The Affinity Bridge nahi-1

by George Mann

  Bainbridge smiled. "He fixes things."

  Newbury woke with a start. He sucked at the air.

  His head was throbbing, although he felt as if he'd somehow been infused with a warm, liquid glow; warmth that started in his belly and seemed to seep upwards towards his head, gloriously taking the edge off his pain and leaving his mind to wander in a drowsy state of semi-consciousness. He knew the sensation of old.

  Opium.

  Newbury peeled open his eyes, and then immediately shut them again. The light in the room was blinding, clinically sharp, and it seared the back of his retinas like a hot knife. He drew a ragged breath, pulling the air down into his lungs. His chest felt like it was on fire. Cautiously, he tried to open his eyes again, reaching up to shelter them from the glare with cupped hands. Stinging tears ran down his cheeks. He blinked them away. Finally, an image resolved.

  He was lying on his back on a hard, metal table. A face was looming over him. He tried to sit up.

  "No, Sir Maurice. Try to lay still. Everything is going to be alright."

  Newbury felt a hand on his chest, holding him still on the table. He blinked up at the strange face that was hovering over him. The man was in his late forties, balding, with a neatly trimmed black beard. A bizarre mechanical contraption sat on his head, like a wire frame that encompassed his temples and forehead, with various accoutrements and glass lenses attached to it on folding levers and arms. The man reached up and flipped one of these lenses down over one eye.

  "Who are you? Where am I?" Newbury had a panicked edge to his voice.

  "I'm the Fixer, and you're in my workshop, underneath my home. You have nothing to worry about."

  Newbury breathed a sigh of relief, allowing himself to relax. He'd never had occasion to visit the Fixer before, but he was well aware that the man existed; a personal surgeon of Her Majesty's who made himself available to her agents in times of dire need. He remembered Bainbridge speaking about him in the carriage, just after the attack. What was not good was the fact that, if he was here, his situation was potentially very grave indeed.

  Newbury quickly discovered that his abdomen and shoulder lanced with pain every time he made even the slightest motion with his body. He tried to lie still, giving himself over to the warmth of the opium, but the Fixer had been wise and had only dosed him with enough to take the edge off the pain, and not enough to render him unconscious again. He felt gloved hands tearing at his clothes and the faint stirring of a breeze on his exposed flesh. Nevertheless, the room itself was warm, and listening to the sounds around him he had the sense of a workshop full of bizarre, mechanical devices. There was a faint electrical hum, accompanied by the occasional sound of a belching valve as it issued forth a cloud of hot steam, as well as the constant tick-tock of numerous clockwork engines powering objects that he could not see from his limited vantage point on the table. Newbury tried not to imagine what the man was about to do to him with the strange machines that were making such sounds.

  The Fixer appeared in his field of vision once again, wavering slightly under the influence of the opium, and then disappeared. Newbury could hear him shuffling around the other side of the table. The Fixer cleared his throat, and then began to speak, offering a running commentary as he examined Newbury's wounds. His voice, Newbury noticed, was gruff and gravelley, the voice of a man who'd smoked too much heavy shag in his time. "Hmmm. A vicious bite in the left clavicular area, there. Serious tears to the flesh and muscular tissue. Excessive blood loss." He paused for a moment, poking sharply at the wounds on Newbury's chest. "Deep gouges in the chest. Numerous flesh wounds. A severe laceration in the left side of the chest and abdomen. My, my. You have been busy."

  Newbury stirred uncomfortably. He waited until he heard the other man move away from the table, his footsteps ringing on the tiled floor, and then, with a significant effort, managed to prop himself up on one elbow. The Fixer stood at the foot of the table, fiddling with an array of surgical tools, which pinged noisily on a steel tray. Beside him on a wooden trolley was a rack of steel hypodermic syringes, which contained a range of strange, multi-coloured fluids. Newbury took the opportunity to take a better look at the man who called himself the Fixer. Aside from the contraption on his head, the man was wearing a tarnished leather smock and matching leather gloves. Newbury couldn't help thinking that he had more of the appearance of a butcher about him than of a physician. He had a ruddy complexion and the manner of a public schoolboy. Newbury suspected he spent a great deal of time in his workshop, and very little time engaging with the world.

