by Michael Rigg
After a moment, the butler glanced to Alice once or twice before smoothing the thin crop of hair on his head and turned to her (his bowler sat appropriately on the coat rack attached to their booth). "Alice," he started, pausing to get her attention. His voice was mild, tentative.
"Yes, Lucien?"
"I... I wanted to apologize for... before." He looked down, apparently flustered and embarrassed. “It was ungentlemanly of me, and quite presumptuous.”
Alice set down her coffee and rested her hands in her lap, letting him speak his mind however long it took.
"I honestly didn't want to kill you. I... It's just that I can't abide by witches and black magicians."
Alice nodded but said nothing.
Lucien blinked, again clearing his watery eyes, only this time Alice knew they weren't caused by a stifled yawn. "My parents... It was back in the Kingdom before I came to serve Lord Landry and the Confederacy. They left the tube late one night after a show." He cracked a blinking smile remembering something fondly. "They enjoyed evening shows, my father an immense fan of the cinemas." He swallowed hard and quickly added, "They were set upon by ghouls. Literally torn limb from limb... so the London Times said."
"Ghouls?"
The butler nodded slightly. "Male witches, abominations of Imperial scientists. Unlike female witches, who can move freely amongst us undetected except by Witchtellers like Mr. Rink, ghouls were overcome by the power they could wield and it ate them alive, turning inward and corrupting them physically, mentally and...” He took a deep breath. “Well," he looked down at his slightly trembling hand. He steadied it by resting his other hand on it. "Abominations. That's all."
Alice wondered on what she'd learned up until this point. "But if the Empire here created ghouls and witches, how did they get to Britain?"
Trying to smile, Lucien explained, "Stowing away in the darkness of freight ships, mostly. Others, I'm sure, were sold as living biological weapons to Imperial counterparts in Eastern Europe.”
Alice frowned sadly and reached across the small table to rest her hand on his wrist. She looked at him with as much understanding as she could considering how alien this world was to her. "I'm sorry," she offered.
Lucien patted her hand. "No, my girl. I am. You are nothing like those creatures. Witches serve only evil and corporations of the Empire. You are simply a lost soul, a gentle girl with no home nor direction. Though, I assure you that is only temporary."
“What if I'm a … sleeper?”
He raised a bushy eyebrow, pushed up his spectacles. “Do you believe you're a sleeper agent, Alice?”
Alice started to shake her head, to say something, then stopped and shrugged.
“If you were, I'm sure we would have determined it by now,” He smiled, “And I doubt you can accuse an agent without triggering their protocols if you take my meaning.”
It was Alice's turn to cast her eyes down, but Lucien smiled and leaned in. "Captain Bryce Landry is a good man, Alice. If you have a home and kin, he will find them."
“I wanted to ask you,” she whispered after a silence passed between them. “Those contracts you keep mentioning, the ones I prevented Bryce from signing? What are they?”
Lucien twitched his mustache and rolled his eyes tiredly. “Bryce's father, the Lord Jefferson Landry, is keen on some underwater property that holds great significance for the future of the nation—actually, all nations, I would presume.”
“All nations?”
Lucien nodded slightly and cast a wary glance around the Spoilery. He leaned forward to whisper, “It is a plot of land far below the waves that he believes holds the key to—” He stopped abruptly and studied her. For her part, Alice realized she was coming off as looking too curious. Considering their afternoon and how she was introduced to the family, she lowered her eyes and sat back.
“Maybe it's best you don't tell me,” she smirked.
The butler eyed her and nodded and offered a crooked smile. “You may not be a witch, but I would not discount the sleeper cell notion. Though rest assured Bryce and I are on the case. If we don't find your home, we will uncover your true purpose and deal with it accordingly.”
Alice looked at him, her expression betraying nothing.
“Yes,” he answered her unasked question, “I believe it is not beyond that Yankee's abilities to pull such a move. I've heard tell it's been done before. It was amidst the last armed conflict that two such individuals from Seer & Banes were captured attempting to—”
“I hope I'm not,” Alice said quietly, keeping her eyes down.
