Canon in Crimson

by Rachel Kastin

  So I gave up arguing and begging, but after that, I withdrew even further from everyone, seeking shelter in my room. With nothing left to do but wait, I just stared out the window and tried not to think about it. And by the afternoon on the third day, exhaustion prevailed over anxiety, and I finally dozed off.

  I woke up to the sound of a commotion sweeping down the hall: shouting and the familiar thuds of combat, shattering glass and splintering wood, and the occasional smattering of gunfire. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, disoriented in the glow of late evening light. What the hell was going on now? But then I noticed that I had more immediate concerns. Someone was opening the door, and it wasn’t Alger or one of the twins—it was Shifty. And for some reason, he was pointing a gun at me.

  “What are you…what’s going on?” I asked, more confused than afraid.

  “Nothing personal,” he said, walking towards me with steady aim. “The prisoner escaped, and all hell broke loose, so the Boss said I had to get rid of everyone left. So, congrats. You’re the first.”

  What? But that couldn’t be. Why would he—?

  “Liar,” I said fiercely. “He’d never do that.”

  Futilely trying to get away somehow, I crawled backwards across the bed until I was up against the headboard, my back to the wall. Shifty laughed, his tone rich with scorn, and continued to advance, slowly but deliberately.

  “No, you idiot. Not your precious thief. The real Boss. The one who’s actually calling the shots.”

  Levak. Sudden comprehension slapped me in the face. All those talks with Levak—all that time Alger had been spending with me instead of his lieutenant. Shifty had switched sides. And now he was going to kill me, I realized, feeling the cold, paralyzing fear spread through my limbs.

  Of course, in that moment, it occurred to me again: What if this wasn’t going to kill me after all? But I just couldn’t know. After all, the round that had hit me really had been tiny, and the fire had certainly burned me. And even if I was somehow tougher than I ought to be, what was I supposed to do about it? I didn’t know how to fight, I had nowhere to run, and I didn’t even have time to think.

  “Sorry, kid,” Shifty was saying, pressing the muzzle of the gun against my forehead. “I always liked you.” As he cocked the hammer, I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing all I could do was hope.

  The crack of a gunshot split the air. I winced, expecting red-hot pain to lance through my head. But I didn’t feel anything. Cautiously, I opened my eyes to see Shifty standing there, looking confused. In slow motion, he dropped his gun, his extended arm falling to his side, and then he crumpled to the ground. The spreading circle of scarlet on his back told me what had happened. Just about as surprised as my would-be killer, I looked up to see who’d saved me, and found Big Six holding a pistol, leaning against the door frame.

  Relieved, I leapt up to run over to him, but then I noticed that something was wrong—other than the fact that he was using a gun. He wasn’t just leaning against the door, I realized. He was hunched over, his left hand clutching his side. And by the time I reached him, viscous crimson was leaking through his fingers. He slid to the floor, his eyes glassy with pain.

  Horror pulled me back into its clutches as I knelt and threw my arms around him. As I did, I saw the reason he’d been the one shooting: as I’d feared, the Torpedo was there as well, slumped against the wall in the hallway, motionless.

  But wait. Shifty had said I that was the first one he’d found alive. Which meant someone else must have—

  “Who did this to you?” I asked, pulling away to find him still conscious, if only just. “Was it one of them?”

  But he shook his head, just barely.

  “Didn’t see,” he whispered. And then he managed a weak smile. “Or else we’d have beat ‘em, don’t you think?”

  Tears stung my eyes and ached in my throat, and I couldn’t quite make myself smile back. But by then, it didn’t matter. He’d already stopped breathing.

  I only gave myself a moment to stay there, kneeling next to Big Six and fighting back grief. I wanted to stay there and cry, to give myself time to mourn the friends who’d always protected me. But the survival instinct that had once helped me escape a deadly fire told me that I didn’t have that luxury. I had to go.

