by Viola Carr
The killer could have been inside all along. Behind the mirror. Watching her.
And she’d a pretty good idea who. She ought to call the police. Stay safe. Summon Inspector Griffin and his constables, fade into the background as a respectable woman should.
Nervous giggles bubbled in her chest. Curiosity and recklessness. She hadn’t become a police physician to avoid the front lines. Besides, time—that elusive quicksilver—was running short.
Underground laboratories, mad scientists, impossible machines. Pah. All in a day’s work.
She tucked the book under her arm, gripped the pistol, and started down.
THE MOST DIABOLICAL KIND
DONG! DONG! HER FOOTSTEPS RANG TOO LOUDLY. So much for stealth. The narrow stair smelled musty, of dust and hot wire. She ducked torn cobwebs to reach the bottom.
Ahead, bluish lights glimmered, luring her like fairy flames into the mire. A brass anteater scuttled across her path, concertina nose snuffling after a startled metal centipede, click-clack-click-clack!
She hefted her pistol at eye level. “Who’s there?”
Just screeching metal, clanging glass. The glow grew brighter as she walked, and finally she emerged into the light.
A vast basement, rows of arc-lights hovering into the distance. Benches were loaded with voltmeters, ampmeters, magnetometers, instruments to measure calorific and de-phlogistication and aetheric disturbance. On a shelf lay an optical, similar to her own, multiple lenses on gleaming brass stalks. Crane had known Henry Jekyll, after all, walking the same shadowy, unorthodox corridors. Perhaps he’d shown her an early design.
In the center, beneath a shining arc-lamp, sat the machine.
Larger than Henry’s, a set of crystal-studded brass rings twelve feet in diameter orbiting the aetheric generator, where a knot of blue filaments crackled and hissed. Tangled wires hung, clipped to the testing equipment. Heat sinks, lightning rods, power drains, and other unrecognizable parts protruded like bristling spines.
On the floor, tied to a heavy table with stout rope, slouched Seymour Locke.
She stared, her confidence crumbling to dust. Surely Locke was responsible. This had to be a ruse.
“Dr. Jekyll.” Locke coughed hoarsely. Hair lank, skin sallow, eyes over-bright with fever. As if he’d been trapped here a while. “You found us.”
Cautiously, she edged closer, pistol ready. “Us? I left Starling outside.”
A caustic smile. “Thought I heard him howling. Get the acid, did he? Always was over-confident. Nice plan of yours, to get him to go first. I should’ve thought of that.”
“Why are you tied up?”
“I truly thought you’d arrive before me. Funny, how things work out. Tell me you didn’t do as I asked, Doctor. Tell me you didn’t bring your father’s cursed book.”
The package smarted under her arm. “But . . .”
Locke swore. “Of course you did. That’s how it happens. Knew I could rely on you.” Bitterly he jerked his chin towards the machine. “He’s over there. I only wish I’d warned you. All I can say in my defense is that I didn’t know.”
Inside the machine, bolted on with sturdy steel bands, was a metal stool. And on it, fiddling ferociously with a row of buttons and levers, sat Seymour Locke.
He wore a dark coat and fawn trousers, his long blond hair tossed over one shoulder in an untidy knot. Unshaven, scarred and bruised, dark crescents beneath glittering eyes. The Locke she knew was twenty-five at most. This fellow looked forty.
Eliza’s eyes boggled. Switched from one Locke to the other, her brain refusing to surrender to the truth.
Time shift. Locke had traveled into his own past—and met himself.
Locke the elder grinned. The same cold, insolent smile, sharpened by a broken front tooth. “Dr. Jekyll. So glad you could join us.”
Tossed about his neck, beneath his ragged hair, was the bloodstained blue scarf.
Some long-haired reprobate in a top hat. The mysterious visitor had been Locke all along.
Just not the same one.
“Don’t look so shocked.” He jumped from his stool and limped closer, gait hitching. “Is that my book? Not before time.” A husky chuckle, his voice ruined by drink or abuse or some other frightful circumstance. “Before time. Ha! Honestly, these jokes never get old.” His right sleeve was pinned roughly over a truncated forearm. Somewhere—somewhen—he’d lost a hand. “Now give over, there’s a good stooge.”