  Unsure what was likely to happen next, and unwilling to ask, Newbury cast his eyes around the room, trying to get a measure of his surroundings.

  The basement was lit by a series of long, unusual gas lamps that arced across the ceiling from one wall to the other, curved glass tubes that terminated with gas valves where they met the walls at each end. An array of bizarre machines and surgical tables filled the space in between. One of these-a large, brass contraption about the size of a small table, with two glass vats full of bubbling fluid atop it-had long coils of tubing that snaked out from the belly of the machine and away into the dark corners of the room. Another, smaller contraption was fitted with wheezing bellows of the sort Newbury had seen attached to Queen Victoria's life-preserving engine. It even rose and fell with the same constant rhythm of Her Majesty's breathing machine, although in this instance it appeared that the bellows were helping to power an unusual electrical device, the lights on it flickering from orange to blue as the exposed filaments danced with the current.

  The alarming contraption above Newbury's own table was connected to an extensive brass framework, a kind of large gun on a moveable rail, with fat tubing trailing from the back of it and disappearing into a nearby hatch in the floor. The device had a trigger fitted to the undercarriage and the end of it terminated in a spread of fine needles, bunched together to form a neat point. Newbury shivered.

  The Fixer turned to notice him looking. "Impressive, isn't it?" He turned to encapsulate the room with a gesture of his arms, indicating the various machines. "This is what Dr. Fabian gets up to when he isn't busy attending to Her Majesty or running errands for the likes of you and Sir Charles. Works of genius, every one of them."

  Groggily, Newbury met his gaze, and felt immediately disorientated by the sight of the man's strange eyewear, which magnified the appearance of his right eye so that it seemed at least three times the size of his left. "So, what's next? Surgery?"

  The Fixer smiled. "Of a sort. I'm going to knit your shoulder and chest back together with my stitching machine." He indicated the gun-like device on the rail overhead. "Then I can give you a blood transfusion and a dose of one of Dr. Fabian's excellent compounds."

  Newbury narrowed his eyes. "What will it do?"

  "Fix you, of course." The man beamed. Newbury held his gaze, a serious expression on his face. Sighing, the Fixer continued. "It's derived from a rare flower that Fabian discovered out in the Congo last year. When the powder is dissolved in saline and transfused into the human body, it boosts the existing immune system, helping the blood cells to clot and bind, so that muscles and bones can reconnect very swiftly indeed. I wish we'd know about it before; could have saved a lot of trouble with Ashford all those years ago." He paused, tapping his foot on the tiles as if planning his next move. "Come on. Let's get you under the knife. You'll know the effects of the treatment soon enough, anyway."

  Cautiously, Newbury laid his head back against the hard surface of the table. The Fixer moved round to stand beside him, reaching over to wash his shoulder wound with a wet cloth. The antiseptic fluid burned angrily where it came into contact with the damaged, puckered flesh. Newbury winced and clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth, as the other man reached up and took hold of the stitching machine. Newbury closed his eyes. He heard the device firing up, the rat-a-tat-tat of the needles scraping back and forth as the Fixer applied pressure to the trigger, testing the pneumatic power. He
brought the gun closer to Newbury's shoulder, and then, without any further warning, he jabbed the device into the soft tissue underneath the skin of Newbury's left arm. The needles began to puncture the lacerated flesh in a torrent of relentless pinpricks. Newbury screamed out in agony as the device stitched a series of fine filaments deep into his clavicular muscles; slowly, deliberately, knitting his shoulder back together. The Fixer began to move the device along the extent of the wound, closing the flesh where the revenant's mouth had torn it open. Blackness swam around the edges of Newbury's vision.

  He swooned, and everything went dark.

  When Newbury came round again he was lying on a bed, his head resting on the soft, downy pillows, a thick woollen blanket pulled up over his waist. Thin rubber tubes jutted rudely from incisions made in each of his wrists, trailing off toward large machines on either side of him, one of which was giving off a deep, mechanical rumble and a gentle gasp of warm air. He tried to sit up, but felt his shoulder pulling tightly where the Fixer and his stitching machine had done their work. He flexed his fingers and tentatively moved his arm, feeling that he'd regained a lot of strength in the limb. The pain in his shoulder and abdomen had mostly subsided to a dull ache. He lifted the corner of the blanket warily and looked down at the line of puckered flesh where the machine had sewn him back together again. It was bruised and purple, and had an ungainly web-work of black stitches weaving across it, but it was far better than an open wound, and in truth he felt almost normal again.

