Clockwork Looking Glass (Heart of Bronze Book 1)

by Michael Rigg

  Lady McFerran turned toward the admiral and nodded. "Have all ships concentrate their fire on the remaining Imperials. Destroy them all."

  Lucien took her by the arm. Lydia McFerran glanced from his hand to his face, incredulous at first, then gradually melting to the sincerity in his eyes. "Lady McFerran... Please."

  "Mr. Howard," she said in a whisper, "I have it within my means to bring peace to the world."

  "But at what cost? And to replace it with what? You'll be no better than the empire you've destroyed."

  She turned and peered out at the haze of black smoke roiling from the flames of sinking airships as a trio of Confederate planes roared by. Finally, she nodded and smiled. Lucien released her arm. She clapped him on the shoulder and looked back at the admiral. "Belay that last, Admiral. Inform the Imperials that we accept their surrender."

  She nodded to Lucien. "It's time we came together under the flag of a new Republic, don't you think?"

  Lucien slowly smiled. "I live to serve you, my Lady."

  “I'm in need of a new butler. You should consider the change of employer,” she said with a wink before turning away.

  ~~~~~~~

  As the Stravitskov quickly descended to the ocean floor, its rivets and seems moaned and squealed.

  The first officer, sweat streaming down his temples, turned to Captain Hayden. "Sir, we're already ten fathoms below the red."

  Hayden swallowed hard and glanced to the ghoul standing next to him with his arms folded. Teivel Hearse merely stared forward, his red eye intently focused on the dark water outside. He remained still as a statue as every other man winced and cringed against the popping and whining of the sub as the pressure outside slowly threatened to crush them at any moment.

  Hayden muttered to his first officer, "How much farther to Atlantis?"

  His first officer checked a chart, then a gauge. There was a whimper in his voice. "Still another fifty fathoms, sir."

  "Prepare to—"

  The ship continued to chug on its steep angle downward. Rivets popped and pipes burst. A loud squealing hiss shrieked through the hull. The sound broke Teivel Hearse from his thoughts of conquest and he looked up to find every member of the crew gone.

  Uncrossing his arms, he shouted above the shriek of bending metal, "Captain! Captain!"

  "They're not here."

  Hearse spun toward the voice. Pandora stood dry as a bone, her scars and tears healed through her magics, near the aft hatch of the bridge. Her hands were behind her back and a wide thin smile creased her face.

  "Bitch," Hearse spat. "Bring them back!"

  Pandora slowly shook her head as a crack formed in the transparent dome behind Hearse. "No. I don't think so."

  Another rivet exploded, then another. Gunshots of broken bronze and steel rippled through the submarine.

  Pandora frowned mockingly and nodded behind the ghoul. She said one final thing before transporting to safety.

  "Isn't that dome made of glass?"

  The witch's thunderclap was lost in the roar of the dying ship as Teivel Hearse spun to face the enormous forward portal. His single red eye grew wide as he prepared to transport himself out of the ship before it was too late, but his rage had confused him and he froze unable to budge. He opened his mouth and said, "I—" just as the pressure of the Atlantic's depths crushed the Stravitskov like a tin can, her forward portal of thick glass cracking and imploding into a million razor sharp shards tearing through the ghoul's body a split second before the ocean's depths crushed him into oblivion.

  The dazed crew of the Stravitskov were found wandering aimlessly in the center of a Confederate airfield hundreds of miles away. Thankful to be placed under arrest as prisoners of war, instead of crushed like water bugs, each man obediently preceded their Confederate captors lead by General Strong.

  Pandora was nowhere to be found.

  CHAPTER 37, “The Mirror”

  I held Bryce like I never wanted to let go, breathed in his scent and relished the scratchy wool of his jacket against my cheek when I rested my head on his chest.

  When I finally realized it was really him I didn't care how he managed the miracle of his arrival in Atlantis. After all I had seen in this world nothing would surprise me anymore. I just knew it was him and didn't want to let go.

  It was Bryce who finally eased me away so he could find the glint in my eyes through all the dim greenish light in the Atlantian catacombs. "Alice... Alice, are you all right?"

