by K. C. Finn
Every clock in the window shows a different time, and many have stopped altogether. Cae reaches the metal door and pushes gently, and what he expects happens exactly. The door swings open freely.
“This is a dead end,” he groans. “A fake shop in Watt’s name.”
“No,” Redd protests, insulted. “This came from a good informant. There must be something here.”
And with that Redd passes them both and enters the shop. Cae peers into the dark little storefront, finding Redd standing in front of a counter. The shop doesn’t even have air filtration working, so the hazy smog from outside follows Redd in. He turns on a little lamp beside him to cut through the smoke. Kendra follows him inside, looking around, but Cae stays in the doorway.
“At least it’s not raining in here,” Redd beams, flapping his wet jacket about. The motion raises little piles of dust on the counters, and it’s then that Cae notices something else that’s very odd.
“These clocks have all been destroyed,” Kendra exclaims, having noticed the same thing.
From the doorway Cae can see the entire counter of timepieces nearest to him have been cannibalised for their parts, stripped bare, their workings left open with various elements missing.
“Richmond, you said Thomas Watt was a mechanic?” Cae remembers.
“Yeah,” Kendra adds. “He screwed up those robots at the station pretty well.”
The suited conman nods slowly. “It would appear that his penchant for technology runs in the family,” Redd muses.
His curiosity piqued, Cae finally enters the main floor of the shop, crossing to stand between Redd and Kendra. “Maybe they’re building something?” He asks to no-one in particular.
A strange creaking sound suddenly cuts the smoky air in the shop, like the echo of a submarine buckling under pressure. Cae looks around wildly for its source, his eyes meeting those of Redd Richmond, who is doing the same thing. A louder creak shudders through the room, and the floor beneath the trio shakes a little.
“We should get out of here,” Kendra says, lowering herself into a crouching position. She takes a tentative, creeping step, but as she shifts her weight towards the door the floor shakes again, this time so violently that Redd flops to the ground.
He lands on his hands with a groan. “No amount of dry cleaning is going to get this grime out,” he moans, looking ruefully at the arms of his jacket.
“That’s the least of our worries if the floor caves in,” Cae says sharply. “Don’t anyone move until I’ve figured this out.”
Another loud creak and a shake of the floor rapidly change his mind.
“Sod it,” he quips quickly. “Everyone run!”
17.
“Did I ever tell you how much I admire your powers of judgment, Rex?” Says Redd Richmond from somewhere not far away.
The tiny splintered shard of floor lodged in Cae’s neck tells him that he has not yet made it out of Wincher’s Clocks. He pulls out the splinter with a sharp motion, sucking at his teeth from the sting.
“You okay, Cae?” Asks another voice nearby.
“Kendra?” He answers quickly, pushing himself up onto his elbows.
“Over here,” she says, and he looks to the source of her voice to find her already on her feet. Her gas mask is on the ground in front of him. “The air’s clean,” Kendra adds. “Some sort of airlock closed over us when the floor gave way.”
The young detective looks up to find that they have fallen a fair few feet, and sure enough a blurred film has formed to protect them from the toxic fumes above. He can hear the faint whirr of an air filtration vent, though he cannot find its location in the semi-darkness.
“So it is a trap,” Cae observes.
Redd gives off a groan as he sits upright. “I hope I find somebody I recognise when they come to shoot us,” he states all too brightly. “I wouldn’t want them to think I’m on your side.”
“Neither would I,” Cae adds.
“I wouldn’t worry about that, boys,” Kendra remarks. “Nobody’s coming for us. I think we’re supposed to go to them.” Redd rubs his head with a curious look at her. “Take a look over there,” Kendra adds with a pointed finger.
Cae scrambles to his feet to follow her indication. Small lamps forced into the underground walls reveal that the pit they are in is not a pit, but the opening to a tunnel. The tunnel leads off around a corner and, at its furthest point, Cae can see shadows moving against the dark tunnel walls.