  "Marvellous, isn't it?" Newbury looked up, noting for the first time that the Fixer was sitting in a chair by the side of the bed, watching him intently as he explored his handiwork. His strange headpiece was on the table beside him. He looked considerably more normal without his leather smock and gloves. "It won't leave much of a scar there, either, what with the watertight stitches and the transfusion of Dr. Fabian's healing compound that you're receiving." The Fixer smiled. "It'll be sore for a few weeks, though."

  Newbury folded the blanket back over his lap. "How long before I'm up and about?"

  "A couple of hours. There's no reason to keep you here, once the transfusions are complete and we've found you some suitable clothes. You should go home and rest, let the compound do its work." He waved at Newbury's abdomen underneath the fawn-coloured blanket. "It should hold up, even if you do find yourself in another scrape. Those stitches aren't designed to give out on you. You'll need to come back in a couple of weeks to have them out again, whatever the case."

  Newbury grimaced at the thought of it. He lifted his arms, presenting his wrists to the other man. "Which one's which?"

  "The machine on your left is giving you blood. The one on your right is giving you the saline solution." Newbury glanced at the machine to the left of him. It seemed to be vibrating gently, humming as it pumped the fluid along the coiling black tube and up into his arm. A panel near the Fixer's chair was decorated with a series of dials, all of which had been turned to various positions that made no sense to Newbury, at least from where he was sitting. He met the other man's eye, indicating the transfusion machine "Why is it so noisy?"

  "Ah. That's the refrigeration unit. I use that to keep the blood from congealing. It doesn't last long out of the body. Luckily for you, Rothford is a willing donor, and his blood type is compatible with most people's."

  "Rothford?"

  "My manservant."

  Newbury nodded.

  "You'll meet him shortly. Now, though, you need to lay back and rest. I'll come and disconnect you shortly, once we're both convinced that you're ready to take a walk." The Fixer stood at the foot of the bed, smiling, and then disappeared into the gloom. Newbury allowed his head to fall back onto the pillow. The effects of the opium had worn off and his skin crawled with craving. He longed for the warm glow of the drug. He thought of the small bottle of laudanum on the shelf in his study, thought momentarily of what he might do when he got home…and then thought of Veronica, and the manner in which she had found him just a couple of days before. It wouldn't do to descend into that madness again. Sighing, he closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep, listening to the sounds of the gurgling fluid that was currently seeping into his bloodstream.

  A couple of hours later, dressed only in a plain white robe, and with thick, yellow poultices applied to his wounds, Newbury followed the Fixer up a small internal staircase and into a waiting area that was set out like a gentleman's reception room. Rothford, the Fixer's manservant, was waiting for them there, his hands folded neatly behind his back. He stood when the two gentlemen came into the room.

  The Fixer spoke first. "Rothford, this is Sir Maurice Newbury. He'll be needing your attention, as well as some assistance finding suitable attire. Please treat him as a guest in this house."

  Rothford gave a single nod of the head, and then glanced at Newbury, a twinkle in his eye. "Very good, sir."

  The Fixer clapped a hand on Newbury's arm, carefully avoiding the wound on his shoulder. "I'll leave you in Rothford's capable hands. Be sure to take some time to rest." He turned to leave, and Newbury reached out to stop him. He offered the Fixer a sincere smile. "Thank you, I…"

  The other man shook his head. "Don't thank me. Simply try to ensure that you don't need my attentions again in the near future, especially before you're back to have those stitches out."

  Newbury laughed, causing his chest to burn with pain. "I'm not planning on it, I'll give you that much."

  The Fixer smiled. "For men in our profession, Sir Maurice, that has to be enough. Good day to you."

  "Likewise." Newbury watched as the man disappeared from the room, descending the stairs towards his workshop once again.

