Jane Doe and the Cradle of All Worlds

by Jeremy Lachlan

  And our time’s run out.

  The forward door squeals again. A bunch of Leatherheads charge inside, heavy boots thumping, a stench to end all stenches hot on their heels. A rolling, toxic fog.

  Roth.

  The reek of him. A heat-shimmer haze of ash and rancid meat. A stain in the corners of my eyes. I sink to the floor with the rest of the prisoners, defeated by the mere presence of him. I couldn’t look up if I tried. Bile rises in the back of my throat. It burns.

  The door swings shut and there’s nothing but the muted clankity-clunk of the train and Roth’s death-rattle breathing. My skin crawls. My vision swims and blurs. The bounty hunter drops his whip, kneels in submission. Hickory flaps Roth a weak, apologetic wave from the floor. He’s as screwed as we are, and he knows it. Roth growls in reply.

  But then something catches his attention. His breathing quickens. Two heavy steps and Roth’s boots are right beside me.

  ‘Always knew I’d see your ugly mug again, Roth.’

  Dad’s voice is a wheeze. Roth lifts him to his feet. The chain rattles and pulls at the collar round my neck, forcing me up to my knees. A thud tells me Dad’s pinned to the wall. A stifled cry tells me he’s in pain. Roth lets out a menacing, satisfied sigh. I want to stop him, want to fight him, but I can’t get up. Can’t even bring myself to look at him.

  Dad’s lifted off his feet. They start jittering, his toes tapping the floor, as if volts of electricity are shooting through his body, choking his screams. I will myself to stand up, to fight, but it’s useless. Hickory’s watching me, knows exactly what I’m thinking. He shakes his head, wants me to forget it, but I can’t. I may not be able to fight. But I can talk.

  ‘Oi.’ At first it’s just a whisper, a croak. A coughing fit grips my lungs but I fight through it, force out the words, louder this time. ‘Hey. Crap-for-brains. Down here.’

  My throat’s on fire. It just about kills me, but it works. Dad’s feet stop dancing. He gasps, tries to catch his breath. Whatever Roth was doing, he isn’t doing it anymore, and now his attention’s on me. I can feel him watching me. Feel his eyes burning into my skull.

  Hickory tries to drag the attention his way. ‘Don’t worry about her,’ he says. ‘She’s just a fool, a crazy person,’ but a Leatherhead smacks him with its rifle.

  Dad collapses to the floor and Roth plants his boots square in my blurry field of vision. I figure I’m about to get my very own case of the jitters, but then the bounty hunter talks. I can’t understand what he’s saying, but it’s scattered with Leatherhead clicks and clacks, and it gets them all riled up. When the bounty hunter points at me I swear every rifle in the carriage does the same. Next thing I know a Leatherhead grabs me. I’m on my feet and choking in no time, eyes closed. Anything to avoid looking at Roth.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ Dad splutters. ‘She’s nobody. I’m the – the one you want.’

  A hand grabs my face. Five fingers, not three. Roth’s hand, long-nailed and cold. His breath scrapes at my skin, unbearably close. I try to keep my eyes closed, but I can’t.

  The sight of Roth’s face blasts them dry.

  His half-mask, shiny-white and flawless. The air rippling between his fake, frozen lips, alive with heat and decay. The leather straps wrapped around his bald head so tight they dig into his skin. Skin that isn’t wrinkled but stretched, grey-veined and mottled. And those eyes, perched above the porcelain like two bottomless pools. A cold, blind-man’s blue.

  They capture mine. Trap them. Turn them inside out.

  At least, they try to.

  Something’s wrong. I can see it written all over the top half of Roth’s face. He wants to read me, but he can’t. I can feel him probing, prodding, trying to open me up with his mind, but I can block him without even trying. It’s like a reflex, a jerk of the knee.

  And Roth doesn’t like it one bit.

  He releases me. Strides over to the bounty hunter, who’s rambling now, still on his knees. I don’t even need to speak his language to know what he’s saying. He’s worried he isn’t gonna get his free ticket home. The poor sucker actually thinks he still has a chance.

