thank you once again, and good night. Sleep well…"

---

Once again, he dreams of masked dancers: once again he finds himself half-floating half-dancing across a mirrored void, his partner's face lost behind a procession of weirdly lifelike masks.

This time, Nessarose and Glinda are nowhere to be found: now his dance partner wears the faces of Elphaba and (for reasons that escape him) Miss Turnkey.

His own face is blank and featureless, having long since shed the faces of Boq, Fiyero and the Chameleon: occasionally, it assumes the features of what might be a new face, but they drift away too quickly to take in. But as they dance, the two of them leave a trail of tiny fluttering pieces of paper in their wake, and as they move to and fro across the reflective emptiness, the papers briefly coalesce just long enough for Mr Heart to recognize the face they once comprised.

For an infinity, Boq's disembodied face stares at the dancers, eyes sad and thoughtless; for an infinity, the dancers return the stare without expression, their eyes amorphous and inscrutable.

Then, Boq's face dissolves into fluttering papers once again, and drifts noiselessly away into the silvery nothingness.

---

It takes less than an hour to arrest and restrain the suspects, not including the time it took to retrieve Branderstove from the Asylum, and for the most part, their capture is almost hilariously easy: most of the conspirators have been operating alone except for Morrible's on-and-off supervision, and at this time of night, most of them were fast asleep anyway. None of them were expecting their arrests. Equally thankful, the overwhelming majority of them are assistants and unanchored apprentices: with Morrible deliberately isolated from her former colleagues and any members of the think tank who might share her political views, so there's only one researcher to be found in the entire conspiracy – and he's not even a qualified magician.

The interrogations are even easier, for the suspects confess almost immediately after sitting down, though most of this is due to the intimidating presence of the four biggest guards in the Pottery, accompanied by the fearsome-looking Dr Coil and the glassy-eyed Dr Calenture. With so many unspoken threats hovering overhead, Elphaba's lie-detecting spells barely register a thing over the course of the interviews. Best of all, most of the suspects look to be redeemable, if given enough time to see the error of their ways.

In the end, all that remains is to interrogate the ringleaders. So, once the last of the underlings have been ferried down to the isolation cells, Morrible and Branderstove are hauled into the office. Both of them are in a particularly sorry state: Branderstove is still ponderously fat in spite of his hospital diet, and judging by the defiant expression on his face, the last few weeks of octopus transformations still haven't had much success in crushing his ego. As for Morrible, she's positively seething with rage, much to Miss Turnkey's delight. If anything, the old press secretary's physical condition seems even worse, and the fact that she's been palming her medication clearly hasn't helped.

All things considered, the conference that follows is the most disheartening of the entire evening: in sharp contrast to the openness displayed by the previous round of interviewees, Morrible and Branderstove are determined to be as disagreeable as possible – the former maintaining a sullen silence broken only by hissed expletives, the former glibly deflecting all questions with a steady barrage of chitchat, small-talk and meaningless conversation. And when they're not wasting time, they spout so many outright falsehoods that the mental alarm for the lie-detecting spell barely has a chance to stop ringing for the entire first half of the interrogation. This particular half lasts just under two hours, but the routine is so entrenched and monotonous that it feels like two months: Elphaba will demand answers, Branderstove will prattle on, Morrible will grumble like a thunderstorm in the making and get slapped across the back of the head by Miss Turnkey. And then Elphaba will try a different approach and the routine will start all over again, soaking the atmosphere in a wearying haze of tedious inevitability.

"What were you attempting to accomplish?"

"Could you elaborate? I've been trying to accomplish a great many things over the past few hours. It seems that breakfast will be the only one I'll have any success with at this rate."

"You know very well what I'm talking about, Mr Branderstove: your company has been petitioning the Wizard for a witch-hunt spanning more or less the entire country. Why did you order this?"

"What makes you think I ordered it? What makes you think I have the power to order anything these days? I'd imagine that the acting president's had me written off as a has-been by now and declared himself CEO… not that he hasn't tried to do that before. Mind you, he's in good company: I've just about lost count of how many executives in my service tried to force my resignation just because I coughed too loudly, or got caught in traffic. And then there was that lovely weekend away from work when the entire board of directors tried to have me declared legally dead. Don't look at me like that, I'm being serious: while I was settling down in a deckchair with a good book and a glass of wine, getting ready for a lovely evening by the river, they were running around telling everyone that it was time to find a successor for poor drowned Branderstove. They might have succeeded, too, if I hadn't noticed the guardsmen searching the river for dead bodies. Good times."

"Listen to me, Mr Branderstove: I already have conclusive proof that you've been working with Morrible, and I've been paying enough attention to the letters you've been sending to determine that you're still in control of the business. I want to know what you hope to accomplish and why you also insisted that the Wizard cancel all Animal rights and have the re-education camps operating once again."