  Rothford approached from the other side of the room. "If you'd like to come with me, Sir Maurice, I'll show you to our dressing room."

  Newbury nodded and followed behind Rothford as he led him through a door, along a short passageway and through another door into a small room on the left. It was furnished with a wardrobe, cheval-glass mirror and dressing table. Rothford crossed to the wardrobe and opened the doors with a flourish. Inside, Newbury could see that it was filled with all manner of formal suits and dresses, white shirts and underclothes. He wondered how many 'visitors' the Fixer regularly received.

  Rothford searched through the rack of clothes for a moment, before withdrawing a black suit on a hanger and holding it up beside Newbury. "There. I should imagine this will suit. I'll lay it on the chair over here." He draped it over the back of the tall chair by the dressing table. "Please feel free to help yourself to a shirt and underclothes. When you're decent you'll find me in the reception room at the other end of this short hallway. I'll organise some breakfast. Bacon and eggs?"

  "Thank you." Newbury nodded, unsure what else to say. He watched as Rothford exited the room, clicking the door shut behind him.

  Then, gingerly, he disrobed, eyeing his wounds in the cheval-glass. The line of bruised, puckered flesh that ran down the left side of him looked angry and sore. Yet, strangely, he felt decidedly more alert than he had in days. He supposed that had a lot to do with Dr. Fabian's miraculous healing compound. He made a mental note to attempt to find out the name of the flower it was derived from. It would make an interesting study, and he could do worse than to have a small amount of the compound available to him at his Chelsea lodgings.

  Taking care to dress slowly so as to avoid pulling on his stitching, Newbury was soon feeling more like his usual self, and with the promise of eggs and bacon just along the hall, he realised he was absolutely famished. Finding a pile of his personal belongings arranged on the dressing table, he slipped these into the pockets of the borrowed suit and set off in search of Rothford, Earl Grey, and food.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Veronica sat beside Amelia on a wooden bench on the grounds of the asylum, wrapped up against the chill. They were watching the other inmates as they circled the airing court like a flock of birds, each following the others as they walked, their feet crunching
noisily on the gravel. Nurses kept a watchful eye from one end of the courtyard, gossiping amongst themselves and dressed in thick winter coats. Their breath plumed in the frosty air.

  Veronica glanced at Amelia, who-even dressed in a heavy coat and shawl-was shivering with the cold. She put her arm around her sister, hugging her closer for warmth. Veronica knew that she shouldn't have come. She could think of a hundred reasons why she shouldn't be there that day, why she'd have been far better off staying away, yet none of them seemed quite as important as the reason she had finally given in and made the journey across town. Now, here, she could barely face her sister, who had been delighted by the unexpected visit and had clutched her brightly, kissing her fondly on the cheek. Tired and emotional after a difficult morning, Veronica had chosen to walk with Amelia in the gardens before broaching the true reason for her visit.

  After Sir Charles had deposited her at her Kensington lodgings, Veronica had found herself alone in her apartment, her housekeeper out running errands around town. She had stripped out of her filthy clothes, poured herself a scalding hot bath, and sat weeping on the bathroom floor, her knees drawn up to her chin, tears streaking down her blood-caked cheeks. She sat like this for at least an hour, cycling through the full gamut of emotions, from relief to anxiety and then back again. She had been so terrified by those detestable creatures as they attacked the cab, trying to peel the door away to get at her and Bainbridge inside, that she had done little to aid in the battle. She cursed herself for being so weak. She was a strong woman, a fighter, but she had seen no way out of that dreadful scenario, and had almost given herself over to her fast-approaching fate, when Sir Maurice had appeared out of the fog and taken on the two monsters single-handedly, drawing them away from the cab. She felt ashamed that her first thought had been to flee, to get away from there as quickly as possible whilst she had the chance, to abandon Newbury to the monsters in an effort to save herself from harm. Reason had reasserted itself, however, and she had remained in the carriage, knowing that there was little she could do to help him as he fought the creatures in the fog-enshrouded street. She had come close to rushing out there to aid him when she heard him crying out in pain, but she knew in truth that she would have only served as a distraction and that, had she taken on one of the creatures herself, she would have surely lost out to its brutish strength and animalistic will.