A Perfect Machine

by Brett Savory

  And what she knew was incredibly important.

  What she knew would change everything.

  While she hovered in this strange place now, her mind turned again to Milo, who was apparently Henry’s ghost familiar. Adelina had had a ghost familiar, too, right after she died, but she couldn’t remember who it was. Was it one of her close friends, like Milo was to Henry, or was it someone she didn’t know? She felt like she’d learned very important things from her familiar, but most – if not all – of it seemed drained from her mind.

  She felt like her name started with an M. Marney? Mabel? Marissa? Maureen? Maura? … Then it popped into her head: Marla. That was it. A little girl.

  Adelina had no idea where she’d come from, but as soon as she’d died, this little girl, this comfortable companion was very near her. But she had eventually left her side. Gone somewhere else.

  In this formless place, which she had come to call simply the Otherland, memories slipped through her fingers like tiny fish in a stream, but one conversation burbled briefly to the surface now, and she grasped at it, held on tightly, tried to remember…

  When Adelina had first arrived here, her brain couldn’t conceive of the near-nothingness in which it’d found itself, so it created a fictional construct from a memory of her childhood. Her mind plugged in walls with movie star posters on them, a carpeted floor on which she sat cross-legged, leafing through a celebrity gossip magazine. This was her teenage room, at home with her parents. She’d barely had any lead in her body at this point, had only just started participating in the Runs recently – fourteen being the age everyone had to start. It was quickly discovered that if you didn’t start on the night of your fourteenth birthday, your friends and family began to disappear. The learning curve was incredibly fast for this, so not as many people vanished in the early days of the Inferne Cutis – about a hundred and fifty years ago – as one might imagine, and not a lot had disappeared since. (There had been one or two people who tried purposely missing Runs so they could get rid of family members they loathed, but whatever external force oversaw the vanishings saw through this tactic, so no one would disappear in those cases.)

  Adelina flipped from page to page in her magazine, more details coming into existence as she glanced around the room: a night table; her alarm clock; her fan to help her sleep; the door – at which someone now knocked.

  “Come in,” she said, even though she didn’t want to, had no idea who was going to come into the room.

  It was the little girl she would later learn was named Marla.

  Marla walked over to where Adelina sat, dropped to the ground, and sat crosslegged in the same position as Adelina.

  “Hello,” she said, and smiled. “My name’s Marla. What’s yours?”

  “Adelina.”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  “So is yours,” Adelina said.

  Marla looked satisfied. “Thanks. My mom told me my dad named me.”

  “Where’s your mom now?”

  Marla’s features darkened a bit. “I don’t know. I think my dad and she got divorced a long time ago. I never really saw her much.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Marla looked away, then down at her hands. “Look, um, I know a lot about where you are. I was shot in the head by your people, but they don’t know it. I think they’d be sad if they knew, but I have no way to tell them. Maybe you could let them know?”

  Adelina just stared at her, unable to process everything the little girl had said.

  “Anyway,” Marla continued, “I know a lot about where you are because I used to be here, too. The room was different – looked different, at least – but I know this was the same place.”

  Just then, the movie posters on the wall shimmered, seemed to phase in and out of substantiation. One of them vanished, popping right out of existence as Adelina watched. It was replaced by a sort of hazy blackness shot through with a pulsing glitter, like the edge of a star.

  “So where am I?” Adelina asked.

  “I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s a different universe from the one you came from, the one you lived in. The one we both lived in.”

  A deep sadness came over Marla, then – deeper than her age would seem to allow.

  “And where are you, then? If you’re not here, and you’re not alive in our old world, where did you go?”

  “I moved on to a different universe – different even from this one. There are so many universes, I can’t keep track. In the one I’m visiting you from right now, I see all other universes laid out in front of me. Sort of –” Marla struggled to explain using her child’s vocabulary “– like, stacked on top of one another, but still so that I can see them all at once… I know that’s hard to imagine, to picture in your head, but if you went there, you’d know what I meant.”

  Adelina just nodded, waited for whatever Marla might say next. The dreamlike quality of the experience was morphing into something that felt more realistic, and it scared Adelina. It was better thinking that it was all just some strange hallucination.

  “I need to leave soon. I shouldn’t be here,” Marla said. “They don’t know I found my way back here, and when they find out, they’re going to be mad. What I wanted to tell you – what you need to know, even though I don’t think there’s anything you can do about it – is that this universe I’m in… well, we create gods.”

  More things shifted, disappeared in Adelina’s room. Everything was becoming more and more insubstantial. Lightning forked somewhere far off in the distance. Adelina saw it through the holes created by the vanishing walls, ceiling, floor.