“Maybe this is a secret entrance?” Cae questions, looking back up at the hole they’ve fallen through. As he stretches his neck upward, the left strap of his gas mask snaps with a ping of elastic. The mask skitters off into Redd’s lap, who looks at Cae for a moment, then removes his own mask from his seated position.
“Well the air doesn’t appear to have poisoned us yet,” Redd says, wiping the condensation from his bare chin. “I feel that bodes well.” He gives a confident little nod, getting to his feet and handing Cae back his now broken mask.
The detective clips it onto his belt, stepping forward to the entrance of the tunnel. Kendra is beside him in a moment, and even without looking Cae knows she has taken up arms. The click of a safety catch being removed confirms this. Cae trains his bright blue eyes, now adjusted to the lamplight, on the moving shadows not far ahead.
“What’ll it be then, Richmond?” Kendra asks. “You coming with us or are you gonna stay here and starve?”
Cae hears petulant footsteps thump up behind him. “I rather think you know the answer to that, Chief,” says the conman poisonously.
The detective leads the march down the tunnel, heading towards the bend with slow, definite steps, testing the ground for traps as he goes. All seems well, so eventually Cae moves more confidently into the tunnel, starting to see the ventilation grids built into its walls here and there.
“I have one condition about you coming any further with us,” Kendra says sharply, the harshness of her tone echoing down the curved walls.
Redd Richmond makes a noise halfway between a huff and a groan. “And that is?” He asks ruefully.
“You say one more word about that damned suit, and I shoot you in the leg and leave you here,” she completes.
Cae chuckles into the silence as they reach the sharp corner turn where the moving shadows lurk. One gloved hand poised to grab his gun, he turns with the tunnel and looks upon the scene before him.
“He might prefer that option when he sees this,” Cae observes, mouth falling open a little in surprise.
Redd pushes his way to one side of the detective at the corner, Kendra takes the other, and the trio, packed like sardines, gaze in fear and confusion at the new tunnel ahead of them.
Kendra lets out a short breath, hazel eyes darting everywhere at once. “Is it just me,” she begins, “or is this starting to look like a trap again?”
18.
“This isn’t happening to me,” says Redd Richmond, shaking his handsome head. “This is what happens to meddling idiots like you two. This isn’t supposed to happen to people like me.” He flings an angry hand at the array of mechanisms in front of them. “I specifically work on the opposite side of the law to avoid this kind of thing!”
The detective and his chief are barely listening to the conman’s ramblings; instead they survey their situation carefully.
Before them lies a series of swinging swords, swaying in even, mechanical precision, apparently fairly sharp and definitely very, very heavy. Beyond the swords, great hammers swoop down from the tunnel’s ceiling with thunderous gravity, dropping at randomised times so that there isn’t a single moment when one death-bringing blow doesn’t occur somewhere. After the hammers it’s harder to see what might follow, but the lamplight indicates further swinging and stomping terrors, the never-ending echo of heavy locomotion haunting the whole space.
“It’s a gauntlet,” Kendra states, staring hard at the machinery.
“A what?” Cae asks, the word unfamiliar to him.
> “A test for warriors,” she explains. “And a pretty ancient one at that. The Prof at my base designed one for us when I was training in the Brigade.”
“Prof?” Cae repeats. “Why on earth did you have a professor at a military base?”
“That is not the most pressing question you could have asked,” Redd chips in, tapping Cae hard on the shoulder. He points angrily at the swinging swords. “How about something along the lines of ‘How the hell do we get through that lot’?”
“Julius told me once that nothing’s as random as it appears,” Kendra says, the faintest smile on the corner of her dark lip. “Everything happens with a purpose.”
Cae suppresses the urge to scoff at such philosophy, but Redd is far less tactful.
“Lovely sentiment,” he hisses. “I’ll ponder it later with a cup of tea, honest I will. But for now could you possibly reach the point of Julie’s fabulous wisdom?”
