by Paul Crilley
They were only about twenty feet away from the intersection now. The tram was nearly there. She had to time this perfectly…
“What are you doing?” shouted Stepp. “There's a tram coming!”
Octavia watched, gauged, lessened her speed a bit. Too much. A bit more power. The tram's whistle exploded, piercing the night air. A bit more speed. Nearly there…
Octavia nudged the front of the Ministry carriage onto the tram lines, stopping Tweed's steamcoach just beyond the lines.
The tram hit the Ministry carriage, wrenching it away from their crash bumper, sending them juddering away to the side with the force of the separation. The Ministry carriage launched into the air, spinning over and over before smashing down onto the tracks. The tram smashed into it again, shoving it along the tram lines, sparks exploding up into the night air.
A terrific screeching wail cut through the street as the tram applied its emergency brakes. More sparks sprayed out from under its metal wheels as it lurched and shuddered to a stop.
Octavia glanced over her shoulder to make sure Stepp was all right. The eleven-year-old girl stared at her with horrified admiration.
“That,” she said, “was insane!”
Octavia gave her a shaky grin. “It was, rather, wasn't it?” She pumped the lever to see if the steam carriage was still working. It was, but it didn't sound too healthy. “Stepp, I've had a thought. Actually, wait, have you found my mother yet?”
“Not yet, no. I've been rather busy.”
“Then start searching. I need to know if she's in there. Please?”
“Fine.”
“Thank you. Now, can you still not access the locks?”
“Afraid not.”
“Then can you get inside their automata, the ones that are used for security?”
“I think so. Why?”
“I'll tell you in a moment. First we need to find Jenny and Carter.”
The couple said they would be waiting in the same alley they had used while Tweed and Octavia picked their target outside the Ministry offices. Octavia parked the steamcoach and turned to Stepp. “Still no luck?”
“None.” Stepp slammed her hands down on the typing keys. “I really thought I could crack this. I have to say, I'm quite annoyed.”
“I'm sure Tweed feels the same.”
“Good point. So I take it you have some kind of plan?”
“Pass me those maps.” Octavia pointed at the plans and maps Horatio had given them. Stepp gathered them together and passed them over.
“What do you need those for?”
“Never mind that. Now, when you hear the signal, I want you to…do whatever it is you do with your Ada and send the automata crazy.”
“What do you mean, ‘send them crazy’?”
“I mean, send them crazy. Make them fight each other—actually, can you do that? Probably not. Make them walk into walls then, make them knock a few Babbages over. Just make sure they're not doing the job they're meant to be doing.”
“Why?”
“Because I plan on slipping inside the Ministry and rescuing that idiot Tweed.”
“Um, how exactly are you going to do that?”
Octavia grinned. “With flash and style, of course. Just get ready.”
She opened the door and hopped out onto the road.
“How will I recognize your signal?” asked Stepp.
“Oh, you'll know. In fact, I think you better move this carriage somewhere else. A side street somewhere. Just don't leave it on this road.”
Octavia jumped out of the carriage and closed the door. She checked that no one was watching, then took out her Tesla gun and walked to the alley.
“Hoi!” she called.
“Who's there?” came Carter's voice.
“Oh, look. It's the competition,” said Jenny, emerging from the shadows with a grin. “How's it going?”
“Rather messy,” said Octavia. “I need you to get me inside the Ministry.”
“I see. And exactly how would you like us to do that?”
“Can't you use one of those little explosives you've got? Knock a hole in the wall?”
Carter joined them, holding the satchel against his chest. Octavia reached out to take it, but Jenny slapped her hand away.
“No touching. It's dangerous stuff.”
“Fine! But will you do it?”
“I have to say,” said Carter, “the prospect of you wandering around inside there fills me with a vast amount of unease. I mean, I'm talking huge amounts here. Jenny?”
Jenny nodded. “I tend to agree, Carter. Octavia, it really does sound as though you're about to do something incredibly crazy. Is that the case? Are you about to do something incredibly crazy?”
Octavia thought about it. It was crazy, wasn't it? Her plan—if you could call it that—was to basically walk into the Ministry complex and rescue Tweed from the prison he had stupidly got himself locked in.
“Look at me,” she said. “Do I look like a crazy person? Your Sebastian Tweed is the loon. I'm the sensible one. Now, will you help?”
Jenny leaned forward to study Octavia's face. Then she raised an eyebrow and turned to Carter. “She has that look,” she said.
“What look is that, dear?” asked Carter, grinning.
“The one I got when I broke you out of Millhouse Prison. Are you sure you two aren't an item?” she said to Octavia.
Octavia flushed and turned away. “Of course not. But we got into this together. We can't just leave him in there.”
“Fine,” said Jenny. “We'll do it. You go and wait in that alley across the road.”
“I want to help.”
“Helping you become a terrorist is where I draw the line,” said Jenny firmly. “You go wait. We'll take care if it.”
Octavia opened her mouth to protest, but by the look on Jenny's face, there would be no point. Instead, she nodded, then turned around and hurried across the empty street, slipping into an alley and watching from the shadows.