"Conclusive, no less! Well, I'm afraid I'm at a loss as to why my company would make such a petition. Repealing Animal rights would have my factories half-emptied of workers, and send the most innovative contributors to the business back into unproductive obscurity. I can only assume my deputy has developed a crippling fear of money and success."

"I'm well aware of your progressive stance, having discussed it with you at length on our first meeting. I'm also aware you ordered this petition: codes aren't your speciality, otherwise the last three of four letters might have escaped my notice; as it is, you've given me all the evidence I need to trace the petition and the conspiracy back to you and Morrible. Please, confess now and this interrogation will proceed much smoother."

"Speaking of which, could I please have I glass of water? Returning to normal after a long time in octopus forms tends to leave me a little dehydrated. Oh, and I wouldn't mind a small glass of wine, either: I'm partial to some of the sweeter vintages if you've got any behind your desk; I know a drinks cabinet when I see one. And you never know, I might be a bit more inclined to talk candidly with you after a glass or two."

"And you, Morrible? Do you have anything you'd like to tell me?"

Another stream of obscene invective, followed by yet another backhand from Turnkey.

Once it becomes clear that the two ringleaders aren't going to succumb to boredom or intimidation, Elphaba allows Dr Calenture to take over the interrogation for a time. A pharmacologist by trade, Calenture's been anxious to try out his newest truth serum on more disagreeable test subjects that the usual volunteers from the apprentices and assistants, and this is the golden opportunity he's been waiting for: corpse-eyed and stoic as the man may be, even he can't disguise the excitement in his eyes as he goes about readying two syringes of prototype serum for the suspects.

After that, resistance falters very quickly, the defiant expressions giving way to sweat-glazed grimaces and frantically watering eyes. True, it's a while before any of them are able or willing to talk: Morrible has to be slapped across the face once or twice in order to keep her from passing out before the intended symptoms emerge, whilst Branderstove spends about fifteen minutes hunched over a bucket, heaving and retching as the serum attacks his nervous system. But once the really unpleasant side-effects have faded and the pain has subsided enough for the two of them to speak coherently, they begin to confess – not all at once, for the impulse to retain secrets is difficult to consistently subvert. But as their ability to prevent themselves from answering honestly withers away and Turnkey continues applying pressure, the truth slowly begins to emerge, once halting sentence at a time.

It turns out that Branderstove had allied with Morrible out of desperation: with Northsweep's image badly damaged by its proprietor's reputation as a Plague victim and stable business in turmoil thanks to the impact of Plague and Plague Witch alike, he'd felt the only way to save the company – or at least some of it – was to attack the source of the trouble.

"It wasn't for revenge," the corpulent businessman insists, eyes fluttering wildly as he struggles to regain control of his mouth. "It wasn't… for the sake… of revenge. Strictly business. Nothing personal. Never take anything personal. Never get angry. Never hold grudges…"

Somewhere in the back of her head, Elphaba hears the lie detector frantically ringing, and resolves to avoid getting within arm's reach of Branderstove until he's been properly rehabilitated.

According to the increasingly disorganized testimonies provided by both ringleaders, Morrible had directed the petitioning in an attempt to uncover the truth behind the Plague: she'd reasoned that once the amassed soldiers had scoured Oz for the Plague Witch and found no trace of her, their gaze would turn inwards. Eventually, the constant pattern of unexplained appointments, deliveries and missing persons would, in all likely, lead them to the Pottery; as for the proposed mass-dismantling of Animal Rights, that had been done mainly to aggravate Elphaba and keep her pre-occupied in her attempts to prevent it from ever being enacted.

It was a feasible enough idea in theory. True, neither of them had planned for the Wizard admitting everything to Elphaba, but then again, even Elphaba's still a tad surprised by his openness in this regard. Less forgivable is the fact that neither of them had any contingencies prepared for what might happen if, say, Elphaba had decided to make it look as if the Plague Witch had left Oz altogether or died. From what the two drugged ringleaders confess, it sounds as though the two of them had been operating on a very tight deadline when they organized this plan, hastily stringing the plan together from whatever resources they'd been able to find at short notice; being forced to communicate by hastily-smuggled letters probably didn't help much, either. According to Morrible, she'd been forced to conceal each note in all manner of disgusting hiding places for hours on end before she could find a co-conspirator with enough time and leeway to smuggle it all the way up to the Asylum.

As for the eight spies that were to be smuggled into the Asylum under the guise of patients, they were drawn from the ranks of Morrible's swiftly-dwindling list of contacts from her previous lines of work, having been chosen largely because they were the only targets that could be readily and subtly exposed to the Plague without anyone in the Pottery noticing. ("Or so I thought," Morribly remarks wearily) Once inside, their orders would be delivered to them by another co-conspirator, and their work would begin in earnest.

