by Karen Garvin
He’d gone to his brother, been forced to seek him out and put him in danger.
“What?”
“They have Geiger,” Tristan said, gaining strength with each step.
“Tristan, are you sure?” she asked, fear in her voice as well. She knew what that meant and kept looking to the door, her fingers digging into Tristan’s back a little. “We can’t, though. We’re running out of time, Cassiel and the rest of the fleet will be here any minute.”
“They have him, Mel, I know--” Tristan stopped talking abruptly, looking up sharply at the door. “Someone’s coming.”
There was no way out of the room except, maybe, through a small air vent in the top left corner. Amelia might be able to fit, but Tristan certainly wouldn’t. If the people on the other side of that door were smart, they’d have at least four guards and one magnate with them, which meant he and Amelia were also grossly outnumbered. He took a closer look at Amelia’s olive green coat and cap, squinting some as everything settled into a more normal state of being. He knew the color, knew who wore it but why was she wearing it?
“Russians?” Tristan asked, looking at Amelia curiously. “Yeah,” she answered. “Someone had to find your sorry ass.”
She pulled a sabre from its sheath on her hip and then snapped her wrist so that the hilt clicked into place. Waves of electricity began to coil around the length of steel wrapped in steel-and-copper rope. Tristan glanced at the weapon then arched a brow at his young companion for both her choice in defense and her sassy comment.
“What?” she said. “I had it done custom, okay? So what?” “By who?”
“Does that really matter right now?” Amelia hissed. The knob on the door turned, making both of them revert their attention to the task at hand: surviving.
“Find Geiger,” Tristan said, frowning so fiercely he set the door to melt.
“What? No, Tristan, there’s no time! We’ll have to-”
“Make time! I am not leaving him behind with these bastards! And you better promise me that whatever help is coming is prepared to deal with me and what needs doing when I lose it, cuz I will lose it.”
“No one is going to do-” “Promise!”
“Okay!” she frowned, brows furrowed with tears welling in her big eyes. He hated that look. He had helped train her. While she never made it to full magnate, she was a brilliant apothecary. They did not always see eye to eye—in fact, they argued almost all the time—but he trusted her with his life, and his death.
He made sure she was not near him before raising his arm, the sleeves of his shirt pulling back to reveal one of the augmenting gauntlets. It was composed of a series of flat, black metal disks, all polished to a gleam with large rubies clasped to the center in a row of three. The flesh of his arm was raw around the sharp prongs that held the gauntlet down. Thin chains ran from the first disk to another atop his hand with a much larger ruby at its center. More chains connected that disk to tiny pieces of the same metal on each finger, a matching stone just above and below each knuckle. There, too, the prongs dug into soft flesh, leaving red welts that were beginning to scab and bruise, turning ugly colors of yellow and purple.
“Kolgal!” Tristan barked. The fire returned to his veins, the tattoos on his arms and neck lit up to match the bright red of the rubies on the gauntlet. A cone of resonating energy shot out of Tristan’s hand and blasted the steel door from its hinges. It collided with three soldiers that were on the other side, literally smashing them into the opposing wall with an audible and sickening crunch.
“Jesus, Tristan,” Amelia breathed out from behind him. Her blue-green eyes were wide and her chest heaved. She watched him repeat the spell on four of the Soulless that were all reduced to twisted heaps of metal and then again on a set of soldiers that happened by. Their bones simply snapped, one at a time, until they lay in puddles of their own blobby flesh. He was about to do the same to another man that had been following the soldiers when she grabbed his arm and pulled it down. Now she understood why he’d made her promise.
“Stop!” Amelia cried, clearing her throat. “Stop; no more.
We need to find Geiger; remember?”
She could clearly see on his face that he did not remember. The serum she had given him had been rendered utterly useless. Something else had taken over entirely, like a trance that induced violence. As soon as that trance was broken, Tristan fell to his knees. His breath was ragged and heavy. The tattoos on his arms pulsed in time to his rapid heartbeat. He needed help.
“I’ll find Geiger,” she said quietly. She was aware of the other man peeking around the corner of the hall, eyes wide with terror. She fixed him with a foul glare, rising to her full height.