Lucien sat back and considered her for a long moment. He ran his chubby fingers down his face and rested them on the table. “Me too, my girl. You're far too lovely to shoot.”
~~~~~~~
One block away and 60 stories higher, Pandora stood in the shadows between gas lamps with her fingers crossed. She scanned the lower levels of the tall buildings of Philadelphia, stopping periodically and squinting at lighted windows. "There's two of 'em, at least."
Bryce tried to follow her gaze but only saw the back of a nearby billboard. "How are you seein' them?" he whispered in the silvery drizzle of the damp night.
"It's lucky the rain was cold. I can see their heat clearly, and the coldness of their weapons."
"I don't suppose you can make out their Idents from here."
"Nah. I doubt they got 'em. I'd say T.W. sent somebody after ya when you and luscious Lucien decided to skip town in Yorke."
Bryce nudged her, but smiled. "Be nice with the names."
"What? I think he's a sweet bowl o' puddin'. I just—" She stopped and turned her gaze up toward the overarching gangway of the bridge tower. "Uh oh."
"What is it?"
"A third. Looks like he's heading to the tower."
"You're sure he's not a worker?"
"This worker has a barb hook and just climbed over the access gate before looking around to see if anyone saw 'im. Big fella."
Bryce nodded to himself and muttered, "Guess our amnesiac Alice really is of prime value to Thorne & Wolfe. It's doubtful they would send assassins to retrieve a sleeper, even if they felt she was compromised."
“She ain't no sleeper,” Pandora said as she continued tracing the distant armed figures.
Bryce took a brief moment to ponder, rubbing his chin thoughtfully before pulling his coat tighter around his neck. “Although removing her from the Towers may not have been in Thorne's cards. Killing me, Lucien and the girl would assure the Imperial Union gets both the sea lanes and whatever daddy's hidin' on the sea bed.” He blinked and looked at her. “Wait. How are you so sure she's not an agent?”
Pandora blinked and uncrossed her fingers. Her gaze flattened out on the horizon and she turned to him. She vividly remembered the three small bumps on Alice's back forming a straight line, a slight scratch linking them. "I know she ain't, Cap. In fact, I think you should ditch her now."
"What? Why would—?"
That's when a breathless Wilco waddled quickly up to them and shoved a thin leather packet of documents into Bryce's hand. "There ya go, Cap'n Landry. I e'en gave her a proper name that matches what yer callin' her: Alice Hampton."
Tucking the papers into his coat pocket, Bryce nodded his thanks before looking at Pandora. "What do you know?"
She pushed him. "We don't have time for this. If T.W. is planning to do something to the tower to stop you leavin', hundreds of people could git hurt." She turned before he could say anything, tugging Wilco after her, and jogged toward the open stairwell door by which they had reached this level.
Over her shoulder, Pandora shouted, "Be careful, Bryce. And don't fall asleep near her." She motioned at the cityscape dotted with lights. "Think about this... Why would Thor
ne & Wolfe send goons after you if not for her? If they wanted to stage an accident, wouldn't they have done it before you got to Yorke? It's her, Bryce."
"What? Why?" He called after her before dashing to catch up. It was Wilco who turned and stopped him.
The dwarf said, "Look, Cap'n, don't mind us. You should get back to Lucien an' the girl. If Pandy's right, and she's never wrong, they could be in trouble."
Bryce only watched for a few seconds as they ascended the stairs to the next level of criss-crossing fire escapes. Then he took the same stairs going down.
~~~~~~~
"Well," Lucien smiled, tucking his watch into a vest pocket. "I think we should be off, young lady."
Alice nodded and stood up as Lucien left some money on the table. He squared the bowler on his head and smiled. Then he nodded toward the front of the sweetshop and offered to take her hand when a voice spoke up behind them from the corridor next to the kitchen.
"You should go out the back."
Lucien turned and eyed the man. "Excuse me, sir?"
Perek Grubbs opened his jacket to show the pistol tucked into the front of his trousers. "I strongly suggest you step out back."
