Broken Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  I would comfort her except for, well, the constant barrage of insubordination and know-it-all comments.

  “You’re not feckin’ useless.” Kayla takes another step, rests the outstretched hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “Period of feckin’ adjustment and all that shite. Takes a while to get used to the weird shite. You should have seen him when he first got here.” She nods at me, because apparently I’m just exhibit A for the prosecution today. “Abso-feckin’-lutely useless he was. Couldn’t even get the safety off his gun. Now he’s all right. Took him a bit, but baptism by fire and shite. If he can pick it up, you sure can.”

  Hannah looks unconvinced.

  Felicity, on the other hand, just looks a little bit pissed off.

  “Maybe,” she hisses, “we could all work on the interpersonal dynamics when we’re not trying to hide from not one but two packs of homicidal nutjobs. Better yet, you could have done it when I bloody suggested it.” Her gaze sweeps the room, and again I fail to avoid the ire.

  Personally, if the timing were better, I might take this as a positive sign. Hannah is acknowledging that she’s no good at this and, begrudgingly, that we are. If she just threw up her hands and said, “Well that lot can take care of that shit, I want no part of it,” then MI37 would be back in the right hands.

  “OK,” Felicity says when no one feels the need to snark back at her, “we’ve got some breathing room.”

  “Time to find the papers,” I say. “Anybody got a good sense for how deep we are into this place?”

  Tabitha, who has been trying to find the spot in the room farthest away from Clyde, snaps, “Probabilistic mapping algorithms. Would be using them if some magical asshole hadn’t totally failed to protect the things most important to the woman whose life he seems determined to ruin.” She wields the two halves of her laptop at Clyde. It is his turn to flinch away.

  “I think the humans must be rusting,” Hermann comments to Volk. “We will need papers on how to fix them.” It’s the first time I’ve heard him sound amused.

  “Hush,” Volk chastises.

  Hermann just snickers.

  “Well,” Clyde says into the ensuing silence, “most forts are built on an asymmetrical pattern to prevent attackers who breach the main gate from making a straight run to the good stuff. Create more of a killing field. Which is not the sort of encouraging term I suspect anyone wants to hear. Maybe be better if there was some nice euphemism for it. Poppy field perhaps. Though maybe that word’s a bit tainted. Actually, tainted is a bit of a tainted word, if you ask me. All sorts of nasty connotations to that one these days. Yick. But I, much like a fortress attacker actually—funny coincidence—am a little off course. Was going to say, at least, I am saying it now, I suppose. Got there in the end. Avoided the killing… erm, poppy field of my own distractions. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. The main gate of the castle was central. So I would anticipate an inner wall with a gate to the left or right, and then any sort of keep to be on the opposite side of the gate. Probably toward the back of the whole complex. Then the chamber would be hard to access inside that keep. Given that we’re subterranean probably down rather than up. I mean, just playing the odds here. And the way the tunnel took us came in near the back left of the fort. At least if my sense of direction still stands. And we’ve been meandering around here and found nada, so if we headed that way, and went down a few floors, that might be a best bet. If one trusts me. Which, totally understand if you don’t. Whole laptop disaster. So sorry about that. Not the sort of thing I would allow to happen to any live cargo Tabby had. Should she be carrying some sort of basket of kittens, or crate of chicks, or… well, erm…” He shrugs violently. “Say, a child.”

  There is a slow exchanging of looks.

  “Probabilistic mapping algorithms,” Tabitha says eventually. “Same results. Less mouthy.”

  Felicity and I exchange a glance. “Well then,” I say, pointing in the same direction as Clyde. “That way then.”

  37

  TWO FIGHTS, EIGHT SERIOUS LACERATIONS, AND FIVE DEAD BODIES LATER

  Gasping for air, dripping blood and sweat, and thoroughly bloody sick of this ridiculously sized penis-extension of a sword, I crash to the bottom of a flight of spiral stairs. I bounce off one wall, spin into a broad room. Kayla is already there. The rest of MI37 follows swift on my heels. Hermann and Volk come last, taking a lot of the important-looking structural components of the stairs with them. Ominous cracks spread through the rock walls. Hopefully there’s an alternative exit.

  “Did we lose them?” I call back to Felicity.

  “Like fuck.” The constant threat of death seems to be damaging the part of her that normally controls her language. That said, I can see at least three gashes on her that look like they need stitches. If she wants to curse, I think she has an excuse.

  I wish I had time to comfort her. Personally, I’m finding the imminent death thing is actually distracting me a little from, well… the other imminent death thing, I suppose. But I’ve had less time to be morose about the new threats.

  “Is this it?” Hermann asks. “Or another of your dead ends.”

  And well… I take the time to take stock. We’re in a broad room. It’s not deep though. And… well, there is a massive oval door to help give the place an ante-chamber sort of feel. The door itself resembles the one that got us into this whole mess. Lying on its side covered in swirling paisley patterns.

  “Oh crap,” I say. I seem to have developed bad associations with doors that look like that.

  Behind us, the sound of fighting encroaches. Another deafening roar widens the cracks in the walls.