Elphaba turns to the gargantuan figure on Morrible's left. "Why did you accept this bargain in the first place?" she inquires. "Surely you'd have had reservations about a plan that took so many risks and flaunted so many of your principles?"

"Of… of course I did... but I was out of options: it was this… or see the empire I'd spent a lifetime building carved up and sold to the highest bidder. You'd have done the same… if it was to save your life's work…"

You should have accepted the inevitable when you had the chance, Elphaba silently reflects. You need a clean slate, Mr Branderstove: you might be a progressive among industrialists and you might be one of the more generous industrialists in Oz, but other than that, you're just as unprincipled and decadent as the rest of the Ozian upper crust. Greedy, self-indulgent, arrogant, and corrupt… and physically speaking, you've done more to damage your own health than any plague I could devise.

"And after… another month of trans… transformations and useless treatments," Branderstove gasps, "I'd have probably gone insane. You might think this serum's doing the trick in… breaking my resistance… but forcing me to spend half life in that damn tank, waiting for my fortunes to collapse and watching my body periodically wither away into octopus limbs… well, that's a far more effective form of torture than anything this fish-eyed hack could devise." He gestures vaguely in Dr Calenture's direction, one enormous arm swinging lazily across the room like a blubbery pendulum.

"What makes you think this is torture?"

"What else could it be? I can understand why you… why you spread the Plague and fabricated the existence of the Plague Witch: you… want control over all of Oz. I get that. But why… why all this continued transformation? Why so many treatments that cause pain and nothing else? I… nnnngg… I know what you did to Miss Lakefold; you're not as good at soundproofing the walls as you think. I heard you telling her it was her fault she was still a victim of the Plague, heard you telling her it was punishment for her… ugliness… I heard all the… the ways you jabbed at her insecurities until they bled. Why would you do that if you weren't just out to torture her? Why would you run those treatments if you weren't a dyed-in-the-wool sadist?"

"All will become clear in time," Elphaba assures him.

If you only knew the truth, she muses sadly. I'm not trying to torture any of you: I'm trying to help you, just as I've tried to help all the patients at the Asylum, just as I hope to help every citizen of Oz.

"As for you, Morrible, why did you bother with this ridiculous conspiracy? If you'd obeyed the rules and accepted your new life, you'd have been made a full-fledged researcher by now and you'd be operating without Miss Turnkey's assistance. You'd probably be cured by now as well… but I'd attribute that to the fact that you've been refusing your Aclyvospironlyn tablets for the last few weeks-"

"Drugs intended to keep me drowsy and pliabilitive!" she snarls. Clearly, the serum is beginning to wear off.

Elphaba sighs, closing her eyes in exasperation; she hates to see Morrible like this, but in the end it's not all that surprising considering the excesses of both her lifestyle and her misguided research. For the time being, she's stuck with this irrational distortion of the once-brilliant headmistress… until she, too, can be changed for the better.

"Medicine intended to stimulate the regeneration of your failing internal organs, Madame Morrible," she insists wearily. "You might even be walking by now if only you'd kept taking it."

"Even if you really are telling the truth, do you think I'd bother with that when I've got a source of true immortality sitting right in front of me? If you were in my position, would you'd settle for the ability to walk again if the other option meant having that, a clean bill of health and eternal life."

"If you really wanted health, all you'd need to do was accept the treatments I offered. But you wanted more: you wanted fame and power once again… and your arrogant pride couldn't accept that you'd be saved by someone else – by someone you were once superior to. You wanted to mastermind your own escape and your own immortality; so you deluded yourself into thinking that I was trying to drug you, threw away life-saving medicine, and returned to your old obsessions." She shakes her head pityingly. "Was a clean slate so terrible, Miss Emma?"

"That's – not – my – name!" Morrible snarls, her collar glowing with the effort of suppressing a magical outburst.

"It will be someday, when you finally realize the blessings a new life could offer you. Does Madame Morrible seem especially happy or prosperous right now? Do you feel that your delusional search for eternal life in my blood gives the remainder of your life meaning?"

"It's not delusional. I've seen the evidence with my own eyes: you haven't aged a day since you stepped out of my operating theatre, and you'll remain young and beautiful long after the Wizard's dead and the Land of Oz has collapsed into ruination. All my experiments confirmed it, and all of them were triple-checked for accuracy: like it or not, you are an immortal!"

"So you claim… but conveniently, the evidence has been destroyed, and so I'm forced to accept the fact that it was just another hallucination brought on by exposure to the fumes of your experiments."