Grumbling under his breath, Lucien reached for his wallet. "Sneakthief. Fine... Fine... I'll give you all I have, just let us—"
"I'm not repeating myself." Grubbs reached into the open jacket and gripped the pistol. He nodded his head toward the back door.
"Now look here, my good man—"
"Do as he says, Lucien," Alice said quietly, and led the way toward the back door. Lucien followed.
"Smart," said Grubbs, "I had no idea Property talked. Seems my intelligence was wrong."
As Lucien moved with Alice into the alley, Grubbs stepping out behind them and drawing the pistol, he said, "What do you plan to do with us?"
"Well... I'm gonna kill one of you." Grubbs shrugged. "Don't know which one, yet."
~~~~~~~
"Can you handle the big one?" Pandora pointed through the darkness to the blinking red lights of the SkyTrain platform.
Wilco nodded. "Jus' 'cause he's big, don't mean he can beat me."
She pointed down through the grating of the stairwell platform to a lower level where some Confederate guards stood near a junction box. "I'm gonna get some help."
Noticing the mischievous look in Pandora's eye, Wilco squinted at her. "Now you've caused enough trouble today. Don't you go gettin' into more." She hugged him around the shoulders and kissed his bristly cheek. "Oh, daddy, you know I'll be fine." Then she sprinted off. Wilco muttered, "Oh, that girl. If her mother was alive..." and made his way up to the SkyTrain platform.
Pandora dropped down from the ladder and approached the group of guards. There were only three of them and two were sipping tea. Only one seemed to be watchful, but wasn't looking where he should have been—the platform. Instead, he was watching a group of ladies on the far side of their location, strutting along a promenade and twirling parasols, out for an evening stroll on the lamp-lit walkways of Philadelphia.
"Ick," she sneered quietly, then turned her attention to the guards and crossed the fingers of her left hand.
Instantly upon her spell, each man froze as they were pulled out of time. One stood frozen with his teacup part-way to his lips, another's head was tilted back, his mouth open obscenely, frozen in the act of a sneeze. The 'watcher' simply locked in place, his eyes staring straight ahead and no longer following the women.
With the guards frozen in place, Pandora sneaked past them and to a guard house booth. There, she found what she was looking for. The .44 revolver was nearly as long as her forearm and mounted with a long brass scope as long as its barrel and a glass power tube on either side wired to a stun trigger. "Nice," she smiled. "You'll do." She couldn't easily tuck it into her jacket with the fingers of her spell hand crossed, so she crept back the way she came until she was out of sight of the guards. Then she un-crossed her fingers.
"—Choo!"
"Hey! Watch that, will ya! Ya sneezed in my tea!"
Chuckling to herself, Pandora crept along the grated walkway until she found an access ladder that would take her up to a higher vantage point over the city.
~~~~~~~
SkyTrains resembled brass bullets nearly three hundred feet long, pointed at both ends with rows of rounded windows like portals. The nose and tail of a SkyTrain were points of steel wrapped tightly in coils of copper. Enormous metal spans, like shark fins, stretched up and down from the SkyTrains' fuselage while in flight. The fins rotate into 'wing' positions when the ship docks, turning on a series of gyros that leave the cabin upright during flight and docking. While upright, the dorsal fin catches and rides the current of the Tesla Network while the lower acts as a rudder, steering the Sky Train while also bleeding off kinetic energy generated by the Network. In the “down” position they acted as glider wings, allowing the SkyTrain pilots (or engineers) to gently swoop down to a docking platform like the one Wilco used to climb onto the long transport.
The SkyTrain bound for various Confederate states, including Louisiana, sat docked at a boarding platform, its wings stretched out on either side of it. Frederick Denk squatted on the dorsal wing over an open panel, a long hook-shaped tool in his hand as he surveyed the components inside the wing.
"I wouldn't if I were you," Wilco shouted in the brisk night's cross-breeze as he climbed aboard the wing, crouching low, from the same service access Denk had used. Both men had made it easily onto the wing under the cover of darkness, the boarding platform and illuminated portals all facing the boarding dock of the Tesla Bridge sixty feet below and behind them.