Clutching the book, she backed away, pistol steady. “Not a chance. Untie him. We’re leaving—”
“Leaving!” Hippocrates barreled belatedly down the stairs, splashed with noisome filth. “Escape imperative! Make greater speed!” He hurtled into her skirts, knocking her off balance, and the book slipped from her grip and fell to the floor.
In a flash, Locke the elder dived in and wrenched her pistol away.
But he didn’t point it at her.
Crrack! Blue current forked, stabbing the floor beside the book. Locke cursed his aim—left-handed, of course, and to think she’d imagined he’d missed his shot at the demonstration through lack of practice—and fired again, point blank. A much weaker blast, but it was enough. The dry paper burst into flames, and swiftly reduced to ash.
Hipp cowered behind her skirts. “Error,” he muttered. “Idiot. Sorry.”
Eliza stared, aghast. The air shimmered with excess potential, making her woozy. “What have you done? That’s Mr. Faraday’s book. Now you’ll never fix your machine.”
The younger Locke, who was wriggling in his ropes, just looked at her and laughed.
Locke the elder laughed, too, the same yet strangely different. Bitter, painful to hear. “Oh, the machine works. That’s the thing. It works too well. I’ve spent the last eight years trying to stop the god-awful thing from working.”
“But Interlunium . . . you needed Mr. Faraday’s book. Starling said so.”
Locke the elder snorted. “Starling’s an idiot. That iteration of this fiasco has long been done with. I barely recall it.” He kicked viciously, scattering the ashes of Faraday’s masterpiece. “In any case, who needed Faraday? He couldn’t even solve the field equations without Ada Byron, and look where that got him. Think she betrayed him to the Royal for lines of force? No, it was this that terrified her. Pity for him she didn’t realize the entire project was my idea all along.”
“So,” she murmured, “it was you Ephronia was afraid of. A lowly assistant, you said. But Wyverne knew better, didn’t he? Only no one believed him.”
“Afraid so. You could ask Henry,” he added with a cruel smile, “if he wasn’t dead.”
Clunk! More puzzle pieces slotted into place. “Henry’s student. Seymour Q. Locke. You’re Quentin!”
“Very good,” he declared with a flick of long hair. “I was the real brains. Henry and Finch and their cronies were just passengers. Too scared even to test it. Not a pair of balls between them. So they sent me here, to the future. But the machine got damaged and I got stuck here. Or rather, he did.” He waved a disgusted arm at younger Locke. “And now the thick-headed twist is rebuilding it, isn’t he, with Ephronia and Antoinette and the rest. Of course they had to die.”
The younger Locke gave the same arrogant head-toss, angry curls flying. “So you killed them, just to prevent the machine from ever existing? Congratulations, idiot. Great job. It’s gone swimmingly.”
Eliza blinked. “But you—he—must have succeeded in rebuilding it! Or he will. For you to come here from his future.”
“Give the lady a prize,” sneered Locke the elder. “Hark at the poor lamb. He still thinks he can return to his own time and live out his life. Ha! Seymour old thing, you’ve no idea what’s about to happen.” He shrugged. “Or, in this case, what isn’t about to happen.”
Alarms clanged in her head. Mr. Paxton’s insistence that the engine was dangerous, that it ate up precious aether and destabilized the fabric of the world. “What do you mean? Does it cause some catastrophe?”
“Aether disturbance,” said Hipp helpfully, poking his head from under a table. “Cataclysmic. Probability high.”
“Oh, it’s worse than that.” A nasty broken-toothed grin. “Luckily, you’ll never know. Because I’m about to destroy this machine, along with all evidence it ever existed. I was on track, you know. Everything was at last going to plan. And then you came along, and started enabling the cursed thing.”
Her blood chilled. Blithely, she’d collected the evidence. Ephronia’s notes. Henry’s prototype. Mr. Faraday’s book.
“Clever, aren’t you?” Locke the elder wiped his damp face with his forearm, and recharged the pistol to point it at her. “A shame, really. Because now the only evidence left is this machine, him”—he gestured rudely to the younger Locke, who scowled—“and you.”
TIME’S ARROW
WAIT.” SHE BACKED AWAY, THINKING HARD. “WE can work this out.”