The alarm on the lie-detector rings in the back of Elphaba's mind, and she suppresses a brief flicker of sorrow at having to lie to the former press-secretary: she knows for a fact that Morrible's findings were correct, having repeated the experiments herself. So far, all diagnostic tests have indicated that her normal aging process has been suspended, and has been so since the day of her purification. Much like the botched levitation spell that led Chistery and his brethren to sprout wings, the antibiotic barrier intended to protect her from infections has left her with an extraordinary form of health and vigour. An accident, no doubt, but one no less miraculous for the state of perfection that it granted her. And there are more blessings within her condition, some she has only recently discovered: it's just as well that the guards have been under the impression that she enjoys the occasional catnap in at her desk, for otherwise they might be aware that she's been wide awake for the last four days – and without even the vaguest sense of fatigue either!

It's a shame that lying about her state of perfection is necessary, but the world is not ready for the knowledge of her true nature… nor is it ready for the knowledge of the transformation it must undergo. At present, she has some of the Pottery's more secretive operatives seeing if they can replicate her immortality; if Morrible had been more open to rehabilitation, she might have been taking part in those experiments as a researcher, but her mind is still clouded with the excesses of her old life and her obsession with eternal life drives her to dangerous extremes. So, for the time being, lies are necessary.

But Morrible refuses to be deterred. "Why shouldn't you share your vitality, Elphaba?" she growls, voice ragged with the effort of fighting off the effects of the serum. "Why shouldn't it be mine? I taught you magic, I offered you a place in the Wizard's service, I gave you a chance at redemption, I even cleansed you of your unnatural skin colour; I gave you everything!"

"I know. Believe it or not, I've already offered you a reward befitting your good deeds… but you still haven't accepted it."

"And what reward would that be? Slavery under a new name? A thankless existence stripped of all my life's accomplishments?"

"A chance to live free of your past failures and mistakes; the freedom to perform all the magical research you've never had the time to conduct; an opportunity to help build a new and better world… But it appears I've been too lenient in teaching you to discard your old life." She sighs. "You've betrayed my confidence time and time again; you've tried to foment rebellion; you've endangered your own life for the sake of a fantasy… and you've stolen a great deal of valuable equipment. Up until now, I've allowed you sufficient privacy for the sake of your mental wellbeing. No more: from now on, you are not to go unaccompanied anywhere; Miss Turnkey and a guard will be assigned to follow you at all times, and your collar will be adjusted to a much higher pain frequency. Also, you will be given new quarters with additional restraints, and your movements will be continuously monitored via magic. Oh, and given how adept you've been at stealing, I'm afraid I'll have to resort to… preventative measures."

Behind the wheelchair, a wicked grin splits Miss Turnkey's face in half.

"Now, would you be so kind as to place your hands on the desk?"

Morrible has her hands halfway extended before she realises what's about to happen, and promptly yanks them behind her back, eyes wide with horror.

"Please put your hands on the desk."

"Can we talk about this?"

"No. Put your hands on the desk."

"You don't have to do this!"

"I'm afraid I do. You've already proved that you're prone to ignoring advice intended for your own benefit unless vigorously enforced; you've already proved that you're more than capable of picking locks; negative reinforcement is the only viable alternative. Now, put your hands on the desk. Don't make me put them there myself."

Morrible shakes her head furiously, hands remaining clasped behind her back.

"Miss Turnkey?"

The nurse deftly reaches over and grabs Morrible by the shoulder, sinking long, sharp fingernails into the ex-press secretary's withered flesh – immediately eliciting a yelp of pain. "You heard what the Director said, Miss Emma," she whispers. "Put your hands on the desk, or this is going to be even more painful."

Morrible, now in blind panic, doesn't seem to hear: instead, she can only gibber "Allidra, please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything I did to you, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, it's just what happened to servants, I'm so sorry, please tell her I'll wear restraints from now on, she listens to you, Allidra, please…"

For a moment, the woman who once went by the name of Allidra Jave looks surprised. Then, her eyes glitter with fresh anger. "PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE TABLE OR I'LL MAKE YOU CHEW THEM OFF!" she bellows, her grip on Morrible's shoulder tightening so violently that Elphaba senses flesh being punctured.

Whimpering in pain, the old woman finally relents and extends two gnarled, shaking hands towards the desk. "That's better," Elphaba announces, voice serene and remote. "Now hold still."

"Elphaba, please…"

"Believe me, this hurts me almost as much as it will hurt you… but this is the only way you will learn."