Denk looked over his shoulder, still squatting, and sneered. "Who the hell are you, little man?"
"I'm the guy what's gonna stop you from stoppin' this train."
“That so?”
“That's so.”
~~~~~~~
Finger's crossed and eyes closed, Pandora "sighted" down the brass telescopic sight mounted on the .44, her hands tight on the grip. The spell she cast drifted out in two parts. The first silenced the report of the long chrome gun, the second guided the bullet to its target. Pandora was a brilliant young pilot, but as Bryce often teased her, couldn't shoot fish in a barrel if the barrel was empty and the fish were nailed to the bottom. Unless, of course, she used witchcraft.
She had traced two of the shadowy goons to areas near the boarding ramp to the Sky Train platform. They were hidden on either side of the area where Alice, Lucien and Bryce would have to board. Pandora concentrated on the first target and muttered a silent prayer, hoping her father was okay.
~~~~~~~
Denk swung the hook again, missing Wilco and slicing only air, but he rebounded with his fist, connecting with the little man's face and knocked him down. Blood trickled into Wilco's mustache and beard as his nose crunched. The dwarf scooted back and clamored to his feet as Denk charged forward. Diving straight at the tall goon, the dwarf dropped and rolled into Denk's knee, catching the tall man off-guard and fumbling his balance. Denk fell hard, the curved metal barb hook knocking loose from his gloved hand and rattling across the wing where it snagged a riveted seam not far from Wilco.
Both men flashed glances to the hook. Wilco was closer, but Denk had height and speed.
In a flash, they both dove for the makeshift weapon, Wilco grabbed it first and rolled aside as Denk thudded heavily on the metal wing and slid to its edge. He glimpsed rows of suspended walkways, and the slick dark streets of Philly far below. Denk scrambled to his feet and moved away from the edge. "Little bastard!"
Each man stood, Denk clad in black from head to toe almost a full three feet taller than the dwarf, and Wilco, panting, the long metal hook held ready in his hand as the wind whipped at t
he straps of his pilot's cap.
Wilco glanced around. They were almost at the thinnest point of the wing with Denk closest to the tapered tip, what would be the very top when the SkyTrain went to flight, and he was only a step away from the open access plate where Denk had been poking around. Wilco glanced into the opening and smiled. "Here," he shouted, and tossed the hook to the goon. "You're gonna need it."
Denk caught the hook, and smiled. The distraction drew his attention from the dwarf who dropped to the open plate and reached inside. Sparks snapped into the night sky as Wilco tugged on the rotation control chain, popping the safety tube that held the wings horizontal in dock. Instantly, their platform started to rise as the shark-fin wing angled toward the sky. The humming Network overhead buzzed louder as they approached it.
Wilco rode the rising wing down like a slide, taking the chance that he wouldn't bounce off the curved fuselage and plummet to the darkened streets below. Frederick Denk, however, struggled to hold tight as the fin rose higher into the air, sliding down only as far as the open plate and using the barb hook to hang on as the angle grew steeper and steeper.
Wilco hit the fuselage with a thud before scuttling on his hands and feet toward a narrow maintenance catwalk. He made the jump and held on. Through the grated mesh of the walk, he could see the line of passengers waiting to board, looking up and pointing as their SkyTrain's fin reached toward the electric layer of sky, most of them grumbling out loud that the train was about to launch without them. Two local policeman worked their way through the line, rushing forward as a conductor shouted to the figure rising toward the thrumming current of the Tesla Network. Wilco shielded his eyes from what would come next.
Denk rose higher and higher, struggling against gravity to re-hook the chain and reverse the wing's rotation, but it was moving too quickly and he couldn't hold much longer. Fear rushed through him in the last seconds of his life that he would lose his grip and plummet to the darkened streets below, but as the dorsal fin rose to kiss the invisible high voltage layer of atmosphere, Denk's hairs all stood on end and the muscles throughout his body constricted simultaneously.