“Step forward and name yourself!” she barked in perfect Russian. The man was not a soldier, but wore the military robes of his Majesty’s Royal Marines; a magnate of some kind by the guess of his attire—but from Britain? That was odd. “Your name!”
Amelia was sure to keep an accent when switching to English, though she surmised that he not only understood Russian but that he’d also heard her pleading with Tristan. Was he a captive as well? Regardless, her cover had to be maintained or this would not work. Just in case though, her grip tightened on the saber in her hand.
“Magnate Commander Killian Reeth,” the man finally answered.
Commander? Interesting. What would he command on a ship like the Darrow, Amelia wondered.
"You now have new task, Magnate Commander,” she continued in accented English. “Do not lose this asset. Protect him at all cost and assist how you are able.”
She pointed to Tristan when she spoke. The Magnate Commander looked at him with fear, swallowing hard then turning his eyes to the floor with guilt and regret before finally nodding, eyes darting between Amelia and Tristan with growing uncertainty. She saw recognition on Magnate Commander Reeth’s face; he knew Tristan. How, she wondered. Had he done this to her mentor? Amelia didn’t feel
right about leaving Tristan with this man, but she had no choice—she needed to fiind Geiger Fallon, and fast.
* * *
Consciousness returned slowly. There was a heaviness to Geiger’s limbs that drew a groan from his lips and furrowed his thick brows with pain. No, pain was not right, he realized. Soreness, perhaps, mixed with an incredible lethargy. Opening his eyes felt like an insurmountable chore. Once open, what little light that filtered through caused him to flinch and roll away from its source. That was when he heard the scuff of grating metal that drew his attention to his wrist.
Even with everything out of focus, Geiger could see the iron cuff around his wrist with its partner shackled to the post of an iron bed. He glared at the offending item, eyes narrowing while he tugged gently just to test it. Nothing gave. The small hinge pinched the hairs on his arm and the linchpin that held it in place had been soldered shut. Geiger rolled the other way, lamenting at how much his body protested. His bound wrist only allowed him to go so far, but it was enough.
The room was dimly lit in a sickly orange-green haze emanating from a pair of oil lamps on either side of the bed. That, in and of itself, was merely a metal spring frame bolted to the wood-paneled wall with a thin mattress pad rolled out over top of it. The door was some sort of metal from what he could actually see, and the floor thin planks of sanded wood. He tried to focus more, eyes narrowing and widening in turn, when he realized that the enhanced patch for his left eye was gone. Without it, that eye was all but useless and the right worked far too hard to compensate, leaving him in a perpetual haze of partial vision. Panic began to fill Geiger from bottom to top like water filling a glass until it nearly crested the edge. Something had happened; something awful and wholly unbelievable.
Tristan. Geiger’s twin had set those soldiers on fire. Except that they were not soldiers, not really. Somehow Geiger knew that. They had looked like soldiers with proper uniforms, if a little ill fitting; but if not soldiers, who were they? Moreover, where was Tristan? He’d been at t
he warehouse and then... Then Geiger remembered nothing at all except the burning soldiers.
Geiger squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. He focused on the tattoo on the chained arm, focused on each angle and curve.
“Ow!” Geiger hissed.
“It isn’t supposed to tickle,” Tristan chuckled. “You’re not even supposed to have this. They’ll take us both before a firing squad if they find out.”
“They will not,” Geiger cringed as the tattoo was seared into his skin, curve by painful curve; angle by painful angle. “Will they?” “God, you’re a moron.”
Staring at the branded tattoo made it burn like the day it had been given to him. Was that why he was chained to a bed? Had they found out?
That was when the screaming began.
Geiger heard it clearly. The terrible sound echoed through the thin walls around him like a church bell echoing inside of a basilica. Geiger’s panic spilled over into terror. He fought against the iron cuff that held him until blood ran down his arm in crimson rivulets, pulling and tugging, even bracing his feet against the iron bedpost to give him more leverage. The sigil on his arm was useless if he could not get the cuff off. All magic was useless in the presence of iron—that was how rogue magnates were dealt with: permanently clapped in irons. The iron disrupted something; Geiger had never really learned what. Tristan knew, but without the ability to use the sigil, that knowledge was lost to Geiger.