  “The door,” I say, pointing. “How long?”

  “Oh,” Clyde looks about, shrugs, “erm, well the last one took us a couple of minutes and we, sort of, in a manner of speaking, by which I mean, very directly and in all the obvious ways, we were assisted by Tabby’s, erm…”

  “Computer,” she finishes for him, acidly. She holds the two halves aloft once more. I have no idea why she’s still holding them.

  Another boom of ugly steel-based death resonates above us.

  “What about this feck?” Kayla asks.

  I spin around to see who on earth she could be talking about. I only catch a blur as she whips into motion. Then she’s across the room, reaching around a corner. There’s a shrill scream and suddenly she’s dragging a small spindly man back across the floor toward us.

  The man is stark naked, and unfortunately one of the first things I get to learn about him is that he has been completely shaved. Not a speck of hair on him. Anywhere. Bright blue tattoos swirl over his body, matching the patterns on the door. I also quickly learn that they cover him completely. Some tattooist needs to learn when to stop.

  “Yes!” Tabitha cries as Kayla drags the man kicking and screaming across the floor. “All makes sense now.” She turns to Clyde, a victorious expression on her face, but it sours as soon as she lays eyes on him. She turns back to Kayla, grimacing. “Key. He is. For that door.”

  The man wrestles and twitches in Kayla’s grasp but can’t get free. She shoves him toward the door.

  “How the hell is he a key?” I say to Tabitha. This seems like a fundamental idea I’m missing.

  “No clue,” says Tabitha. “But read in my database before…” another acid glance at Clyde, “cryptic then. Makes sense now. A man is the key.”

  Oh hell, that’s about as good an explanation as I usually get.

  Kayla shoves the man closer to the door, pulls her sword. “There you go,” she says. “Feckin’ open it.”

  The man stares at her, shaking. A string of syllables that make about as much sense to me as my DVR instructions spill out of him.

  “I don’t think he speaks English,” I say.

  “Bet he speaks feckin’ this.” She brandishes the sword.

  “Clyde,” I say, “you don’t happen to know any nifty translation spells do you?”

  Clyde shuffles his feet, looks anywhere
but at Tabby.

  “Database,” she mutters in a voice that could grind granite.

  “Sword it is then,” Kayla says, sounding a little too cheerful for my tastes. She takes a step toward the tattooed youth.

  He takes an instinctive step backwards.

  Another vast tremor shakes the building. I stagger a step. Suddenly Kayla’s sword isn’t the only weapon pointed at the youth.

  He puts a hand on the door. It glows. Yellow light cracks through the deep bronze carvings. It seems to linger at certain points. Geometric patterns illuminated. Networks of hexagons and swirling lines.

  And it seems to collect too, pooling on the youth’s body, swirling around his tattoos. The light glows, grows, is nearly blinding. I take one hand off my sword handle to shield my eyes. The youth is glowing like a lightbulb, his head thrown back. The door itself looks almost on fire.

  Then the light flares, too bright. The world a shade of yellow that is almost white. Someone lets out a cry caught between pain and bliss.

  When my eyes recover the light is gone, the youth is nowhere to be seen, and the door is grinding open.

  “There,” says Kayla, “told you he’d understand the sword. Universal feckin’ language.”

  38

  “Inside. Fast,” Felicity snaps. But we don’t really need to be told. I can hear feet on the staircase behind us. The metallic sort that shake loose stones free.

  Hermann and Volk lead the charge this time. Uncharacteristic eagerness possesses them. They duck through the low entrance, momentarily blocking the view of the room, then I’m pushing in behind them.

  It’s another study, but neater than Lang’s last one. It possesses a sense of order and tranquility I normally associate with tombs and cathedral chapels. None of Lang’s personal brand of organizational chaos. This is a curated, cared for selection of texts.

  The room is large, as wide as the foyer but deeper. A path is worn smooth in the rough rock floor. Low tables delineate its edges. They are made of wood in opposition to the stone furniture that dominates the rest of the fort. On each table are textbooks, spread open, much annotated, diagrams scribbled in the margins.

  At the end of the path, raised slightly on a central stone dais is a table. More books are stacked upon it. A series of large, thick journals bound in browning leather.

  Beyond that a subterranean river scours its way through the back of the room. Dark passageways lined with white froth punctuate the walls to either side of the room. The rest of the room is as typically barren as the rest of the place.

  “Not going to gain much renown as interior decorators, are they?” Clyde says at my elbow. “Though I suppose, being a secretive death cult, renown isn’t exactly what they’re looking for—”

  “Shut up,” Tabitha snaps. “Time. Essence.”

  To emphasize her point, several Uhrwerkmänner land at the base of the stairs behind us.

  “Shit!” I say, ever eloquent in the face of danger. Still my curse gets folk moving, no longer taking in the room, just running pell-mell toward that desk and its contents. They have to be the papers. They have to be what we came for.