  "I'm fine, Bryce, but how—?"

  "Pandora. It's a long story." He glanced to the ceiling. "Hell's payin' up stairs. There's a war goin' on over this place."

  I frowned a little and started to shake my head, but he held me by the arms and glanced around as if suddenly hearing a noise. "We have to get you out of here before Thorne doubles back."

  "How— I mean, no."

  His eyes found mine.

  "I can't, Bryce. I have to be here. I just know I do. I feel it. Something's unfinished, I..." I felt the skin of my forehead pucker. "Wait. I thought you wanted to try to send me back. Why are you trying to rescue me now?"

  "That's exactly why. We can't see you safely to your own reality with Thorne and his armed goons about. He'll kill us both if he finds us, now come on." He took me by the hand and started to lead the way back toward the submarine.

  I held my ground and tugged back. "No."

  He stopped and looked at me, a deep sadness as blackish green as this ornately-carved cave filled his eyes.

  "I mean..." I dropped his hand and tried to search his expression in the dim light. "I have to see it, Bryce. I have to see what brought me here."

  I caught a shadow of a smile on his face. "Then we go together. I ain't leavin' you again."

  I smiled brightly and took his hand, led him carefully over the ice patch where we'd slipped, and turned down the next corridor.

  "How do you know this place so well?" He asked as he glanced around at the ornate rock-and-ice carvings that had morphed from thick leafy forest to ornate reproductions of ancient homesteads, possibly pre-historic. Bryce paused for a moment to run his fingers over the carved matted tresses of a little girl holding the hands of what appeared to be her mother and father. The man looked to be dressed in some kind of leathery smock, the woman bare-chested and belly distended. The man held a spear, the woman a fistful of dead fowl by the neck. "What is this?"

  I stopped and backtracked to his position. The moss was growing more abundantly in this and the adjoining corridor and we could more clearly make out some of the carvings. "As we make our way closer to the center of the city, you'll see all kinds of these carvings. They appear to be artistic renderings of key moments in history.”

  “Mine or yours?”

  “Everyone's. You'll see.”

  I shivered as the memories returned. The Atlantians, the Carpenters, whatever they were, had somehow artistically created a map of human culture throughout time. In the "sky" above the prehistoric family was a symbol: three open circles joined by a line. I pointed to it and told Bryce that was the symbol from my back.

  He looked at me, his strong face lined with concern. "The trinity?"

  I shrugged. "I'm not sure what it means."

  Bryce glanced behind us as if suddenly sensing that we were being followed. He was right. I had sensed it since we left the slippery patch of ice where we'd fallen. They were coming. He said, "What do we do if we encounter one? I mean... didn't you say they told you not to come back?"

  I nodded.

  Bryce drew a breath and glanced around. "Then we have to get out of here. What if they—"

  "It'll be all right," I smiled. "They won't harm us as long as we're together."

  "How do you know that?"

  I didn't know, to be honest, but I realized Bryce was way out of his element. Unlike me, he had suddenly found himself in an alien world surrounded by things he could barely comprehend. I, on the other hand, was getting closer and closer to where I was from. With eac
h bend and junction in the underwater city I remembered more and more about what I had seen here before. I wanted him close to me when it finally all came together.

  I took him by the hand and led him around a corner. We had yet to hear or find any sign of Bradford Thorne or his men, but I could tell we were getting close. The air was changing, becoming less dense. I knew we were within a few hundred feet of the center. I found a well-lit panel of carved rock and pointed to it. "Do you remember this from your history?"

  The detailed carving showed a tall thin man with a beard wearing a stove pipe hat. One hand clutched his long coat and the other held a small scrap of paper. A sculpted crowd looked on and men with kepis and forage caps looked on from a close distance. Bryce shook his head. "That looks like Abe Lincoln, but I don't know what this is supposed to be."

  "It's the Gettysburg Address. It marked a turning point in the Civil War leading up to the North's victory."