“Hey!” he hollered, desperately hoping for some sort of response. “HEY!”
“There is no need to add to the ruckus, Mr. Fallon. I assure you it will be of no use.”
Geiger had not heard the door open, the new presence slithering in like a shadow and startling him to silence. Slowly, he eased himself into a sitting position, his right arm crossed over his torso where his wrist still connected to the bed.
Two men walked toward him, one a great deal older than the other. They wore military uniforms, though neither was the deep blue of the Union Militia. The elder of the two wore a rich red, while the other wore a deep olive green topped by a cap that hid the rest of his features. The elder gentleman was highly decorated from what Geiger could make out. All of the man’s pins and tiny gears of status jingled slightly as he stepped further into the room. He stared down a bold nose, lips pursed and high cheekbones giving him a skeletal appearance. He stood with hands clasped behind his back reminding Geiger of a villain in an old space epic that he and Tristan used to watch in their father’s old garage late at night.
“Where’s my brother?” Geiger demanded, still squirming some to break free. “Who are you people? What are you doing to him?”
Adrenaline surged through him every time he heard his brother holler in agony. He knew it was Tristan, almost felt the pain writhing inside his own body. That was the way with twins; or, rather, that was the way with Geiger and Tristan. It had always been so. If one was hurt, the other knew it and hurt in sympathy. Several people called it creepy, and at least two psychologists had suggested to their parents that it was either an imagined connection or a highly unhealthy codependency on each other. Whatever it was, it had been the impetus that spurred them to try their little experiment, and made Geiger feel the truth of the twin connection while sitting on the mattress, pulling against the iron that held him in place while glaring at the old man in red.
“Now, now,” the elder man said. “All in due time. We are here to have a civil discussion, Mr. Fallon. We have been looking for you for quite some time and, reasonably, there are quite a few questions that need asking. I must commend your work— and that of your brother, of course. It has become quite legendary in my field of specialty. Your automatons are also to be commended; they are quite highly regarded and sought after. And your brother...”
The man in red left his words hanging in silent awe. His accent was very formal, educated, and full of an authority that expected absolute obedience. All things considered, Geiger surmised that he was from the British Empire. The other man, however, the one in deep olive, remained in the shadows of the room. He confused Geiger. He seemed almost too subservient and the coloring of his uniform was entirely unfamiliar. Geiger tried to blame the abysmal lighting, but he felt something was off about the young man in olive. His suspicions were confirmed when she glanced up enough to catch his eye. Her features seemed gentle to his blurred vision in comparison to the hawkishness of the old man. She was young and pretty from what he could make out, and oddly familiar in the way she looked at him. Why?
“War,” the elder gentleman was saying, pacing now so that Geiger lost sight of the woman in deep olive. “Is a rather harsh mistress, Mr. Fallon, and a cover for the true desires of man. I am sure that you are aware of what is happening in the Confederacy, yes?”
Of course Geiger was aware. An army of the Soulless had invaded Confederate and Appalachian lands; his creations. They’d been hacked and turned against their allies, laying waste to Fredericksburg City in Appalachia and Mobile in the South with aims to take Richmond and Atlanta proper, if reports were to be believed. Creations that wore the faces of men, creatures so large they had to be airlifted into battle, all walking about on hinges and springs, all loaded down with the worst of what humanity could conjure. Geiger had had a hand in each of them, even if it was only in the creation of one tiny, little part. He felt responsible for the massacre, each man, woman, and child being cut down indiscriminately for seemingly little gain. No one understood it, everyone feeling helpless to stop it and their allies now firing back as best they could with understood, if misplaced, fury. Even after the Civil War, the three new nations had remained tense friends—until now.
“What do you want from me?” Geiger growled.
“It is what we both want, Mr. Fallon,” the elder man soothed. Whatever this man wanted, Geiger could see it as lust in his beady little eyes. He practically trembled with joy to have Geiger clasped in irons, making Geiger’s jaw grind even harder. “We want safety, above all, for yourself, my crew, your brother, of course.”