  Roth grabs the big man’s face as he stands. The bounty hunter might be taller and bulkier but he isn’t anywhere near as strong. They lock eyes and it’s like what happened to Dad all over again. The bounty hunter twitches and jitters. The prisoners around him shrink into the walls. Hickory looks away. The bounty hunter convulses, bleeding from his nose, eyes and ears. It sounds like there’s a dying animal trapped in his throat. You can almost see his life story pouring out of him, all of it gobbled up by Roth. His home. His family. Finding me in the forest with the key. I want to scream at Roth, tell him to stop.

  But I’m already too late.

  The bounty hunter’s eyes roll back into his head. He hits the deck and Roth’s on him in a flash, tearing through the big man’s pockets, searching for the key. He turns the bounty hunter over, pats him down. Unsheathes one of two curved blades hanging from his belt and slices through the dead man’s clothes. He can’t find it.

  The key isn’t there.

  And then I see it. A glint in Hickory’s eyes. The flicker of a smile.

  The fight was a ruse. He picked the bounty hunter’s pocket.

  Roth rounds on me again. I see the questions like ice and fire in his eyes. Where is it? What have you done with it? I don’t know what to say, what to do.

  The Leatherhead behind me twists my arm, tries to force an answer out of me.

  ‘She took it,’ Hickory says, pointing at the girl’s empty collar. ‘Picked his pocket before she got away. I tried to stop her but she escaped through that panel down there.’

  Roth doesn’t look at the panel, though. He approaches Hickory, who’s rambling like the bounty hunter now. ‘Read me if you like, boss, but you’re wasting time. Bet she’s going for the brakes. Engine carriage. Probably there right now. I swear on my life, my soul, my –’

  BOOM.

  An explosion somewhere further up the train rocks the carriage. Makes the lights blink. We stumble for a second, but the rocking doesn’t last long. We haven’t been derailed.

  We’re speeding up.

  Hickory flicks an eyebrow at Roth. ‘Told you.’

  It’s all stations go now. Roth unsheathes his second blade and turns to the Leatherheads, one after another. He doesn’t make a sound but they seem to know exactly what he wants. They scatter. Some through the forward door, some through the back. The Leatherhead breathing down my neck unlocks my collar. A different one frees Dad.

  Roth shrinks us with his eyes.

  Move it, they’re saying. And don’t try anything stupid.

  ESCAPE

  We stagger through the train, led by Roth, herded by our Leatherhead guards. Every carriage is the same. Blinking lights and human stains. Prisoners cowering in the corners.

  Hickory has been left behind.

  The Leatherheads open and shut doors for us as we go. Each time we’re shoved into the roaring wind between the carriages I consider grabbing Dad and jumping, taking our chances with the fall. But even if we somehow managed to survive, Roth could just come tumbling after us. Then there’s the matter of the key. We can’t leave without Hickory.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ Dad shouts. ‘We don’t know where the keys are.’

  I’m sure I hear Roth laugh at this, or what passes for a laugh when your mouth’s been rotted away. A guttural, rasping chuckle that makes you want to clear your throat.

  Into another carriage now, and I’m trying to come up with a plan. We have to make sure Roth doesn’t get his hands on Hickory and the key, but how? It’s just me and Dad. There aren’t even any prisoners left alive in this carriage to help us. I’ve never seen so much death.

  And then I see the girl through one of the barred windows at the end of the carriage. A flash of her face and she’s gone. But then a hand. Five fingers flashing twice. She said she was helping us, but what the hell does that signal mean? Hi
there? Ten Leatherheads?

  Ten seconds.

  The train squeals around another bend and I make my move. Grab Dad and pull him down in the flickering light. A Leatherhead tries to grab us. Roth steps in, too, but the ten seconds is up. A metal canister flies through the window and clatters along the floor between the bodies. I throw myself on top of Dad in case there’s an explosion, but an explosion never comes – at least, not one of fire. With a loud pop, the carriage becomes a cloud.

  It’s a smoke bomb.

  Footsteps on the roof. The Leatherheads retaliate with a round of gunfire but they’re firing blind. I crawl away from them, hauling Dad along with me, over and around the dead bodies, through the smoke and the noise and the gunfire all rat-a-tat.

  The sliding side door screeches open. A gust of howling wind clears the smoke, and we’re two sitting ducks. Thankfully, Roth and the Leatherheads are too busy worrying about the girl to pay us any attention for the moment. They edge towards the open side door. Don’t even notice the grenade pop through the barred window behind them till it’s too late.