  He looked at me, a crooked smile on his face. "North?" He pointed to Abe's stalwart face. "Your Atlantians missed their mark, Dear Alice. The North admitted defeat in early 1864. General Lee took—"

  I poked a thumb over my shoulder. "If I'm right, you'll find an alternate history—your history—on that wall behind us." As Bryce moved to examine it, I closed my eyes and described it from memory. "It's General Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis at a table with Abe Lincoln. They're accepting the surrender of the Union army on the shore of the Mississippi somewhere, if I remember correctly."

  There was a long pause as Bryce looked over the carving behind us. Then he said, "This is my history, all right, but not what you described."

  "What?" I turned and stepped closer. I reached down and tore a fist of glowing moss from the floor and held it up like a weak yellowish flashlight. I gasped at the first perfectly-reproduced image I saw. "Ray?"

  Bryce nodded and pointed to the bearded man standing next to Ray Simcoe. "That there's Robert E. Lee at the commissioning of the Citadel in Baton Rouge, at what would later become the site of ADAM and EVE."

  I reached up and touched Ray's face. My chin quivered slightly at a foggy memory that hadn't quite surfaced. "But this isn't what we saw." I looked at Bryce and explained. "I swear. As our team moved through the city we noted branches of different time lines breaking off." I looked down at the floor and pointed to a jagged V of moss from where I'd torn the piece I held. "I remember this hallway. I remember what was here. Ray was with us. How could he be..."

  Then it hit me.

  I pressed my hand over my mouth and spun around. At the end of the corridor where we stood was a junction that branched into three passageways. Before there had been only two. "Oh, God."

  "Alice?"

  "They were right. They warned us."

  "Who? The Clockwork Carpenters?"

  I nodded slightly as I made my way to the junction. "Ray altered history by stepping through the mirror. I followed him and altered it again. Every time there's a change it changes the city."

  Bryce caught up to me. "I don't understand. Mirror?”

  I cringed as more memories flooded back. I nodded at Bryce. “It's a portal of some kind, a time-traveling device, I think.”

  Bryce looked to the junction in front of us. “So, the looking glass analogy is accurate after all."

  I pointed to the wall to our right. A vast carved mural showing the post Civil War Reconstruction rolled around a corner. "That's my history." I pointed to the wall to our left. "That's yours. But, before Ray stepped through the mirror it wasn't like this. We had no idea it was an alternate reality. We couldn't make sense of it. It makes sense to me now." I shook my head, not quite sure if that were true. "Never mind." I took Bryce's hand and led him down the center corridor, the one that used to be the left passage the last time I was here.

  Bryce said, "So, what were you doing here? What was this team you're talking about?"

  I glanced at him as I continued forward. The corridor dipped slightly and wound deeper into Atlantis. I ran my fingers across the carved history of Bryce's reality. "We thought we were stopping terrorists."

  "Terrorists?"

  "Remember when you found me? Remember my reaction to the towers?"

  He smiled at the memory, but the smile quickly faded. "You screamed. It was the first I'd heard your voice."

  I nodded back the way we came, to the right wall. "In 2001 my country was attacked by terrorists. They destroyed those towers."

  Bryce pondered this. "I've never known such an effrontery. Activists took down a Tesla bridge in 1999." He shrugged. "They were found and arrested. It never happened again."

  “How many died.”

  “None, as I recall.”

  “Wish I could say the same for my reality.”

  We continued walking in silence until I could swear we had covered a mile or two. The corridors turned abruptly, branched off unexpectedly. I was completely lost. My reality was long gone, angling off in another direction as Bryce's reality continued toward what I thought was the center of the city. The walls here became translucent, the sculptures appearing backlit by the phosphorescence embedded in them. We stuck with it until we reached a panel that made us both drop our jaws.

  Bryce reached out and touched my sculpted face as I reached out and touched his. The rock was warm and made the fine hairs on my arm stand on end. I tasted copper in my mouth.

  "How could this be?" He whispered.

