Metamorphosis

by Marty Chan

  Ehrich’s heart sank. His one lead to Ole Lukoje was gone.

  “Well, this looks easy to fix. Just a matter of how much you need it mended.”

  “What?”

  “How much are you willing to pay?”

  “Oh. Of course,” Ehrich said. “How much for your services?”

  “Five cents. You should learn how to sew, Blackstone. Might save you some money in the future.”

  “Then I’d put you out of work.”

  Bess laughed as she perched on a hard bench near the window. She pulled a needle and thread from a sewing box. He wondered if she missed the footlights and the audiences of the Bijou Theatre—maybe not the catcalls or the theatre owner’s wandering hands. He wondered if she still performed or if she cared about the Harry Houdini act anymore.

  A series of knocks from upstairs shook him out of his reverie.

  “Is your employer upstairs?” he asked.

  “No. It’s one of my patients. He’s a handful.” She looked up and called out, “What do you want, Charlie?!”

  Ehrich stiffened. Charlie? Awake? Questions flooded his mind.

  Charlie’s voice called back. “I’m thirsty.”

  “I’ll get you water in a minute.”

  “I’m really thirsty.”

  She sighed and set the jacket down. Ehrich waved her off. “No, I can do it.”

  “Now you’re doing my job.”

  “I don’t mind. Call it a fair trade.”

  “You still have to pay.”

  “I will, but now you’ll owe me something in return.”

  “Thank you. You’ll find a pitcher of fresh lemonade in the kitchen. Take a left off the hallway.”

  Ehrich entered the kitchen, found the lemonade, and poured a glass. Then he headed upstairs.

  “I’m dying of thirst,” Charlie cried out from the room at the top of the stairs.

  “It’s on the way,” Bess yelled from below.

  Ehrich pushed the bedroom door open. He stifled a gasp at the sight of his old friend sitting upright in a narrow bed. The shock of blond hair was longer and his face was gaunt, but he was alive and alert.

  Charlie smiled. “You’re new.” His voice was hoarse. “You a friend of Bess’s?”

  “No, a lost traveller. She’s mending my jacket and I’m repaying her the kindness. Here.” He stepped around the wheelchair sitting in front of the bed and passed Charlie the glass of lemonade.

  “Thanks. My name’s Charlie. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to?”

  “Blackstone. Nice to meet you.”

  Charlie sipped the lemonade. “Ah. That’s good. Do we know each other?”

  Ehrich tapped the side of his leg nervously. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “I ain’t so good with faces but I’m damn good with voices, and yours sounds familiar.”

  Ehrich shook his head. “No one’s ever said I had an unforgettable voice. You should hear me sing. That you’ll never forget. It will haunt your nightmares.”

  “I suppose it might.”

  “So, what happened to you?” Ehrich asked.

  “Oh, this. I’ll be able to walk eventually, but the muscles need to be built up again. I got into a scrap with some demons. They didn’t take too kindly to me.”

  “Are you all right now?”

  “Bess said I was in a coma for a few months, then one day I just woke up.”

  Ehrich probed a little deeper. “When did that happen?”

  “Not sure, really. I guess it was a few months back. Summer-time. Weird thing was, when I got up, I thought I was back with my squad mates.”

  “You worked as a hunter?” Ehrich asked, but he knew the answer.

  “Of course I did. Of all people, you should know that, Ehrich.”

  Ehrich froze.

  The Coil’s Call

  At the Hudson River tunnel project, Amina supervised her recruits. The first hour or so had been tough for them, trying to blend in with the travellers. She nudged the pair to move on when a group of people began staring at them. Now the recruits were settled near the middle section of the fence with a quiet group of women standing around a barrel fire.

  Amina then headed to another group of travellers. She sidled up to them. “Any word on when the project will start up again?” she asked.

  “Do I look like an official?” a woman with wide eyes asked.

  “I thought you might have heard rumours.”

  “The same stories we hear all the time. They’re going to open it when we leave. They’re going to put us back to work but only if we agree to work for half as much. They’re bringing in people from across the sea to work in the tunnel. They’re all just stories.”

  “How long had you been working in the tunnel?”

  “Me? Since they started the project. You?”

  “I got the job about a week before it shut down. My name is Amina.” She reached out a hand to shake.

  “Hexacate,” the woman replied, waving it off with her seven-fingered hand.

  “Nice to meet you. I don’t know how much longer I can wait for the project to start up again. I’m down to picking scraps from the trash for food,” Amina said.

  “We still have a few supplies. You’re welcome to them.”

  “I don’t want to use up your stores. Besides, I’ve heard there’s food if people are willing to do some work for it.”

  The tall woman leaned in. “Where did you hear this?”

  “Around.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Nothing too hard. Watching the guards on the fence, taking note of their shifts, and any lapses in security.”

  “Sounds less like work and more like preparing for an assault.”

  “Interested?”

  Hexacate shook her head. “Any battle against the humans isn’t going to end well for our kind. They’ll have more reasons to kick us out of their dimension. You should tell whoever is offering this work to think twice before they ruin what little chance we have of making peace with the people here.”