  This time there’s an explosion. Me and Dad are far enough away to avoid being hurt, but the Leatherheads aren’t so lucky. One of them is blasted clean through the open door, the other hits the side and gets sucked out a second later. Roth merely staggers, catches a handle, steadies himself and spins around. He advances on the girl in the window. She has a gun. Fires once, twice, three times, the blasts hitting him in the chest, the stomach, forcing him back, closer and closer to the open door. But it isn’t enough.

  I scramble to my feet and run at him, yelling, ‘Shoot him in the face! The face!’

  The girl fires again and shoots Roth square in the mask. It shatters but he spins around before we can see the horror beneath. He’s teetering on the edge now. I don’t stop, keep running, throw the full force of my weight into his. As expected, it’s like hitting a brick wall, but it’s enough. I bounce back into the carriage. Roth tumbles out the door.

  Just another blur.

  When Dad helps me up, I’m a huffing, puffing wreck, sucking down the Roth-free air. ‘Don’t you ever do anything like that again,’ he says, but he smiles and hugs me.

  The girl swings down into the carriage, throws Dad a spare rifle. ‘Get a move on.’

  ‘Thanks for coming back.’ He pulls some kind of latch on the rifle, checks the sight-thingy. ‘You destroyed the brakes?’

  The girl nods. ‘After I put the train on full-throttle. Raided their weapon cache, stole some explosives. Took out a carriage of Leatherheads too.’

  ‘Very good,’ Dad says, genuinely impressed. But he’s missing the point.

  ‘Good?’ I say. ‘We need to stop this thing and get off it, not make it go faster.’

  The girl throws me a pistol. ‘I counted eighteen carriages, including the engine car. We’re slightly closer to the back of the train so that’s the way we go.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘We climb onto the roof and run.’

  ‘You want us to run along the roof of a speeding train filled with bad guys? That’s your big plan? What do we do once we get to the end?’

  ‘Disconnect the carriage,’ Dad says. ‘Watch as the rest of the train speeds away.’

  ‘What about Roth?’ I ask. ‘The fall couldn’t have killed him.’

  ‘We’ll have put enough distance between us by the time we get down there,’ the girl says. ‘We’ll jump off the train and duck away from the tracks as soon as we start slowing down. Lose him in no time. You two manage to get the key back yet?’

  ‘Hickory has it,’ I say. ‘He fought the bounty hunter. Picked his pocket right before Roth – well, I’m not exactly sure what Roth did to him. Fried his brain?’

  ‘He can do that?’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately,’ Dad says. ‘He gets inside your mind, he can tear it apart in no time. The good news is he doesn’t already have the second key.’ I’m about to ask Dad how he knows this, when he says, ‘While he was reading me, Roth told me what he wants. The keys – plural. He’s no closer to the Cradle than we are.’

  ‘Where’s the second key?’ the girl asks.

  ‘Elsa has it,’ Dad says, and turns to me. ‘She survived a long time in here before the Spectre found her. When we found each other in the Grip she told me –’

  ‘Later,’ the girl says, ‘and not in front of me. Or anyone else. If Roth can read minds, the less we know about the keys, the better. Right now, we head up to the roof, stay low and move fast. We’ll find Hickory and the first key as we go.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I say, ‘who put you in charge? Who are you?’

  The girl shuffles her feet impatiently. After a deep breath she says, ‘It’s me, Jane.’

  ‘You’re gonna have to be more specific than that.’

  The girl undoes her scarf. Pulls the lower half under her chin and the top half back over her hair. It’s dark and long and tied back in a braid. I stare at her and she stares at me and she looks so familiar it’s crazy, but she can’t be.

  ‘Violet,’ she says, but I still say, ‘Violet who?’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘How many Violets do you know, Jane?’

  ‘One,’ I say. ‘And she’s eight.’

  The girl steps back to the door. ‘Not anymore,’ she says, and swings out into the wind.

  A CHANGE OF PLAN

  So we’re crouched on the roof of the train, hands and feet spread wide against the tilt and shudder of the carriage. The wind flaps our clothes and whips our hair and roars in our ears, trying to snatch us up and slam us into the Manor walls speeding by.

