The Circus of Machinations

by Chris Ward

  The more distant something became, though, the weaker his hold over it, and the tiny explosive came to a bouncing stop in the shadow of the stairwell. Too late, the Grey Man realised what he had inadvertently done.

  The little robot exploded, bringing the stairwell above it crashing down to cover the cave entrance, sealing the only way into or out of the hangar.

  He had sealed his own tomb.

  Kurou’s laughter seemed to come from everywhere, and a moment later he realised that it did, from speakers fitted high up in the walls. The Grey Man tried to sit up, looking around, searching for some other way out or something he could use to first free himself from the wires encircling him, then unblock the entrance so he could escape before he ran out of oxygen.

  Then, almost as if the curtain was coming down on the final act of mankind’s greatest stage performance, the lights went out, plunging the cavern into total and complete darkness.

  44

  Hellos and Goodbyes

  Victor had just reached the medical bay corridor when he felt the explosion on the level below. A blast of warm air made him blink, then everything went quiet. Whatever had happened, only one thing was certain: he didn’t have much time left to save Isabella and get them both to safety.

  He took the wrench from his bag and crept along the corridor, staying close to the wall as he approached the turn before the door to Isabella’s room. He peered around it, his eyes going wide at a sight of disarray. The walls of the corridor were seared with burn marks and scarred from some kind of explosion. The door had buckled and in front of it lay the twisted remains of a chair.

  The guard’s body lay in a heap several metres further along the corridor, thrown there by the explosion, his clothes ripped and chard. Feeling nauseous, Victor looked down, and saw the imprints of a small pair of shoes leading through the dust of the explosion and up to the door.

  A sudden fear for Isabella overwhelmed everything, but even then he hesitated. What if she was already dead and her killer was waiting for him?

  He put a hand on the damaged door and eased it open a few inches. From inside came the beeping of Isabella’s life support, accompanied by the rustle of the ventilator. He breathed a sigh of relief and pushed the door a little wider.

  When it was halfway open it stopped, blocked by something on the floor behind it. Victor eased into the gap, looked down, and saw the end of one of Robert Mortin’s crutches pushed against the edge of the door. He tried to kick it out of the way, but it was held in place by the weight of Robert Mortin’s body on top of it.

  Robert was lying on his back, spread-eagled on the floor, one crutch at his side and the one blocking the door stuck beneath him. He had been shot in the face, but his head had lolled to the side, shadows hiding the worst of the damage.

  The room was in semi-darkness, the only light coming from the monitors and a small table lamp. Victor felt the need to close the door, as if it would block out all the world’s troubles. He pushed it as far closed as he could. Only then did he realise that Isabella wasn’t the only person in the room.

  The girl was sitting on a chair in the corner, a gun on her lap. She didn’t move as he came in, but he heard her give a quiet sigh.

  ‘Hello, Victor. You took your time.’

  ‘Patricia.’

  Victor’s heart was thundering. He had considered a thousand eventualities on his way up here, but Isabella’s little sister hadn’t crossed his mind. Over the last few days the girl had been nearly invisible, helping with the war effort and staying out of sight.

  ‘What happens now?’ she said, patting the gun against her knees. ‘I wondered if you’d come. I thought you might. Not much else left for you, is there?’

  It felt like he should say something heroic, or meaningful, or even diplomatic, but all he could muster was a quiet, ‘No.’

  ‘I’d like to blame you for everything that’s happened, for the war, and the train crash and my father’s death, and a thousand other things. I’d like to say that everything is your fault, but it’s not, is it? You didn’t start the war, and you had no real involvement in ending it. Nothing much was your fault really.’ She cocked the gun. In the gloom Victor couldn’t even tell what kind of gun it was. ‘No, the only thing I can really blame you for is the death of my brother.’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  She raised a hand, rolling her eyes as if he was a complaining child. ‘I know, I know. Don’t waste your breath. I know you didn’t kill him, that it was Kurou’s machine. Whatever. Who cares now? You’re not listening to me, Victor. I could blame you, but that wouldn’t be right. It wasn’t your fault, just like what happened to Isabella wasn’t your fault. Nothing was your fault.’