“Julius,” Kendra corrects with a dangerously dark look. Redd steps just a little further away from her. “The point is there’s a pattern in this gauntlet. So shut your yapper and let me listen for it.”
Kendra steps forward, looking into the machinery ahead. She swings her head to and fro with the blades, stomps her feet to the thump of the hammers and stares deeply into the distance. Cae knows all too well that she can see much farther ahead than he can, but he tries all the same to follow her gaze.
“Well?” Asks Redd impatiently. “Can you get through it?”
“That’s not the problem,” Kendra answers. “The timing’s pretty simple for me to go through, actually. I’m just wondering how to get you two through it.”
The detective looks at her thoughtfully. “I suppose you could go through twice, take us one at a time?” He suggests.
“That’s pretty risky,” Kendra replies. “I don’t know if I can plan out the spacing for two very well. And it’s not like I have dummy to test it out on.”
The same marginally wicked thought hits the chief and her detective at the same time. They look together at Redd Richmond, who is in front of them now, hopeless and weak in his ruined suit. Cae catches the gleam in Kendra’s eye and returns it with a slight grin.
“We don’t really have another option,” he reasons with too much frivolity in his tone.
“Right,” Kendra agrees, and she too is smiling. “It’s either this, or we starve in the pit.”
“What are you muttering about now?” Redd asks, turning just as Kendra grabs him with a vaulting leap.
The conman manages to let out one squeal of protest before the ex-soldier has him by the shoulders, pushing his head down and charging into the path of the swords. Cae watches with interest as Kendra pushes and pulls the yelping Redd through the nearest dangers, relieved when they are through the swift blades.
“This is the last time I ever help the police!” Redd yells in a shrill tone.
“Shut up and move when I tell you!” Kendra’s voice echoes back towards Cae, distorted by the machinery.
She barks her orders in true regimental form, and Cae can just make out the two figures getting clear of the hammers, the thumps of which are matched intermittently with Redd’s cries to the powers that be to save his pitiful existence.
“Jump?” Redd suddenly cries. Cae tries to crane his neck into the tunnel to see the conman, but his figure is now a dark blur that’s a fair way off. “Are you insane, woman? Jump? Jump? Bloody ju-‘
But the finale of Redd’s outburst is interrupted as he suddenly lets out a terrified holler. This is swiftly followed by silence. Cae’s muscles start to tense.
“Well that takes care of him!” Kendra shouts back happily.
19.
Caecilius Rex stands quietly at the mouth of the swinging swords, watching his ally return through the nearest obstacles with precision. He stands, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, waiting for Kendra to speak. She just grins.
“What did you do to him?” Cae presses with a look of horror.
“He wouldn’t jump, so I threw him,” she replies casually. “Your turn.”
She tries to take his arm, but Cae shakes himself from her grip.
“Wait, wait,” he stutters. “Threw him where?”
“At the end of the gauntlet there’s a chute,” Kendra explains, taking his arm again as if that will suffice.
“But we don’t know where it goes!” Cae protests as she leads him to the first oscillating blade. “You might have just killed him!”
The sergeant turned chief snaps her gaze on Cae, fixing him with her round, hazel eyes. “You think I’d do a thing like that?” She accuses. The smug face of Detective Smyth flashes like a warning sign in Cae’s mind. “My job is to protect people,” Kendra adds, clearly offended.
Shaking himself from his ridiculous suspicions, Cae takes Kendra’s arms in earnest and nods. If he can be sure of nothing else, Kendra has saved his life so often now that Cae knows he is the last person she’d want to harm.
“Gauntlets are designed to test, not to destroy,” Kendra reminds him. “Now do everything I say, and don’t resist me if I try to move you.”
A horrifying thought sweeps Cae’s mind, and he furtively hopes the little spoonful of RESISTANCE he took earlier has worn off; else it may cost him life or limb, or indeed both.
“Alright,” he says as surely as he can. “I’m with you.”