  Forcing myself to leave the twins behind, I stood up, bloodstained and badly shaken, and slipped silently out the door. Wishing myself invisible, I crept down the hallway, following the ebbing sounds of gunshots, broken bones, and bodies falling to the floor. The further I got, the worse the damage was. The lights had been shattered, leaving shards of broken glass everywhere, and bullet holes riddled the walls. Paintings lay ripped apart, doused in the blood that slickened the polished wood floors.

  And that wasn’t all. As I continued, holding my breath and fighting nausea, I found countless bodies. Many of them had been shot, but some had been killed in other ways; their necks had been twisted in unnatural positions. All hell broke loose, Shifty had said. So everyone was killing each other…or someone was killing everyone.

  Then came the moment I’d been dreading most. When I reached the end of the hall, where the rest of the Gang had been staying, I found them at last—lying there among the other dead. Screwdriver, the broken remains of the radio still in his hand, smashed as if he’d tried in desperation to use it as a weapon. The Doc, who looked like he hadn’t even put up a fight. Even the poor Driver.

  For a moment, as I bent to close their eyes, I could see them as I’d first met them: sitting around a poker table and laughing at my nervousness, teaching me how to play. And then I was back in the present, where they lay lifeless in front of me. They were all gone now. Every one of them, except—

  Alger.

  As soon as the thought occurred to me, it drove all others from my mind. Last I knew, he’d been in a meeting on the far side of the villa, where the remaining sounds of conflict were coming from. With adrenaline’s merciless focus, I sprinted down the hall and duck around the corners, ignoring the carnage and looking for the only person left who mattered.

  But when I finally found him on the landing at the top of the stairs, he didn’t notice me. He was too busy diving out a back window onto the veranda.

  Without thinking, I dashed forward to the broken window. Watching through the jagged frame of broken glass, I saw that he was fighting someone: an ordinary man, bloodied and bruised, wearing the remnants of a tan uniform.

  The prisoner! Shifty said he’d escaped, but it hadn’t even occurred to me that he could have been involved in all the killing. After three days of brutal torture, could he possibly be able to fight? Well, as unlikely as it seemed, he certainly could—and impressively. The two of them whirled in a furious cyclone of kicks and punches. The prisoner’s chopped, brutal jabs interrupted Alger’s fluid strikes. They matched each other hit for hit, neither gaining the upper hand. It seemed they’d already disarmed one another, because two guns lay on the ground near their feet, just out of their reach.

  Which gave me the worst idea I’ve ever had in my life.

  Maybe it was the flicker of hope that I really was, somehow, invincible, or maybe it was just the but I just kept telling myself, I have to get to him. I have to help him. So I ducked through the broken window onto the veranda, reaching for the gun nearer to me.

  I remember the next part in sharp detail, the dark twin of that perfect December afternoon years before, when my life had begun. The spring air carried a sharp chill, and the shattered glass crunched under my bare feet. I remember the quiet rushing sound of the azure sea below, nearly the same color as Alger’s eyes, the brilliant red of sunset, the prickly mint aroma of the vegetation mixing with the scent of fresh blood. I remember it all.

  I knelt to pick up the gun, but the prisoner got there first, snatching the weapon from the ground beside me. I stood up to run, but again he reacted faster. His left hand snaked around my neck and pulled me into a chokehold, while his right hand pointed the gun at my head. Meanwhile, Alger di
ved for the other gun and rolled deftly to his feet. He leveled the weapon at the prisoner, poised at the edge of the veranda, his back to the open sky.

  They both stood still for a moment, in a perfect standoff. I held my breath, terror drowning out thought and reason. Alger’s finger twitched on the trigger, and the prisoner shoved the cold metal barrel of his gun up against my temple.

  “Drop it,” he warned, “or she dies.”

  Alger’s eyes met mine. I swallowed and stared back at him, silently begging him to drop it, to save us both. I could see him calculating, timing, measuring, and I wondered if he expected me to do something. If only I’d been sure of myself—if only I could’ve been certain about whether a gunshot would really kill me—then maybe I would’ve acted. But all the ifs in the world can’t change the past; I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t act. The prisoner waited, adjusting his grip, and I could feel his heart slamming into his ribcage. Alger turned his gaze from me back to the prisoner. And then he made his choice.