  She lifted the gun and fired it into the ceiling, causing a cascade of dust and concrete. In the tiny room the sound was incredibly loud. Victor shrank back, clutching the bag to him like a comfort blanket.

  ‘You see, Victor, I can’t blame you for anything. You’re such a spineless pathetic weed that you’ve drifted through your whole life doing nothing of any importance or note, making no impression.’ She leaned forward into the light, and the pure, uncontained rage on her face made him flinch. ‘You’re such a worthless, nothing of a human being that I want to blow your fucking face right off your skull.’

  The ferocity of her hatred was stunning. It took Victor a few seconds of uselessly working his jaw up and down before he could muster forth a reply.

  ‘I … I … I can save Isabella.’

  ‘Save her? You think that condemning her to a life with you is saving her? The only way to save her is with this gun.’

  Patricia stood up and pointed the gun at Isabella’s face.

  ‘No, don’t hurt her!’

  She turned towards him. ‘Are you going to stop me? Go on, Victor. I’ll make it easy for you.’

  To his astonishment she turned the gun over in her hand and held it out to him.

  ‘Go on, take it. Kill me, and save your beloved girlfriend. Take it!’

  Victor stared at the gun, then looked back up at Patricia. Isabella lay between them, a sacrificed Juliet on her mechanical altar.

  ‘Why did you kill your father?’

  ‘Take the gun, Victor.’

  ‘Why?’

  Her bottom lip trembled. ‘He wasn’t my father. He left me to die. He took Isabella, but he left me behind.’

  Victor shook his head. ‘There was no choice. He thought you were already dead. He was just trying to save himself and Isabella.’

  ‘He could have waited!’ she screamed, almost as loud as the gunshot had been. Victor took a step backwards as she turned the gun and held it first up towards his chest, then down at her father lying on the floor.

  ‘He did wait,’ Victor said, voice trembling. ‘Isabella told me, he did wait. Those men he sent looking for you, they told him they found your body, but they lied. They tricked him. He left because he thought you were dead.’

  While he wasn’t entirely sure he was right, having pieced together the words from Isabella’s incoherent mumblings during their climb back up to the base after the destruction of the train, he felt certain Patricia wouldn’t know either.

  All he needed to do was keep the gun from pointing at Isabella or himself. If he could just calm Patricia down, he might even be able to enlist her help.

  The girl was still staring at him. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t prove it so you’ll have to.’

  ‘I don’t believe you!’

  Victor jumped aside as Patricia lifted the gun and fired. The bullet hit the door behind where he had been standing. Patricia started to come around the bed towards him, but Victor grabbed Robert’s loose crutch and swung it at her feet. It caught between them and tripped her. The gun went off again, this time the bullet hitting the floor just in front of his face. Then Patricia hit the ground, grunting as she landed heavily on her shoulder. Victor grabbed her wrist, turning the gun away as she tried to aim it back t
owards him.

  The girl was wild, but Victor was far stronger. He twisted her around in front of him, holding the gun arm against the floor. She struggled for a few seconds, but he held on to her tightly until she went still.

  ‘Look, your sister is going to die if we don’t help her soon,’ Victor said. ‘I can do it. I have what I need in my bag. You can help me.’

  ‘You really want me to help you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Patricia sighed. Victor thought he heard a sniff, and wondered if she was crying. ‘I’ll help you if you help me,’ she said.

  ‘Sure. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Take the gun. I can’t trust myself.’

  Her request was a little strange, but she had gone limp in his arms. He eased his hand along her arm until his fingers closed over the cold metal of the gun. He pushed her fingers aside and eased his over the handle, pulling it out of her grasp. She didn’t move as he slid the gun back towards his pocket.