These days, magic is as simple as breathing. All she has to do is concentrate, and her own intrinsic power flows outwards, accompanied by the familiar radiance and a wave of intangible energy: swiftly but carefully, Elphaba's mental grip closes around Morrible's outstretched hands, pressing the palms down against the mahogany and ensuring that their owner can't escape. Then, shifting her grip slightly, she grasps all ten digits on the extended hands and begins forcing them backwards; propelled by telekinetic force, Morrible's fingers slowly curl away from her palms as far as they can go… and further.

Five seconds after this process begins, the silence that has briefly descended over the office is shattered by the long, drawn-out whine of a human being in extreme discomfort and trying not to scream. Morrible, being the source of the noise, is staring in horror at her fingers as they curl themselves towards her wrists, bending further and further until –

There's a sudden series of muffled crunches and pops, not unlike a roomful of people cracking their knuckles. Morrible immediately lets out an agonized scream. Ignoring it, Elphaba shifts her magical grasp and twists the already-broken fingers in another direction, and is promptly rewarded with yet another crunching sound. Morrible screams again, this time her pain audibly mingling with disbelief at the sight of her fingers cracking and twisting out of shape.

Elphaba twists one last time, before finally relaxing her grip: Morrible instantly lurches back from the desk, sobbing pathetically as she tries to hide the mangled remnants of her hands under the sleeves of her gown – as if afraid that someone might try to amputate them. But Elphaba knows for a fact that this won't likely be necessary: from the looks of those crooked, blood-streaked digits, the former press-secretary won't be holding anything for quite a while. Negative reinforcement should take care of any further rebellious tendencies on her part.

"Miss Turnkey, would you kindly escort Miss Emma down to the infirmary? Once she's sedated, please return as quickly as possible; we need to have a word about your temper."

The former maid nods, not even bothering to drop her gleeful smile, and makes for the door with her mutilated charge in tow – Morrible weeping openly, all her old pomposity lost in a flood of tears.

Once again, Elphaba muses, through destruction we achieve perfection.

Out loud, she continues, "As for you, Mr Branderstove, I'm afraid you have a debt to repay for the damage you've attempted to inflict upon Oz. As a covert group, we're a little short on legitimate sources of funding, and you still have a substantial fortune to your name…"

Branderstove's face shifts wildly between shock and anger. "And you'll think I'll just give it to you?"

"Not entirely, but we would be happy to accept any donations you'd care to offer."

"What makes you think I'll be offering you anything?"

"The simple fact that you are no longer a patient of the Asylum. Officially, you've been transferred to our Intensive Treatment ward; unofficially, you are now one of the Pottery's test subjects. As the director, it's within my power to determine how you treated down here: if you cooperate, you'll be provided with comfortable lodgings, good food, and the chance to put your skills as a manager to good use. I'll even ensure you'll be delegated to the least dangerous of experiments. But if you attempt to rebel… well, I'm sure you don't need any further demonstrations."

"And once Northsweep collapses and my bank account runs dry, I'll be subjected to the worst treatment anyway, I presume?"

"You misjudge me, Mr Branderstove: I've no desire to kill you, or to squander you on lethal experiments."

"Then what do you want?"

"You'll see. In the meantime, you've got a very simple choice: a life of comfort and enjoyable work… or hardship interrupted by torturous punishments. What would you prefer?"

The industrialist sighs deeply. "My mother always said I was too easily bribed. I suppose a warm bed and three square meals a day are the best I can expect from now on."

"And no more bribing the orderlies for extra helpings, either. Now that you're a permanent resident, I expect you to conform to certain standards. Speaking of which, there's one other thing you'll be able to provide us with…"

"Well, don't leave me in suspense: what do you want from me?"

On the sideboard next to him, Dr Coil's eyes glitter. "Raw materials," he chuckles.

---

The next day, everyone seems to be thanking him.

Everywhere he goes, Mr Heart finds himself unexpectedly congratulated by apprentices, guards and researchers alike; even more perplexingly, nobody bothers to explain the situation to him, even as they go about shaking his hand and patting him on the back.

Even Miss Turnkey, who goes so far as to fling her arms around him and kiss him on the cheek, seems too happy to grace him with anything other than "thanks."

It's not until he finally arrives at work that Dr Coil finally explains what's been happening – but not before gently winding himself across Mr Heart's shoulders in the python equivalent of a hug.

"News travels fast," he explains. "Everyone's heard that you were responsible for shutting down Miss Emma's little conspiracy – making you responsible for saving the Pottery's collective bacon. Speaking of which, I think you'll find your reward in the icebox over there…"

Inside the icebox are three large tubs of extracted tissue. "Alchemically purified and render down into blank-state flesh," Coil explains. "Usable for any procedure you have in mind, and specifically intended for your exam. You'll also have an additional body to work with if any emergencies crop up… and I think Director Thropp said something about you being granted some free requests."