Jenny and Carter hurried up the steps in front of the Ministry complex. Surely at this time of night it would be nearly empty. Nobody should get hurt in the blast. She wanted to get inside but she didn't want to start killing people, even if they worked for the Ministry.
Jenny and Carter moved to opposite sides of the building and crouched down. There was a pause while they pushed the explosives up against the wall, then they moved toward the center, stopping on either side of the main doors. Octavia hoped they wouldn't use all of the explosives. She needed two for when she was inside. One for Tweed and one, hopefully, for her mother.
Jenny and Carter huddled together. There was a flare of light, then they moved apart and touched the Lucifer matches to the fuses.
Octavia could hear the loud hisses even from a distance, the fuses spitting sparks onto the ground and acrid smoke rising into the air. Once they had lit all the explosives, Jenny and Carter ran across the street and joined her in the little alley. They each grabbed one of her arms and hauled her straight for the back wall, where they huddled down and waited.
Octavia had never felt anything like what happened next, not even back at the docks when Holmes bombed the workhouse. The detonation was a solid kick to her entire body. It stunned her with its strength, the shock wave punching her in the face, vibrating through her chest and out the other side. The orange-white light blinded her, throwing stark, razor-sharp shadows across the walls. The roaring, stentorian explosion rattled the buildings and set her ears ringing in protest. The ground trembled, rumbling beneath her feet.
The next thing she knew Carter was throwing her and Jenny to the ground and she heard the crumping, crashing sound of masonry and bricks colliding, falling apart, skidding across the road.
When the sound died down she peered out from under her arm. Dust cloaked her vision. She inhaled, then coughed as the dust crawled into her lungs.
Tiny stones and fragments of building still pitter-pattered around them. Carter stood up, helping
Jenny to her feet. Octavia pushed herself up, then staggered to the mouth of the alley to see the damage.
When she saw what the explosives had done, her mouth dropped open in shock. The whole front of the building was gone, an empty, smoking skeleton. Smoke and flames flicked over blackened, shattered bricks. The three floors stood exposed. She could see into empty offices, could see right along the ground floor hallway into the Ministry itself. Dust and thick, black smoke hung over everything.
It was like a scene from hell.
She gradually became aware that Stepp was speaking to her in her earpiece. “Octavia? Please don't tell me that was the signal, because if it was we're going to be in serious, serious trouble.”
Octavia coughed, then fumbled in her pocket for the trigger. She pushed it. “That was the signal,” she said hoarsely. “And please don't use my name. Songbird, if you please.”
“Fine. Songbird. God, I can't believe you just did that. Interfering with automaton programs now.”
“Good. I'll see you later.”
“Hopefully.”
Octavia turned to Jenny and Carter. They were staring in amazement at the destroyed building in front of them. Jenny turned to Carter and said, “That was a significantly larger explosion than I was expecting.”
“You and me both.” Carter took one of the small explosive packages out of the satchel and examined it. “They certainly look the same.”
“Did you ask for our usual?”
“I did. Ethan must have got it wrong.”
“Then you'd better have words with him. Actually, no, I'll have words with him.”
Octavia took the explosive from Carter. “Thank you. And another one?”
Carter just looked at her.
“One to get Tweed out, and a second to get my mother out.”
Carter glanced at Jenny. She nodded slightly, and Carter sighed and pulled another explosive out his satchel. He handed it to her, then gave her two fuses.
“Just…be careful,” said Jenny. “You saw how powerful they are.”
“I will,” said Octavia. “Stepp's in the steamcoach. You need to go drive her around, otherwise the Ministry will catch her. Tweed and I will see you later.”
Octavia sprinted across the street. By this time, those who'd heard the blast were starting to gather outside the building, staring up at the gutted wreckage. Octavia slipped between them, trying to look like just another nosy Londoner.
Octavia clambered over the rubble, making her way up the steps. She put her hands to the bricks, then snatched them back. They were burning hot. But she managed to blacken her hands, and she rubbed it over her clothes and face, making it look as though she was caught up in the explosion.
She stepped over shards of glass. It was everywhere, crunching underfoot. There was movement up ahead. Someone was coming. Octavia stooped over, staggering forward, sobbing.
“Help me! I was just going home! I was nearly caught in the blast!”
The man, a thin, cadaverous fellow in a black suit stared over her shoulder in horror.
“What happened?”
“I don't know! It was just a noise. Everything went black. I…I think I'm bleeding!”
“Just stay here.” He hurried past her to check the damage to the front of the building. Others were appearing, emerging from offices deeper within the building.
Octavia stepped through the confusion and the panic, realizing as she did so that her disguise to get into the Ministry was going to prove a liability once she was actually inside. The blackened face would most certainly not fit in. So the first thing she had to do was find a bathroom to clean herself up. She had checked the maps—still had them with her, actually—so she knew that after she'd cleaned up she would need to head straight for the elevators that she knew were at the other end of this long corridor.