  “You can’t do it, can you?” he said, his teeth bared like a tiger’s. “You want me to believe you can, but we both know you can’t. So what do you say we just leave the girl out of this, we’ll finish the fight fairly?”

  But it didn’t go that way. My dear, brilliant Alger, who could convince anyone, who could do anything, had misjudged his adversary.

  Swift and sudden as lightning, the prisoner threw me to the side, taking Alger’s eyes off him for a fraction of an instant. And in that tiny fragment of time, my captor took aim and shot Alger three times in the chest.

  Dazed, Alger dropped his gun, touched one hand to his chest, and watched it come away drenched in blood. He looked at me for a moment in astonishment. And then he collapsed, falling backwards off the veranda towards the water below, and into oblivion.

  I stood frozen in time, not breathing. I wanted to run to the edge, to look over it as if maybe I could rescue him, or even jump after him. But I couldn’t will myself to move. It was as if my mind had fallen with him, and my body had stayed uselessly behind.

  I’d forgotten the prisoner entirely until he spoke.

  “Come with me,” he said, “and I won’t have to kill you.”

  I turned and stared blankly at him. This man had just destroyed my life, slaughtered my friends, and shot the only man I’d ever love to death right in front of me. He watched me, waiting. What choice did I have?

  And so, numb and cold to the core, I followed him away.

  Chapter 34—Look At Me Now

  As R7 watched the robot bearing down on Percival, something in her shifted. The gripping panic receded along with the lingering soreness in her muscles from her electrocution, and furious heat boiled in her chest. And finally, red haze bled into her vision. Not this time, she thought. Never again. In a blur, she was standing between the robot and Percival.

  “Get the hell away from him!” she yelled, lunging forward to slam both hands into its metal chest.

  The robot stumbled.

  It flattened a car someone had recently abandoned as it stepped backwards, and seizing the advantage, R7 surged toward it like a hurricane, raining down punches like hail and leaving dents in the impossibly strong alloy. In a cloud of crimson rage, she attacked the metal monster with a vengeance, letting loose the anger that she’d trapped inside for so long.

  A few seconds into the onslaught, the operator finally instructed the robot to defend itself, and it reached down to slap R7 aside. But the attack that had nearly killed G3 was only an opportunity for her. Bracing against the impact, she grabbed the metal hand as it hit her and ripped it off the end of the robot’s arm.

  Wires popped, and oil spurted out of the severed joint. The robot flailed for a moment while the operator presumably tried to figure out what to do next, and R7 went on the offensive again, smashing the chunk of unbreakable metal into the robot’s knee joint until it gave way as well.

  The robot lurched, reaching down to hit her with its working hand, but she shrugged off the concussive strike as she continued to bash the metal hand against the robot’s inverted knee over and over again. Finally wising up to the fact that the robot couldn’t successfully match its force against hers, the operator directed it to kneel, aiming its electrified antenna like a sword at its enraged adversary.

  But it didn’t skewer R7. Instead, she dropped the robot’s hand and grabbed its head in both of her own. Fury continuing to pour in a torrent through her body, she squeezed with inhuman power, pressing on the robot’s glowing eyes with her thumbs. It thrashed in her grip, just as she’d struggled in its grasp only days ago, but she held fast. Memories of death and loss flashed across her vision on a field of red, and she lost herself in the senseless rage.

  “Die, you monster!” she screamed, not seeing the robot anymore at all. “You’ll never hurt anyone again! I’ll kill you! I’ll—”

  A screeching sound like an explosion tore through the blood haze from inches away. Reacting instantaneously, R7 dropped the robot’s head and clamped her hands over her ears, dropping to her knees and squeezing her eyes shut. For a moment, everything was the screaming sound—and then it stopped. At first, she thought that she’d finally gone mercifully deaf, but then she heard a voice say,

  “Well, that worked splendidly. Not that I’m surprised.”