  “Momma, I’m cold.” A young boy tugged on Hexacate’s skirt.

  The burly woman wrapped her arms around the boy. She smiled and walked away with her son. Amina wasn’t going to get any help from these travellers. She hoped the others were making progress.

  .

  In Mr. Serenity’s laboratory, Nikola Tesla tinkered with the tome-like codex the group had used when they posed as a magic act. On the wall, the projected image of Ehrich as Harry Houdini stepped into a trunk. Tesla adjusted a dial to bring the image into sharper focus. He played with the scale of the image, remembering how they had used this to entertain the Bijou audiences.

  Beside him, Mr. Serenity examined the Infinity Coil, scratching his head as he probed at the countless gears within the medallion. He sighed and slapped his tools on the counter.

  Tesla glanced over. “Not making any progress, I gather.”

  “On the surface, this medallion looks like a mechanical marvel, but it’s more than gears and sprockets. It’s impossible to squeeze that much metal into something that can fit in my hand, yet it exists. It’s a paradox.”

  Tesla moved closer and examined the Infinity Coil mounted between the clamps. The intricate designs along the medallion’s perimeter appeared to be infinity symbols, but what fascinated Tesla was the endless network of gears on the front of the medallion, which overlapped each other and descended far deeper into the copper-coloured device than they should have been able to.

  Mr. Serenity asked, “Have you ever seen the likes of this kind of device?”

  “This is beyond anything I could have even dreamed of. The gears are powered through no motor that I can see.”

  “And yet they are in perpetual motion.” Mr. Serenity noted the precise ticking movements
of the gears. Some rotated clockwise. Others moved counter clockwise. But they all moved in sync with each other.

  “If we are to see how this device works, it only makes sense to separate it into its corresponding components.”

  “I suppose you are right, Tesla.” The rotund man picked up a pair of tweezers and a thin metal probe. He inserted the probe between the cogs of one of the larger gears near the top of the medallion. The gear continued to rotate. He applied more pressure but couldn’t stop the machine.

  “What’s wrong, Mr. Serenity?”

  “I’m not sure, but it seems the gears are stronger than I thought.”

  “Let me help,” Tesla offered. He picked up another metal probe, about the width of a pencil lead and inserted it through the spoke of the gear Mr. Serenity was trying to stop. His eyes widened when the instrument recoiled from the contact, like the two positive ends of a magnet repelling each other. At the same moment, Mr. Serenity’s instrument snapped. The tip flew off and skittered across the lab table.

  “Curious,” Mr. Serenity said. “Perhaps we’ll need something non-ferrous.”

  “And something a bit sturdier.”

  The bigger man rubbed his chin. “Vezium is the strongest metal that existed in my world. It would be like the iron you have in this world but 50 times stronger.”

  “Well, then, I wish we could get our hands on some.”

  Mr. Serenity held up the broken end of his instrument. “I did.”

  Tesla’s eyes widened.

  Mr. Serenity drummed his fingers on his worktable. “I have a device that can scan the internal workings of machines without pulling them apart.”

  “Intriguing. What do you call your device?”

  “A radiographometer.” Mr. Serenity beamed as he stepped to the far end of the room to roll a large boxy machine with glass tubes along the top and copper tubes throughout the mainframe. He attached the codex to the top of the box. “This will show us what the device sees.” He rolled the machine to the counter with the Infinity Coil until the two were nearly touching. He pulled a lever on the machine. Diodes began to flash. The glass tubes filled with smoke. He motioned Tesla to step back.

  A powerful beam of green light bathed the medallion. The codex lens sparked to life and projected the image of the Infinity Coil against the far wall. Mr. Serenity adjusted a lever on the radiographometer and the image inverted in colour from white to black. To Tesla’s surprise, tiny ghostly faces appeared on the surface of the medallion. They began to expand from the Infinity Coil to fill the entire screen. The faces of men, women, and children bobbed on the screen like flotsam on top of the ocean.

  Mr. Serenity scratched his head. “I don’t understand. We should be seeing the inside of the Infinity Coil. Gears, mechanisms.”

  “My friend, I think we are seeing the true coil. The gears are what we perceive on the outside, but these are the souls of the people trapped within.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “The Infinity Coil defies explanation, Mr. Serenity. I want to say it’s mechanical, but I think the device is just as much mystical.”

  “Magic. I can’t subscribe to that, Nikola, and surely you can’t, either.”

  “Advanced technology will seem like magic until the secrets are unlocked. When I first proposed the idea of conducting electricity without copper wires, people thought I was insane.”

  Suddenly, the faces twisted in agony and uttered silent screams. The people in the image almost appeared to be the tortured prisoners of Dante’s Inferno.

  Mr. Serenity turned off the machine and the images faded out.

  “This is beyond anything I could imagine. I can’t begin to explain half of this,” Tesla said.

  “I think I know who might,” replied Mr. Serenity. “Dash.”

  Tesla shook his head. “The boy’s fragile and I’m not certain if he has any inkling of the inner workings of the Infinity Coil.”

  “But he is the only one who has experienced the power of the medallion.”

  “We promised Ehrich we would not involve Dash.”