“No more scheming,” snapped Locke. “Eight years, I’ve tried to put things right. Must have jumped a hundred times. I’ve sabotaged experiments, burned laboratories, interrupted meetings, destroyed transcripts. Threats, extortion, kidnapping, assault, blackmail.” An ugly laugh. “Once, I even betrayed them all to the Royal. But nothing works. No matter what I do, or how many times I try, science will out. You can’t kill an idea without killing people. Lesson ended.”
She clenched her teeth, enraged. Always, with killers, it was the “only way.” They made me! I had no choice! Bollocks, as Lizzie might say. “That’s a rotten excuse for murder,” she snapped, before she could stop herself. “There’s always a choice.”
“Don’t bait me,” he snarled. “I loved Ephronia. Killing her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, even after all these years. After her, Antoinette was easy.”
Two killers, she’d thought—or one killer who could be in two places at once. Ha. Brava, Constable Perkins. “You did them in reverse order. First Ormonde, then Ephronia, then Antoinette. The line of least effort.”
“The line of least murder,” he hissed. “I didn’t want to kill them all. Ormonde was old. I thought killing him might be enough, but no. That’s why Ephronia had to be next. She knew the most. I tried to save lives.”
He was getting riled, his aim wavering. “Oh, I’m sure,” she taunted. “Did you even notice Ephronia was with child before you choked her to death? Would you even have cared?”
The younger Locke cursed, fighting his ropes. “Bleeding Christ, what the hell happens to us? When do I go insane?”
Locke the elder paled. “What? No, she didn’t say anything. Surprised to see me, I suppose,” he added with a dark snigger. “It was something of a tumultuous reunion.”
Eliza nodded, stalling. Keep to the plan. Distract him, grab the pistol . . . “So it was you who slept with her the night she died.”
A cunning wink. “What if it was? Check that one off the to-do list, Seymour old thing. Nothing thrills a scientist more than learning her pet invention works. She practically tore my clothes off. And to think I’d once wooed her all those months without success.” A sigh. “Poor Ephronia. It hurt me, truly. I bawled like a baby when I choked her.”
“For God’s sake,” spat the younger Locke savagely, “kill me now, before I turn into such a bloody bastard. I always suspected I had a moral cog loose, but you’ve smashed the whole fucking clockwork.”
A cruel smile from the elder Locke. “Cura te ipsum, my innocent friend. We all kill what we love, don’t we? But you shan’t distract me with pleasant reminiscing. Time to die.”
“What of Crane’s journal?” she stalled, hoping against hope that Lizzie would burst out, attack, do anything. But stubborn Lizzie wasn’t talking. The noxious blue potion had seen to that. Only cold, black emptiness, desolate and frightening. “And Henry’s prototype. They’re still at large.”
“Already taken care of those. Or I will.” He shrugged. “Tenses become so unimportant.”
She fumbled for inspiration. “B-but you can’t kill the younger Locke. If he dies, so do you.”
“Really? Let’s see.” He took aim, and crrack!
Blue current forked, striking young Locke in the chest. He convulsed, jerking in his ropes, and finally collapsed. Smoke drifted from his hair, froth on his lips. Dead.
Locke—the remaining Locke—grinned like a hungry hyena, and waved his scarf at her. “Still alive.”
Eliza boggled. “But . . .”
“There are so many of me now. Parallel worlds, alternate realities, parity duplicates, et hoc genus omne. Who knows which of the dozens of hims is me?” He gave a shrill, irresponsible laugh that chilled her to the core. She’d heard Edward Hyde laugh that way. “Probabilities, Doctor!” he cackled. “I’d have to be unlucky, after all we’ve been through. Shoot him, kill myself, put cause before effect. Create a paradox that could open a rift to the past or transport me to an alternate reality or reverse every decision I’ve ever made while liquefying my brains to porridge. Who the hell knows? One thing you soon learn about this forsaken business is that there are no rules. At least none that make linear sense.”
Her mind struggled. “So is your brain ‘evidence,’ too? You’ll just blow your own head off when you’re done, will you?”
“If it comes to that. But then I’d never know, would I?” Again, he waved the scarf profoundly, as if imparting hidden knowledge.
“I’m sorry, is that supposed to mean something?”
He sighed impatiently. “The bloodstain, you obtuse character. It’s how I tell if I’ve fixed things. Stupid to drop it at Ephronia’s, I know, but that invisible fool Wyverne interrupted me. I stole it back from you, oh, I don’t know. A day or two ago. Before I electrocuted Antoinette. After I realized you were interfering. It’s so hard to keep track of time.”