Mr Heart quietly rejoices: with fresh cadavers being so tightly rationed, one body and half a tub of flesh was the established limit for his exam – plus two additional components of his choice. Now, he might actually stand a chance of passing. And free requests too, he silently marvels. What the hell should I spend them on?

And where did we get all this additional flesh from?

Do I want to really know?

"How long until my exam?" he asks aloud.

"Ooh, I think you'll be eligible within about four days. I'd keep practicing the skin texturing if I were you, young man: you're making progress, but you'll have to make a great deal more if you want to pass this exam with a decent starting rank."

And after that, it's straight back to the daily grind: commissioned work, practice, errands, and skulduggery of every sort, followed by lunch, conversation, congratulations, inane questions over what he plans to spend his requests on, and one pertinent question that seems to be on every apprentice's lips – "What starting rank do you think would be best?"

(The answer is, as always, hard to say. Dr Coil has made it very clear that there's no real prestige in any of the starting ranks, nor are there any special privileges conferred: it just means that they've been found proficient at a specific type of work in their specific fields, and they can now be "borrowed" by other researchers to perform this work if need be. Regardless of whether Heart ends up being designated a "Wheel," a "Glaze," or a "Kiln," he'll still be an apprentice - except this time, he'll be formally apprenticed to Dr Coil on a full-time basis. Wheel, Glaze or Kiln, he'll remain an anchored apprentice until he can demonstrate enough knowledge to earn a promotion to the lofty station of journeyman researcher... and then, if he can come up with a suitable masterpiece, the rank of full-fledged researcher.)

And then it's right back to work.

With so much concentration required of him, it takes quite a while for Mr Heart look up from the embalmer's slab and cast his eyes across the maze of cubicles: after a month spent amidst the curious rhythms of this place, even he can't fail to notice the curious inconsistency that seems to have developed in the flow and ebb of the Pottery's most recognizable faces.

Miss Turnkey is here today…

But Madame Morrible is quite conspicuously absent.

---

With little commissioned work to take up his time over the course of the remaining three days, Mr Heart is allowed to retrieve the practice body from the morgue and begin his daily exercises in earnest: over the course of the next half hour, he does his best to perform every single technique he's learned so far on the preserved corpse, working as quickly as possible without damage. One mistake, and Dr Coil will slither over, correct the fault, and allow him to start all over again.

In the last few weeks, these routines have been getting more and more complicated with every new technique he learns: beginning with simple flesh-moulding, they have been expanded to include bone-sculpting, cartilage-warping, keratin-shifting, and skin-retexturing, each one more subtle and complex than the last – and more damaging to the practice body, too. Slowly, he ascends the scale of difficulty: after a month of study, he knows enough magic to shape flesh and bone as easily as he shaped modelling clay when he was a child; working with cartilage is much trickier, but not impossible so long as he doesn't try anything too complex. The skin, unfortunately, is where things go horribly wrong: normally, if he's manipulating flesh alone, the skin flows with the flesh without much difficulty; but if he's trying to alter the skin itself – in colour, in texture or in consistency – it all goes straight to hell. All it takes is one failed gesture, one misspoken word, one nervous twitch, and the damn thing rips like paper. It's like trying to paint eggshells with a hammer and chisel. But he perseveres, despite his failures: he has to know the techniques if he's to make it over the first real hurdle.

And then, after three or four rounds of exercises, it's onto practice exam sessions, preparations for the inevitable day that he'll have to perform on a time limit. Having reset the body's appearance back to its default condition, he now alters it once again, this time taking care to take each variable of the corpse's physique into account as he attempts to replicate his own features in its necrotic tissues. He extracts flesh from the stomach, thighs and arms in order to make it seem thinner; he trims the jaw, lowers the cheekbones, narrows the shoulders and shortens the legs, extracting almost a pound of liquefied bone in the process; he shrinks the nose and shrivels the ears, trying to make them seem more like his own; he even lightens the skin tone slightly, removing not only moles and scars but also the marks of his own alterations to the flesh.

In the end, he looks down and sighs with disappointment. The corpse now matches his dimensions well enough; other than the nose and the brow, the facial features look accurate enough… but the skin is just about ruined. It's been torn in at least half a dozen places, some of the holes large enough to expose the glistening red muscle beneath. Where it hasn't been ripped, it's so loose and baggy that it's a marvel that it doesn't just slide off the corpse like oversized clothes. And his attempts at manipulating the keratin have only resulted in the body spontaneously shedding its toenails and going bald.

And worse still, he's half an hour over the time limit: if this had been the real exam, he'd have failed, and all the spare supplies in the world wouldn't have done him any good. He'd spent too many precious limits checking the books on cartilage manipulation, too many times trying to make something fancy out of something that should have been plain and boring.