  ‘Guns at the ready,’ the-Crazy-Girl-Who-Reckons-She’s-Violet shouts.

  We move as fast as we can, keeping an eye out for low-hanging chandeliers and archways, ducking whenever they whoosh by. The candles and torches in the corridor keep trying to re-light themselves as we thunder past, but they don’t stand a chance. Only the odd flash of sparks and the electric glow seeping from the train windows show us what’s what.

  The first jump’s the hardest, even with the wind at our backs. One slip and we’re train feed. The-Girl-Who Can’t-Be-Violet soars over the gap. Me and Dad make the jump together.

  One down, too many more to go.

  The train speeds into a new corridor. Chandeliers zip by above our heads with a shoom shoom zoom. Another low archway and we’re charging through a vast pillared hall. Torches flicker to life beyond the grip of the wind. We scramble on, the girl swinging over the edge of every carriage, looking for Hickory through the windows.

  Dad says, ‘Where the hell is he?’

  I say, ‘Maybe he’s already down the back of the train, but inside like a normal person.’

  I don’t think anyone hears me.

  In the end it’s Hickory who finds us, six or so carriages from the end. He clambers onto the roof ahead with the bounty hunter’s whip looped round his shoulder, a gun in his hands and three Leatherheads hot on his tail. Dad and the girl raise their weapons, so I do as well. The girl shouts at Hickory, tells him to get down, and he dives. Rifles fire. My pistol clicks. By the time I’ve finished cursing the damn thing the Leatherheads have all been blasted clear.

  Guns, I’ve decided, are the worst.

  The girl smacks Hickory with the butt of her rifle. Dad punches him, takes his gun, and rummages through his pockets. Finds the key and shoves it into my hands with a quick ‘Don’t lose it.’ I tuck the key back into my pocket and point my pistol at Hickory.

  ‘What are you gonna do with that,’ he says, ‘throw it at me?’

  So I throw it at him. Clock him a good ’un right in the face, too. He yelps and the pistol clatters over the side of the train. The girl glares at me.

  I shrug. ‘It was broken anyway.’

  ‘Stop bloody hitting me,’ Hickory shouts, clutching his nose. ‘We need to go. Now!’

  Then we see them. A troop of Leatherheads climbing onto the roof of the last carriage. Running and leaping towards us. A
nd there, rising and striding among them with his blades glinting like fangs: Roth. He must’ve grabbed hold of the last carriage after he fell. His clothes are torn, but he’s wearing a new mask.

  Needless to say, he looks furious.

  ‘Run,’ Dad shouts, handing Hickory back his gun. ‘Go, go, go!’

  We make like rabbits into the wind, heading towards the front of the train, back the way we came. The jumps are harder now. We have to take them at a sprint, and I can see Dad’s energy is fading fast. I ask the girl if she has a new plan and she says, ‘Get to the front, the engine car, detach it, speed away,’ but Hickory shuts her down.

  ‘Can’t speed away,’ he shouts over his shoulder. ‘We’re coming up to the spiral road.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The spiral road.’ He spins around, tells us to duck. Blows away a Leatherhead that’s popped up right behind us. ‘It’s a – a – it’s a bloody road. In a spiral. Big one, going down. If the train takes it at this speed – even the engine carriage alone –’

  ‘We’ll derail,’ Dad says.

  ‘We don’t have a choice,’ the girl shouts. ‘We’ll just have to figure out a way to slow down once we’re far enough away from Roth.’

  ‘Oh, this’ll end well,’ I mutter.

  Leatherheads pop up in front of us, at our sides, swinging fists and machetes, snatching at our heels when we jump, carriage after carriage. Bounty hunters join the fray, streaming from their carriage up near the front of the train, blocking our path. Nobody shoots at us, though.

  Roth still doesn’t know where the key is. He needs us alive and kicking.

  ‘Heads up!’ Dad shouts, and the train speeds through another giant’s mouth, clotheslining a bunch of unwary bad guys from our path. Chandeliers whoosh and whistle above our heads. We duck and dodge them, slowing down. Roth takes the occasional bullet, but never stops. He’s taking his time because time is all he needs. He’s gaining on us.