She glanced at his missing hand, the limp, the scars. Clearly, the future hadn’t gone well for Seymour Q. Locke. “Is that your blood? From the hand?”
“Trust me, Doctor. If sorcerers slicing my hand off is the worst thing that happens? We’re all home free.” He primed the pistol’s charge, hiss-flick! “Now stop talking.”
“Listen.” She adopted a soothing, persuasive tone. “This needn’t happen. Surely we needn’t destroy everything. The machine can be used properly, controlled. Any catastrophe can be averted. Now give me the pistol and let’s—”
“You think the machine can be salvaged?” Crazed fire lit his eyes. “I once thought that way. Want to see what happens if I let things be? Shall I show you the consequences of your pride?” He grabbed her with a steely arm around her waist and dragged her towards the machine, limping as he went.
“Get off me!” Eliza fought, but he was stubborn and capable. Stronger than the younger Locke, more seasoned. She slammed her boots into his shins, aimed her knee as best she could for his groin. He just grunted, teeth clicking. Pain-tolerant, too. What a life he’d led. “Stop this at once. It’s undignified!”
“Mea culpa.” With a snarl, he leapt onto the stool and yanked her into his lap with his maimed arm, ignoring her struggles. With his remaining fingers, he jabbed at the controls.
The big brass rings whirred, faster and faster, surrounding her in a pulsating sphere. Burned aether sizzled, acrid in her nostrils. Crystals sliced the light into rainbows, and the air groaned and began to tear apart.
“Wait!” She struggled, gripped by foreboding. But fighting was useless. If she jumped out now, she’d be cut to ribbons. “We can talk about this.”
“Talking’s over.” He worked furiously at the controls, sweat dripping on his scarred cheeks. “All I ever wanted was to go home to the girl who loved me. Yes, I had a wife in Henry’s day. It wasn’t much, but I thought I could lead a normal life. Me!” A cracked laugh. “What a fool I was. People like us don’t get normal, Eliza Jekyll-and-Hyde. We don’t get safe. All we get is darkness and loneliness and fear.”
His words chilled her. A normal life. What a pleasant dream.
He wrenched one last
wheel into place, grunting in satisfaction. “You don’t believe in my future? Let’s go see it together.” And he grabbed the big copper lever, and yanked.
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
THE WORLD DISSOLVED.
Tortured air shrieked, ripping her ears to bleeding. Aether exploded, blowing her hair back, and like a melting cinematograph, her surroundings bubbled and tore apart. The machine tumbled like a rock in a barrel, and she and Locke tumbled with it, forwards and back and now and then streaking into rainbows of confusion.
Locke laughed, exultant. “The aether hates us!” he yelled above the cacophony of burning time. “It can’t stand much more of this.”
Where are we going? she tried to yell, but the endless twisting inferno ripped her words away and crushed them to dust.
All was chaos . . . then the machine abruptly recovered its sense of up and down, and plummeted, thudding into wet ground.
Oof! Her teeth slammed on her tongue, a coppery splash.
Night closed in like a fist, and the stormy sky burned a hellish red. Distant grinding machinery, iron screeching on stone, shouting, a stray eerie scream. Lightning crackled, a juddering fork of blue, and the air howled and stretched, wind shrieking. The stink of rotting filth made her retch. Flesh. Bodies. Death.
Squelch! Her boots landed ankle-deep in mud . . . and she stumbled over a decaying hand thrusting from the ground.
A mass grave.
“Where are we?” Cracked, small, frightened. Damn it.
Locke jumped down after her. “Where Ireton House used to be, about a year ago—move!” He tackled her, hurling her up a steep rubble embankment.
Chomp! Jagged teeth the size of knives snapped on empty air, and a wolfish monster with bristling black fur growled in thwarted hunger.
Eliza scrambled for her life, rocks stabbing her hands and knees. “What the hell is that?”
“Want to stay and argue?”
Eliza and Locke ran. Streets crowded with sweating bodies, slack faces, terrified eyes. Hunger, disease, fear. Blood and filth clotted the gutters. Children screamed and wept, their naked bodies bruised. Hideous dogs snarled. Broken and burning buildings, the stink of molten steel and fire.