  Slowly, R7 stood up and turned to see Percival standing right behind her, holding up an altered version of the tracing device and smiling triumphantly, while the robot lay motionless in the street, the light in its eyes extinguished as surely as her red rage.

  “What...?” she managed to ask, as a pounding headache and the acute memory of what she was supposed to be doing there rushed in to replace the anger.

  “I amplified the feedback to burn out the signal in the antenna entirely,” Percival told her. “Not that it was really necessary for you to bring down this one,” he added irritably, looking at the misshapen heap of metal at their feet. “But it ought to help with that one.”

  He raised his cane and pointed it at the Wrigley’s gum sign across the square, where the robot carrying Von Krauss had climbed the side of the building and was in the process of scaling the sign’s scaffolded metal.

  What was he thinking, running up there? R7 watched the robot climb as police, stage actors, showgirls, and theater patrons gathered to watch it as well, now that her own display had ended. But she grimaced as she realized the answer—he wasn’t thinking. He was just terrified and trying to escape from the force of destructive rage she’d been a moment ago. She sighed and turned back to Percival, her temples throbbing.

  “Oh dear,” said Percival, finally looking more closely at her eyes. “Are you well?”

  “I’m fine,” she lied perfunctorily. “Just tell me, why didn’t the—the thing you made stop Von Krauss’ robot too?”

  “It needs to be extremely close to the antenna it’s disrupting,” he explained.

  “How close?”

  “Within feet, preferably. But I could modify it further to—”

  “No time,” she said, snatching the device from his hand.

  “But I just made—oh, bloody hell,” he said as she reached back and threw the device with all her strength.

  She watched as it hurtled through the air, across the square and up toward the Wrigley’s sign, while enthralled onlookers gasped and pointed. She held her breath and squinted to see the little bundle of wires and metal. Just a few more feet, and it would be there. The throw’s arc peaked just shy of the robot before it tumbled back down toward the street below, and R7’s heart sank along with it. She knew couldn’t fight another one. She’d botched this whole thing, and the Chief was going to—

  —and then she realized that the robot had stopped moving.

  Letting out a whoop of excitement, she grabbed Percival’s shoulder and hopped up and down.

  “We did it! We—oh, hell,” she broke off, as the robot began to fall, taking the pieces of sign it had been clinging to with it.

  Before
she could think better of it, she shoved her exhausted body into a sprint. The crowd rippled away from the falling robot like water disturbed by a stone, and above them, Von Krauss scrambled to grasp desperately at the metal crumbling around him. R7 pushed her inhuman speed to its limit, turning the world into a neon blur while Von Krauss’ grip inevitably slipped. She reached the fallen robot in time to take a powerful leap off its metal chest, and she bounded up the side of the building, making springboards out of eaves and scaffolding. She jumped one last time to grab a piece of the broken sign with her left hand just as Von Krauss tumbled down past her, and at the last instant, she reached out with her right hand and caught the mathematician’s wrist in an iron grip.

  Looking down at the wide-eyed, panicked little German mathematician staring up at her in shock and grasping her wrist for dear life, R7 grinned.

  “Ludwig Von Krauss,” she said breathlessly, “nice to finally meet you.”

  §

  R7 sat in the Agency’s miniature kitchen, stirring her coffee and thinking. Four cups and as many hours later, her headache had passed, but she still wasn’t feeling at ease. And her debriefing hadn’t helped...

  “Von Krauss is in a cell,” she told the Chief, letting exhaustion drag her down into the chair across from him in his office. “The team’s cleaning up the robots. Nobody talked to any reporters. And Professor Gregory...” She smiled as she thought of Percival, safe and sound, asking a flood of questions she’d promised to answer later as she’d left Times Square. “He’ll be an asset in the future, I think.”

  The Chief nodded.

  “But I understand that you don’t believe Von Krauss was working alone?”