  Hermann gets to them first, sweeps the table with one massive hand, scoops them all up in one go. He reaches down to a panel on his thigh. Something extrudes from a fingertip, is inserted into some socket. A moment later the panel pops open. The journals disappear into a hidden cavity.

  “Hey!” Hannah snaps.

  “You cannot carry them all, and I have no trust in you,” Hermann says without hesitation, popping the panel closed.

  At least he’s not a bullshitter.

  A sound like the world collapsing behind us. I spin around. Two Uhrwerkmänner are in the doorway. Behind them… It resembles a landslide. The rock of the stairs collapsing. A sound like a train trying to dry hump a mountain.

  Even before I see his massive shadow emerging from the cloud of dust, I’ve worked out that Friedrich is here.

  Kayla pushes to the front of the group, faces him. “Any of you fecks bother to work out an exit strategy?”

  Hannah is shaking her head. “Bloody, bloody, bloody—” She doesn’t seem like she’s going to get any further than that though.

  I scan the room. And there really is only one choice.

  Shit and balls.

  “The river,” I say.

  It’s a frothing black nightmare. A gushing stream spat out of one cavernous hole and swallowed into the darkness of the other.

  Before us, the two Uhrwerkmänner spread left and right, making way for their boss so he can come and personally mash us into oblivion.

  “Just wanted to remind you,” Clyde says, looking at the river, “not to add undue pressure, but your death at this juncture might bring about the end of reality as we know it.”

  “Fully aware,” I tell him. “Why I’m going to do my best to avoid it.”

  “Bloody, bloody, bloody—” Hannah is still working her way toward the next half of that sentence as she pegs it past us and leaps into the frothing waters. When she comes up she’s already fifteen yards downriver, almost out of the room.

  “Tabby, I’ll—” Clyde starts. I think she jumps just to cut him off. He plunges in after her.

  Behind us, Friedrich bellows in frustration. His footfalls accelerate.

  “Idiot fleshy things.” Hermann is in the water before me, then Volk. Titanic explosions rock the surface of the river as they enter the waters, but its force is enough to barrel even them along. And that passageway better not narrow up ahead.

  Then it’s just Felicity, Kayla, and me. Friedrich is charging. The floor shakes with the force of him. With the bass of his rage. And somehow I am still waiting for Felicity to go first, to make sure she is all right.

  Then Kayla is pushing us both in, carrying us with her. And all I hear before the water closes over my head are three bitter words. “Stupid, silly fecks.”

  39

  A moment of near crippling pain. Cold that the Arctic must surely be jealous about. It crushes me, obliterates me.

  Then my head breaks the water. I glimpse rock flying past me. A massive howling Uhrwerkmänn full of rage. Then walls close about me. A fist clenching. Darkness enveloping.

  The terror is almost as absolute as the blackness. There is no sense of space, of how close I am to dashing my head against the wall. There is only the implacable force of the river. It pounds at me. The water closes over my head, opens, closes, opens, like the mouth of some great fish gasping its last on some frozen shore. I wait to break a limb. There again, I’m so damn numb, I’m not sure I’d notice.

  Ahead I hear the clang and crash of Hermann and Volk as they smash against the walls. I want to call to the others, but there is no chance to get a breath. No chance to call Felicity’s name.

  And then light. Stabbing. Fierce. Rushing toward me too fast. And no, I cannot be going that fast. I cannot. That’s not—

  And then out. Out into light and air. Spat out by the river like some vast gastric rebellion. The light is too much. I have no sense for time, space. Just the water is gone. I am flying through the air now. Only my speed remains constant.

  And then water once more. Swallowing me again. It closes over my head. But it no longer pounds at me. My speed has been robbed from me by the impact. Now I simply sink down. Into bottomless space.

  My lungs burn. A pain that forces focus.

  A lake. A river. Something. The subterranean river burst from the rock into a waterfall, spat me out into the sun, and now I am wasting all this successful fleeing business by subsequently drowning.

  Swimming is difficult when you can’t feel your legs. But there must be something in muscle memory. Or in the remaining air in my lungs. Because my head breaks the surface and I gasp air.

  Eventually I make it to the shore. We all do. Even Hermann and Volk, wading up out of the lake, wreathed in weeds and with several small fish snagged and flopping on their recently tattered metal edges.

  I lie on my back in
the dying heat of the day, Felicity beside me, my friends scattered around me. And Hannah.

  “All right then,” I say to the exhausted crowd. “We got what we came for. Let’s call this a success.”

  Laughter isn’t really the response I was looking for, and Hannah’s seems unnecessarily bitter to me.

  I do my best to ignore her. “Tonight we make camp,” I say. “Tomorrow we hike back to civilization.”

  “Our packs?” Tabitha doesn’t even bother to pick up her head. “Our supplies? In a cavern.” She flops a hand over her head to point to the mountain and the waterfall behind us. “Up there.”

  And, I have to admit, that could be a problem.

  “Feckin’ jessies,” Kayla says, reaching out and plucking a limp fish from the end of a spindle of metal that juts from Volk’s thigh. “Live off the land. Make a raft. Do it like we should have the first time around.”