Somewhat absently, he wonders what he'll happen if he really does fail the exam when the time comes: given that it's to determine what sort of work he'll be performing in the Pottery, if it doesn't mean having to take the whole thing all over again, it'll probably mean performing an awful lot of donkey work until he can prove his worth.

But first, he has to tidy up the gibbets of flesh left on the table and return them to refrigeration.

"How long does it take to master skin-retexturing?" he asks wearily, as he slams the icebox shut.

Dr Coil tuts disapprovingly. "You ask as if I know the answer: remember, mage-surgery hasn't been taught on a formal basis in decades, certainly not long enough for the bureaucrats to work out an average comprehension time. You missed a bit, by the way.

Sighing, Mr Heart scoops a marble-sized lump of flesh off the side of the table and begins idly rubbing it between the fingers of his right hand, slowly softening it with the faintest of magical gestures until it's as malleable as wet clay. "Alright then," he grumbles, absently rolling the flesh into a ball. "How long did it take for you to master it?"

"About eight months."

"Seriously?"

"Let's just say that my master and I didn't have access to as many corpses as we do down here. Most of the time, we were practicing on rats and stray dogs… and the occasional burglar. And that was when we were well-fed: mage-surgery tends to spoil the taste of meat, so in the leaner times we had to eat the strays and practice on ourselves. Not so many burglars in those days either; I imagine they heard the rumours about what happened to the last human who tried to break in either – or maybe they just looked a little too close at our curtains."

"At the risk of stating the obvious, I don't have eight months to get this right." Somewhere on the periphery of the conversation, he's dimly aware that he's started unconsciously tossing the ball from one hand to the next. "If I can't change the corpse's skin colour without ripping it-"

"Nobody said you had to get it exactly right, Mr Heart; nobody said that conventional methods were the only methods you were allowed."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You tell me. You're the one being tested here, not me."

There's an awkward pause, as Mr Heart realizes that in his frustration, he's ended up squashing the ball of flesh between his palms. "Alright," he says evenly, wiping the flattened blob from his hands. "Alright. Let's workshop this: I can't go the usual route of altering the skin because I don't have the time or the dexterity to master it. And I can't just settle for handing in a body with ruined skin, because Nessarose obviously won't accept a diagnosis of "death by natural causes" from a corpse that looks as though someone took a flensing knife to it."

"Have you even established an exact cause of death for your duplicate yet?"

"I was planning on blaming it on the aftereffects of the Plague – something to do with the lungs or heart."

"And how are you going to alter the body to make this particular diagnosis convincing?"

"Well, erm… I, uh, I hadn't gotten to that part just yet…. But that's not the point right now: the Director made it clear that she doesn't want the body to look like a murder victim. The good news is that I can graft in skin patches to cover up the mistakes, though… But I can't take a skin graft from someone else because the likelihood of finding a body that's – skin-wise – exactly identical to me is pretty slim, and if I try and alter the grafted skin I'll probably just ruin it as well."

"And you can't use your own skin because you're not suicidal," adds Dr Coil.

"Or a reptile, for that matter. More's the pity."

"Flatterer."

"Well, given that I've been a lizard before, I know how easy it is to… shed… the… skin…" Mr Heart's voice quietly dies in his throat, as the logical implications of what he's just said slowly clatter into place.

"What is it?"

"We wouldn't happen to have any chameleons in the specimen containment unit, would we?"

"Oh, there's probably one or two left from our initial sampling. Why do you ask?"

He can't help it: he smiles, broader and madder than he's ever smiled before, a grin so wide it feels as though it might just take the top of his head off. "I think I've just found the perfect way to fake a Plague Death…"

---

From the balcony outside the office, Elphaba and Chistery observe Mr Heart's antics with considerable interest.

He's getting close. His betrayal of Morrible and his wilful dismissal of his fantasies concerning Glinda already indicate that he's already begun severing ties with his old life, and his loyalties are well on the way to being ironclad. Now, all that remains is the great test of his abilities… and then, the final test of Mr Heart's departure from his old life. And appropriately enough, this step on the long road towards perfection requires the participation of another fellow traveller – one that Elphaba has left waiting for too long.

Of course, they aren't only ones that'll require guidance: she has the rest of the Pottery's apprentices to think of, some of them more difficult to condition than others, but all of them within her power to correct, to improve… and perfect. And soon, her domain will encompass many more…

Elphaba smiles to herself, idly stroking Chistery's back with a long-nailed hand. "Not long now," she murmurs softly. "One day, you'll take flight over Oz once again, and you'll look down at a land transformed beyond recognition."

Chistery murmurs in tentative agreement, his wings fluttering unconsciously. He might not know it now, but he, too, will be made perfect in mind and body when the time comes.