And so it begins, with Kendra barking her orders, pushing him this way and that into the flurry of moving metal. They step in a rhythm that Cae doesn’t understand, every time he thinks he knows when to step, Kendra stands firm, and then when she moves him he is never expecting it. He chooses not to look up at the bludgeoning hammers when they reach them, watching the floor intently instead, Kendra’s arm around his shoulders.
Alternating yells of “Go!” and “Stop!” tell Cae where to place his feet, and he moves all the more swiftly when a dangerously close hammer clubs him hard on the heel. He keeps his gloved hands tucked close to his chest, every sinew poised to follow Kendra’s word. He wonders for a brief moment how Redd Richmond made it through without having such faith in her, but an unexpected buffer shooting out of the side of the wall reminds him there is little time to think.
With the last hammer in sight in the deceptively long tunnel, Kendra pushes Cae’s head forward and shoves him under when it starts to retract. She waits a moment as it doubles-back for a surprise hit, then scrambles by herself. Cae looks ahead to the dark mouth of the chute, stepping forward with his heartbeat in his throat.
“NO!” Shouts Kendra, grabbing at him. “Stop, stop, stop!” She pulls him back by the high collar of his still-damp coat.
“What?” Says Cae, but his question is instantly answered.
A massive circular saw sweeps up from the tunnel floor between Cae and the opening of the chute, its volume deafening the detective as it rotates wildly.
“This thing nearly gave Redd a serious haircut!” Kendra shouts over the oscillation. “There’s a seven second gap between the next fall and rise.”
“That’s why we have to jump?” Cae asks as understanding dawns. Kendra just nods, bending her knees a little.
“Are you ready?” She says. “It’ll go down in three, two…”
“No,” Cae interjects sharply. “Next time, not this one.”
The saw recedes from sight on cue, and Cae leans forward, assessing the chute. There is no indication of how far it goes down; it is little more than a dark, foreboding hole in the dirt.
“Richmond?” He calls quickly, his hands cupped around his mouth. “Redd? Are you down there?”
A few precious seconds pass, and there is no reply.
And then the saw returns, as ferocious and sudden as before. Cae jumps back and looks to Kendra, his dark brows raised hopelessly.
“There’s no other way to go,” Kendra bellows over the saw. She grabs his black-gloved hand and squeezes it strongly. “Together,” she orders, “On my signal. Four, three, two…”
20.
When it comes, Cae flies out of the chute’s end and smashes into a solid wall of rock, chest first. Winded and pained he starts to drop, only to collide with Kendra as she too exits the shaft. Cae crashes back into the wall, this time on his shoulder, with the full and considerable weight of Kendra Nai thumping into his back.
He falls in agony then onto the ground, with Kendra scrambling to get out from underneath his injured back. Gasping for air and bemoaning his bruised torso, Cae stares up at the ceiling above him. The roof is made of plaster and stone, and from it hangs a chandelier of candles, most of which are lit. A droplet of wax begins to fall from the high ceiling, and Cae feels it land on his cheek, still warm.
“Well I’m glad I came down on my own,” remarks a dry voice from somewhere nearby.
“So nice to see you’re still alive, Redd,” Kendra answers. Her voice is strained, and Cae hears her hock up what must be a mouthful of blood. “How are you doing there, Cae?” She asks him.
A moment later Kendra is looking down at him, her face upside-down and fixed with worry. He just looks at her initially, gaining his breath, until she notices something beside him.
“Is this yours?” She says, stepping over his resting form to pick up a silver object in the candlelight. With a shiver Cae sees it is his teaspoon.
“Of course not,” he replies instantly.
“Liar,” Redd objects from his corner. “It just fell out of your coat.”
Groaning loudly, Cae pulls himself to a sitting position and takes the spoon from Kendra’s relaxed grip. She looks at him strangely for a moment, but seems to decide to let it pass.
“Anything broken?” She enquires.
The detective shifts his weight around, wincing. “A few cracked ribs I’d wager,” he replies after consideration. “You?”