Octavia had another quick look at the map while the elevator was descending. She still had to get across to the other side of the complex and into the elevator that would take her down to the prison level.
She pushed the transmitter button. “You still with me, Stepp?”
“Still here, crazy lady.”
“How's it gong up there?”
“The police have arrived. Ministry goons are trying to chase them away. Obviously don't want people sniffing around their secret lair.”
Good. More confusion as the Ministry tried to deal with the police meant more time for her. “Are Jenny and Carter with you?”
“Yup. Jenny's driving. Jenny's a good driver.”
“Excuse me? I'm an excellent driver.”
“Sorry, what I meant to say was, Jenny's a safe driver.”
The elevator slid open and Octavia stepped out into a large, open office area. It was chaos. People were running frantically in every direction, speaking urgently to each other, passing on orders, shouting questions. Automata wandered aimlessly around, bumping into Babbages, walls, and each other. One appeared to be trying to walk up a wall.
No one paid the slightest bit of attention to her as she crossed the space and moved into the next large room. The same thing was happening there. Technicians had the chest panels open on some of the automata, pulling out punchcards, trying to see where the problem lay.
Octavia kept moving until she came to the room with the elevators. She hurried across the floor and slipped inside the first one she came to. She looked at the wall panel filled with numbers.
“Stepp, I'm in the elevator.”
“Give me a second. Right. Push 22.”
Octavia pushed the button. The elevator shuddered and started to move. Octavia breathed a sigh of relief. She'd been worried it wouldn't work at all, with all the chaos going on.
She'd been on the move for about twenty-five minutes now, making her way through the labyrinthine complex. Despite the confusion, she kept expecting someone to demand her identification or sound the alarm. She felt exhausted. Although, admittedly, it hadn't exactly been a quiet couple of days.
“Hey, Stepp. Any progress on my mother?”
“Still searching through the records.”
The elevator doors slid open onto a black, metal corridor. Octavia waited, listening intently. She couldn't hear a thing; it was utterly silent. She found that incredibly unnerving after the chaos upstairs.
She crept forward, moving along the passage until she came to a second corridor that intersected hers. She turned right, then kept walking until she arrived at an open door.
Octavia peered inside. The room beyond was huge, a cavernous space where even her breathing seemed to echo. She stepped hesitantly forward, moving onto a walkway that circled a massive shaft in the ground. She walked quietly forward and leaned over the railing, staring down at the hundreds of prison cells below her. The scale was just…enormous.
“Stepp,” she whispered. “I'm here. What do I do?”
“You should see a cage of some sort. An elevator. Get in.”
About ten paces to her left was the cage Stepp was talking about. It was attached by a metal arm to a pillar that disappeared down into the shaft.
Octavia climbed in and pulled the gate shut. The cage twirled around and dropped, moving smoothly until it came to a stop about ten floors down. There was an open door in front of her. Octavia stepped out and looked inside. It had been in recent use, the bedclothes scattered on the floor. This must have been where Barnaby was held. Which meant Tweed had to be close. She moved to the right, peering inside the other cells. After looking inside fifteen with no luck, she retraced her steps and checked the cells to the left.
The surge of relief she felt when she glimpsed Tweed pacing back and forth in the cramped confines of the cell was surprising even to her.
But it wasn't as surprising as the look of happiness on Tweed's face when he saw her staring through the viewing hole.
“Songbird!” he exclaimed. “How…?” He rushed forward, trying to peer out the door to either side. “How did you get here? Did you see Barnaby? What's happening? I've got
myself locked in,” he finished lamely. “A bit silly, really.”
“A bit silly?” said Octavia. “Rather stupid, if you ask me.”
Tweed quickly straightened up. “Lucky I wasn't asking you then,” he said. “Has Stepp figured out these locks yet?”
“No.”
“So how do I get out?”
Octavia held up the two packages of explosives. “Bang.”
Tweed's eyes widened. “You're joking with me, yes? You'll kill me!”
“It's a risk I'm willing to take,” said Octavia. “Seriously, there's no other choice. And I'm hoping the explosion will direct itself outward.”
“Hoping?”
“Just give me a minute. Stepp? Any progress on locating my mother?”
“Uh…yes and no.”
Octavia turned away. “What do you mean?” she asked, feeling dread flowing through her system. She was suddenly unsure if she wanted to know the answer.
“Well, the thing is, she was here. You were right. But for some reason she was moved about three weeks ago.”
Three weeks ago? Octavia stared into the distance, her eyes filling with tears. Her mother had still been alive three weeks ago. She had been right all along!
“Where was she taken?”
“Not sure. It's all official though. Proper requisitions, proper transfer papers. Doesn't say where she went, though.”
Right. Concentrate, Octavia. That can be dealt with later. “Stepp, copy everything down concerning my mother. Her files, the names of the people who signed the transfer papers, everything.”
“Got it.”
Octavia took a deep, shaky breath, then turned and fixed Tweed with a brilliant, happy smile. “She's alive. My mother. They moved her from here three weeks ago. I told you, Tweed. I always knew…”