  It was both of us down to the last detail. Even the gun held at my side. The image showed us reaching out toward the symbol that had appeared in every marker depicting each century, what Bryce's people referred to as the mark of the Trinity. Beyond that the wall was smooth. "What's this?" I said as I pointed to the unfinished stone. "Why does it stop here?"

  "You don't know?"

  As I shook my head we heard a blood chilling scream echo toward us from below. I flinched and raised the pistol but no one rounded a corner toward us.

  "That must have been one of Thorne's men."

  Then we heard another scream that abruptly stopped short.

  "Come on!" I called back to Bryce as I sprinted forward toward the sounds.

  "Alice! No, wait!" But he had no choice. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Bryce following me. We reached the end of our corridor, then turned left, then right, then down, then left again. I knew we were close to something because the carvings had ceased. The walls were all smooth as ice and just as slippery. The air grew warmer, dryer. I smelled the electrical snap of ozone in the air.

  The hallway opened into a peanut-shaped room with glass panels set into ornately carved frames stretching to a double-domed ceiling. We both stopped and our jaws dropped, but not at the intricate beauty of the ancient room. Thorne and his men were here.

  Sort of.

  "Bryce, no," I cautioned, and reached out to stop him as he stepped forward. He stopped and I moved up to stand next to him.

  "What happened to them? Are they real?"

  Thorne's men were gathered here, frozen like statues. Some were locked in an eternal stare, taking in the architecture of the room. One man was on his knee frozen in the act of tying his boot. Thorne and the big man with the cutter were standing near the front and center of the group. They, along with some of the men next to them, stared fixed at a point in front of them, a doorway. One of the men stood frozen, his finger pointing where they were looking, his mouth hanging open. I could tell by his wide eyes and the lines around his mouth that he was screaming when he froze.

  "Are they statues?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "Did you see this before?"

  I nodded and moved closer.

  "Alice, don't."

  I waved back at him that it was okay, but only weakly. In truth, I couldn't be sure if it was okay or not. I remembered this happening before in a brief fraction of a second to two of the others from my team—just before I woke up in the void room, and moments before they branded me with their electric fork and marked me with their symbol.

&
nbsp; "Are they all here?" I asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "When this happened the last time they had taken me. It was Ray, I think, who saw one of them and called out to us. Then this. Then... I wasn't here anymore."

  Bryce stopped in front of Thorne and waved his hand in front of his unblinking face. He lowered his hand and looked at me. "You weren't here anymore?"

  I could feel my face blush, the heat wash over my face and neck as I remembered being strung up in that room naked as they stared into my soul with their malevolent albino faces and pig-like eyes. My blush clashed with a chill and sweat broke out on my face and sides. I shook my head but couldn't meet Bryce's eyes. "They took me to another place. They said things to me, branded me with this mark."

  Bryce looked back at Thorne and poked him in the chest. "And the others? They were left like this while you were...?" Then it occurred to him why I'd asked if they were all accounted for. One or more of them must have been spirited away to the void room.

  "I didn't see them, Alice," he said as he counted. "Remember, I popped in by you courtesy of Pandora."

  I stepped back and slowly shook my head as I realized everyone was accounted for. Bradford Thorne and his boarding party were all here. I hadn't counted them before, but I was pretty sure this cluster of living statues was about the size of the group that cut their way into the city.

  Bryce said, "But if they're all accounted for, then who...?"

  I nodded as the realization dawned on him. I said, "It's us, Bryce. They're centering their attention on both of us."

  "But you've got their mark. I don't have anything. We're completely different."

  I drew a cold breath and shrugged. "One of us is the escort of the other. That's my guess."

  I saw Bryce's Adam's apple move as he swallowed hard, looking up, his eyes tracing the carvings in the tall domed ceiling. "Well, I think it would be rude of us not to let them know we're here."