  ‘Victor?’ her voice was meek, like a child’s.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Remember my face.’

  Before he could respond, she grabbed his arm, catching him off guard. She twisted the gun up towards her, pushed his fingers over the trigger, and pulled them tight.

  The blast was deafening. Victor cried out and rolled away from Patricia as the girl’s body slumped against the floor. He wiped her blood off his face, tears filling his eyes. He stared at her, a thousand unsaid reassurances racing through his mind. The gun had spun away across the floor and he wanted to take it up, point it at his own face and silence all the bitter voices telling him how much he had failed, how many people had died because of him.

  Then, as the ringing in his ears began to ease, he heard the low rise and fall of breathing.

  Isabella.

  She was the one chance he had left to redeem himself. He climbed to his feet with the lethargy of a dying man reaching a mountaintop, and pulled his bag of tools up on to the bed.

  He couldn’t be sure this would even work. As he stared at Isabella’s gaunt, ashen face, he wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just switch off her life support and be done with it.

  No, a voice whispered at the back of his mind, and he wondered who it could belong to. Surely not Kurou, the Grey Man, or even his long dead mother. Perhaps, he thought, wistfully, it belonged to himself.

  Save her, it whispered again.

  So he tried.

  Epilogue

  Light, Darkness, Uncertainty

  It was a fine, frosty morning on the first day after the end of the world. Kurou strolled through the remains of the town, his cane tapping on the hardened snow underfoot, and the occasional piece of metal or rock debris lying close by. The greatest beauty in such an unforgiving climate, he thought, unable to forget the scars that covered his body, was that it didn’t allow fires to burn for long. A few wisps of smoke drifted up into the air from the fallen machines and the bombed-out buildings, but a layer of snow and ice had already formed as the Siberian wastes staked its claim on the remains.

  Never one to dwell too much on the past, Kurou turned his mind back to his future plans. With the war as good as over and the Grey Man dealt with at last, it seemed a corridor of uncertainty had opened up in the direction of Northern Europe, so it might be best to head that way for a while. The joy his latest masterpiece had given him would only last so long. In time he would feel the urge to create something new.

  He didn’t know how far south it was to reach the Trans-Siberian Express, a train that according to reports on the internet was still operating. It had to be several hundred miles, but he was a resourceful fellow, he thought, as he gave his cane a twirl. There would be something somewhere that would take him.

  The last of Victor’s strength was almost gone as he stepped out into the light. All around him the valley shone crisp and clear beneath an aquamarine sky. The snow was pristine and untouched all around, but there, poking up through the snow by his feet was the shoot of something green, something that would soon grow into a beautiful shrub or flower. A long overdue spring was on its way.

  He hoisted Isabella in his arms and took a few steps forward, the sun warming his face. He looked down and saw her eyelids flutter. Her lips moved slightly, then she groaned and settled back into sleep.

  The bulge just below her neck was barely perceptible under the thick jacket he had dressed her in, but the robot component had fitted well, clearly pleased in its artificial way to be reunited with its human companion. Managing it would take time, as would her recovery, but Victor felt quietly confident. The last few weeks would never fade from his memory, but there was no point looking back, only forward.

  Looking down the valley at the hint of a path that would take him back to Brevik and whatever lay behind, Victor took the first step into an uncertain but welcome future.

  He had been sleeping, but when he opened his eyes nothing had changed. The wires still bit into his body, the air still felt thick and dry.

  Moving his body would do nothing to help him, so he stayed still, conserving his strength. Instead, he closed his eyes again, and let his mind drift, reaching out.

  Old friend, he called. Can you hear me? I have need of you.

  * * *

  END

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  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to all those who have helped and guided me with this and other books, including Su Halfwerk, Elizabeth Mackey, Lee Burton, Emily Hetherington, Jenny Twist, John Daulton, Matt Koeler, and Fiona Ninnes. A special thanks goes out to my friends at the Retreat for your continued inspiration.

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