Soon, all of Oz will know the perfection she has been formulating in the depths of the Pottery.

---

Looking back, Mr Heart finds that he can barely remember how the exam went.

He recalls the events leading up to it decently enough: arriving at the examination chamber, setting up the pre-arranged equipment, confirming his personal details, getting patted on the shoulder by both Turnkey and Dr Coil – the latter almost knocking Heart over in the process... but after that, things becoming increasingly blurry. After arranging the three chameleons requisitioned from specimen containment that morning, the last thing he clearly remembers is the sound of a bell, followed by the distant figure of Elphaba clearing her throat and announcing, "You may begin the exam."

After that? Nothing. The most he can dredge from his memories is the sensation of dead flesh oozing and melting beneath his hands, cartilage shrinking and growing, skin stretching and tearing… and of course, the hiss of chameleon skin grafts fusing to the corpse. The rest is lost in a long list of incantations and gestures he'd used over the course of that frenetic hour and half, a litany in commemoration of all the education in magic that had led to this inexplicably unmemorable event.

Fortunately, it appears to have paid off: staring up at him from the embalmer's slab is a near-exact replica of himself – or, more pedantically, a near-exact replica of the photograph he'd been studying throughout the procedure. True, the duplicate is completely hairless, its skin is an ugly piebald blend of waxy human epidermis and jet-black chameleon scales, and the chest still sports the familiar y-shaped incision of its initial autopsy… but other than that, the features and proportions are virtually identical to his: the knobbly knees, the scrawny arms, the snub-nose, the weak chin, the jug-handle ears, and the truly unfortunate posture – they're all here, replicated accurately according to his dossier, his photographs, and his own unflattering self-image.

And now, looking down at his double – the product of over a month of study and over fifteen consecutive practice exam sessions – Mr Heart finds himself absently wondering who the corpse had been before he'd scrubbed away its former identity. Where had Elphaba's partners found him? What had he died of – assuming it hadn't been the result of "natural causes?" And how had they made him "disappear" from the morgue without arousing suspicion? He'd heard stories about the bodies of homeless people vanishing from mortuaries if the examiners were bribed the right amount, but was it really that simple? And what about the other corpse lying next to it, his source of spare parts? Having scavenged it for the eyes and teeth, he knows that it hadn't been taken from the ranks of the city's beggars and tramps; who had he been in life?

Don't ask those questions, friend, he reminds himself wearily. That way lies madness. What they were doesn't matter anymore: from now on, the guy you patched up is Boq, the guy next to him is spare parts, and that's all that matters.

Elphaba is looking expectantly at him from her seat at the examiner's table. Feeling more than a little foolish, Mr Heart coughs nervously and asks, "How did I do?"

There's a pause, as Elphaba considers the disguised corpse for a few minutes. "From what Dr Coil tells me, you've mastered the basics of your field and gone to some effort to learn the more intermediate techniques of mage-surgery. You've demonstrated comprehension of the texts, a lengthy memory of the spells requires, and a surprising degree of creativity – particularly in finding a solution to the skin problem. Though I still think your manipulation of the cartilage could do with some work. All things considered, your work here today has been exemplary; I'm inclined to let you pass…"

In the pause that follows, the breath in Mr Heart's lungs all but freezes in anticipation.

"… but before I give you a starting rank, I need just one more test from you."

"What kind of test?" Mr Heart asks, tentatively.

"In twenty-four hours, Nessarose will be notified of Boq's death and brought to the Asylum morgue to examine the body. I've no doubt she'll be reluctant to accept the reality of the situation, so you will have to guide her towards the truth."

"… what do you mean?"

"I want you to play the attending physician: I want you to tell her how Boq died; I want you to explain the deterioration of his health from the moment he returned to human form; I want you to describe, in vivid detail, how he died. If you want, you can even mention his last words. Whatever you say, you have to make her believe, or this attempt at faking your death will have meant nothing."

For a moment, Mr Heart can only stammer. "But I-I-I don't know how… y-y-you see, it's not that I don't… I mean-"

"You don't think Nessarose deserves the closure you can grant her? Do you really hate her that much to leave her obsessed until the day she died?"

"No, no, no – it's not that I hate her, it's just that… well… how am I supposed to just lie to her?"

"You're a better liar than you think, Mr Heart. Your little contretemps with Madame Morrible proved that much to me."

"Well, maybe so, but I'll still need some kind of a disguise if this is going to work, and I'm not supposed to learn how to alter myself until next month's studies."

But Elphaba only smiles. "Dr Coil informs me that a temporary skin graft is… well within your abilities. I think you've got a disguise ready and waiting for your right here…"

She gestures to the cannibalized body lying on the other slab.

Or, more specifically, his face.