Geiger’s glower deepened. The screaming, he realized, had stopped. What did the man mean? Something was wrong with Tristan, of that, Geiger was certain. He had seen it in his twin’s sunken eyes and heard it in the strain of his voice. Geiger tugged on the iron cuff around his wrist again, feeling a harsh sting of frustrated and nearly frantic tears rush the back of his eyes. Neither he nor Tristan had been given a choice in their service much like many men of similar age. They had all been conscripted, young women, too, with the ability to read and write or with a particularly useful skill. Tristan had accepted it as an unfortunate necessity. There was nothing necessary about war, however, and the old man’s subtle hints were making that ever clearer. Whoever had started this was after something specific.
Their father had always said that war was an act of desperate men with lesser intelligence and lack of patience. Both he and their mother had been killed during the first attack that set the world on fire while they were on holiday in Paris. Now there was absolutely nothing left of the once-grand city, every part of it obliterated by the horrors that Geiger and Tristan now helped to bring about.
“What have you done with my brother?” Geiger continued. He tugged idly on the iron cuff on his wrist, tears rolling down his face. He gritted his teeth in a poor attempt to reign in his emotions. The tattoo on his arm burned so badly he wanted to scream, the magic seared into it trying to reach out to do its job without the ability to actually do so. The man in red merely grinned at him, using his emotions against him.
“Your brother has been placed in isolation for now. He has been giving us a bit of trouble. He is quite a talented man,” the man in red said briefly, touching the tattoo on Geiger’s arm. “As are you, I’m sure. Your brother, unfortunately, is also quite ill. He is being well tended but we require... a little more finesse with certain things than what we are currently capable of at this juncture. That is where you come in, Mr. Fallon.
“Sergeant,” Geiger corrected. Bloo
d pumped through his veins, thrumming in his ears. They did know, and they wanted something that only Tristan and Geiger together could accomplish. Each idle tug of his bond cut deeper into his flesh, bringing his anger to the forefront rather than his fears. He needed that focus. The man in red only smirked, aging face creasing with wrinkles.
“My apologies, Sergeant,” he smiled then gestured at Geiger’s wrist. “Truly, that is entirely unnecessary, what you are doing. It will only bring about greater harm. Cease immediately, please.”
Oddly enough, Geiger’s arm stopped, his mangled wrist slowly lowering to his lap. He had not wanted to stop moving, yet the compulsion came all the same. Geiger felt his eyebrows rise up his brow slightly with concussive realization of what this man was capable of. Not only was he highly decorated, but he was a magnate; an incredibly powerful one at that. There had been no incantation, no gesture, only sheer force of will. His uniform hid any tattoos or anything else that might have given an indication of what he was.
“There’s a good lad,” the man in red smiled. “Ophelia, dear, would you be so kind as to prepare Mr.—forgive me—Sergeant Fallon for transport?”
“Of course,” the woman named Ophelia replied. Her accent was surprisingly gruff for her small frame. As she stepped forward, something flashed in her hand. Geiger could not make it out, but he knew it was there.
Shock filled the man in red’s face, and perhaps a touch of rage, as Ophelia embedded a long syringe into the side of the other man’s neck. Geiger knew he was gaping, following as the man in red fell to the floor in a fit of violent spasms and electric currents that ran the length of his body.
“That,” Ophelia spat in perfectly clear, homegrown Bronx English. “Was for slapping my ass earlier, dickhead.”
She moved to Geiger and took his wrist in her gentle hands. He watched her intently, hearing the metal chain snap without seeing how nor really caring. Ophelia dropped a pile of worn leather into his lap and arched a perfectly shaped brow at him. Geiger looked down to find his eye patch. It took no time at all to resettle it over his eye, using a corner of his shirt to wipe the smudges of blood from the lens. With clear vision restored, Geiger took another good look at Ophelia while she retrieved her syringe, while leaving the needle in the old man’s neck. He recognized the old man, much like he recognized Ophelia, though he struggled to recall from where. His head still pounded and tilted and his limbs, especially now, still weighed him down heavily.