  “I’m merely suggesting a few probing general questions to give us some direction on how to proceed. Surely there can be no harm in asking him a question or two.”

  “I suppose not, but can we do it after lunch?”

  Mr. Serenity chuckled as he ushered his friend out of the lab. “My friend, you’re always hungry. How on Earth do you manage to stay slim with an appetite like that?”

  “Constitutional walks are the key.”

  “Let’s bring Dash. The boy could use a hot meal and some company. I think he is homesick. I’ve seen that mood in the other refugees in Purgatory. Solitude does not improve the mood. However, breaking bread with comrades provides a welcome distraction.”

  “A good point, especially if that bread is the tetraz cake in the marketplace.”

  Mr. Serenity clapped his friend on the back and they headed out of the chambers. They arrived at the Weisz brothers’ quarters and Tesla knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again.

  “Dash?”

  Still nothing. Mr. Serenity pushed the door open. The room was empty.

  “Dash! Hello? That’s odd. Where could the boy have gone to?”

  Mr. Serenity walked down the hallway. “Let’s check the other rooms.”

  They walked along the hallway to Amina’s room. The place was in shambles. Clothes were strewn across the floor and old half-eaten sandwiches sat on top of the unmade bed. She was a mighty warrior and a lousy housekeeper.

  They moved to Tesla’s room. In contrast to Amina’s mess, his room was impeccably neat. Not even a hair would have been found anywhere among the neatly stacked clothes on the dresser.

  “Do you think he went outside?” Mr. Serenity asked.

  “You suggested he was homesick. Perhaps he’s looking for something familiar.”

  “In Purgatory? What could that be?”

  “Nothing here that I can think of. What about the surface?” Tesla asked. “You don’t think he ran away, do you?”

  They hustled to the docking station of the pneumatic tube transport system. One bay was empty while a sled was parked in the other one. Mr. Serenity scratched his head. “Amina and Ehrich took one to the surface, so there’s no way Dash could have gone up this way. Where could he have gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They returned to Mr. Serenity’s chambers. As they entered, Tesla noticed the door to the lab was wide open. He glanced at Mr. Serenity and then glanced at the open door. His companion inched along the wall and picked up a lamp from a nearby table to use as a weapon. He inched to the doorway with Tesla behind him.

  The two men peeked into the doorway, then Mr. Serenity shoved the door open and jumped into the lab. He waved the lamp at the intruder within—Dash. The young Weisz was trying to pry the Infinity Coil from the clamps.

  “Stop!” Mr. Serenity said. “What are you doing?”

  The boy withdrew his hands and stuck them behind his back. “Nothing.”

  Tesla came out from behind Mr. Serenity. “You know you’re not supposed to be in here by yourself.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dash said.

  Mr. Serenity walked over and examined the medallion. It was still safely moored in the clamps. “Why were you trying to take the Infinity Coil?”

  “I wasn’t,” he said.

  “Easy, Dash,” Tesla said. “You know this is a dangerous artefact.”

  “I know how dangerous it is. It’s ruined my life.” He stormed out of the lab before Tesla could stop him.

  Mr. Serenity turned to his friend. “Do you think he wanted to steal it or destroy it?”

  “I don’t know, but I think I’d better find out what’s bothering the boy.”

  Surprise Visit

  “How did you know?” Ehri
ch asked, self-consciously pressing his fingers against his fake goatee.

  Charlie chuckled. “You expect people only to look at your face, but a hunter notices everything. I’ve been your partner long enough to recognize your nervous tic. Tapping your leg. Then there’s the way you speak.”

  “I lowered my voice.”

  “You can’t hide the rhythm of your speech or the way your eyes shift around the room. You can take the guy out of the hunter but you can’t take the hunter out of the guy. That spider on your face real or did you grow it?”

  Ehrich laughed. “Fake. I’m relieved that you’re no longer in the coma.”

  “Yeah? Bess said my body made pretty good bait.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Weird story. She claimed a Dimensional could possess people, and you tried to trick him into taking over my body to trap him inside me.”

  “I didn’t know if you were ever going to come out of the coma.”

  “So you assumed I was going to be thrilled with being used as a meat puppet.”

  Ehrich raised his hands. “I know it was wrong, and I can’t ever expect that you’d forgive me, but I needed to catch this assassin.”

  “Ehrich, you nearly wiped me out forever.”

  “If there’s anything I could do to make it up to you, I would.”

  “You want to make it up to me?”

  “Yes. What can I do?”

  Charlie beckoned him closer. “You know what you could do for me?”

  “Yes? What?”

  “I’d kill for a steak and some potatoes. I’d even settle for fresh oysters and hot yams.” Charlie broke into a grin and laughed. “I had you on the line. The colour left your face faster than a cat shoots out of a rain barrel. Oh, man, you were squirming.”

  “So you’re not mad at me?”

  “Oh, I’m spittin’ mad. Never came to visit me when I regained consciousness. What kind of friend are you?”

  “I didn’t know. When did you wake up?”

  “A week after you pulled that stunt. The doctor can’t explain it, but I think it was something you did. In a way, I owe you my life, but you’re still a bad friend for not visiting.”