  “We create gods, Adelina, and we let them do whatever they like.”

  Marla began to cry.

  F O U R T E E N

  Krebosche froze.

  He desperately wanted to move – every muscle in his body screamed at him to do so, to get up and run like hell – but he couldn’t. He just lay on his belly in the snow and shivered.

  Gun’s in my waistband. Knife’s in my boot. No way I’ll get to either before he shoots me.

  Edward Palermo stood a couple of feet back from Krebosche. Gun trained on his head. “Let’s assume for argument’s sake,” he said, “that you’re looking for me. Well, here I am. What can I do for you?”

  Krebosche said nothing, just stared ahead, eyes big and round in his head.

  “Have we met?” Palermo asked. “I don’t believe I’ve had the honor.”

  Silence still.

  “You don’t happen to be involved with that man who was here earlier, do you? Duncan, I think his name was. He didn’t meet a very pleasant end.”

  Snow and breathing.

  “Shall I just shoot you where you lay, then? Clearly you’re retarded or someone has cut out your tongue. In either scenario, you’re of no use to me, and you’re trespassing, so–”

  “How did you…” Krebosche said, at last finding speech.

  “How did I what?”

  “How did you know–”

  “That you were here? My men have binoculars and, unlike you, they aren’t retarded. They located you bumbling around out here, playing – very poorly – at being some kind of sleuth.”

  “Can I stand up?”

  “Slowly, yes. And with your hands clear of your body.”

  Krebosche pushed himself off the ground, got his knees under him, stood, arms away from his sides. His heart thumped slower now, his breathing becoming steadier.

  Calm down, just calm down.

  “I’m going to assume,” Palermo said, “that you’ll’ve come armed with something to harm me. What did you bring? Oh, and don’t show me, just tell me first.”

  Krebosche thought about what to say. Should he tell him about the gun and the knife, or just one of them, leave himself a last-ditch option?

  “Gun,” he said.

  “That’s all?”

  Krebosche nodded.

  “Now, show me where, but don’t move your arms.
”

  Krebosche turned around slowly, feet crunching snow. The gun was visible in his waistband.

  “Lovely. Stand very, very still as I remove it. OK?”

  Krebosche nodded. Palermo moved forward, gun trained on the back of Krebosche’s head. He snatched the gun out of the waistband and stepped back quickly, popped it into his own waistband.

  “One more chance: any more weapons? Be honest now.”

  Krebosche decided to stick to his deceit. The way Palermo was talking to him – the condescending snideness – could work for him. He thinks I’m a fool, a retard. He thinks he can fuck with me. If I can just get one moment where he’s unguarded…

  “Nothing,” he said. “That’s it.”

  “Grand. Now tell me what you’re doing here. You were with the other man, Duncan, yes? In it together, were you? Come to expose our secret society?”

  Krebosche said nothing.

  “Do you think you’re the first to try?”

  Krebosche wanted to tell him he’d been tracking him for nearly a year, that he wasn’t just some shitty reporter or something, sniffing around for a lead, that his little society was responsible for his sister’s death, and also that – in a crazy twist of fate he still found hard to believe whenever his mind would turn to the fact – Krebosche had been dating his fucking daughter. And that he knew Palermo had killed her. But he held it in. Tipping his hand now would be stupid. He needed to take advantage of his anonymity.

  “I don’t know much at all,” Krebosche said. “Duncan just said if I hadn’t heard from him by a certain time, I was to come after him. Get him out.”

  Palermo squinted, cocked his head a little. Said nothing.

  Sell it. Come on, sell it, Krebosche thought. Then, eyes down, his voice dropping an octave in what he hoped sounded like shame, he added: “He said we’d be famous.”

  Palermo smirked. “Famous.”

  Krebosche raised his eyes again, met Palermo’s. He knew the key to selling a line was to not overplay it. No hangdog expressions when shame has been offered up. Definitely no tears. And don’t talk too much. The less you say, the more believable the lie is. Easier to keep track of what you’ve said that way, too.

  “So what do you suppose I’m to do with you, Mr Famous? I can’t just let you go, can I.”

  “Why not? Won’t I just forget everything in a couple of hours? And who would believe me, anyway? Whatever weird mind scrub effect protects you works on me, too.” He wanted to keep Palermo talking. “How does it work, anyway? Some kinda force field? Some Rasputin-esque shit? Divine intervention?” He dropped his arms a little during the last sentence to test Palermo’s attention. Palermo immediately caught on, motioned to him with the gun to get his arms back up.

  “No force field. No Rasputin shit. No God. As far as we know.”

  “Then what?”

  “Nothing that would make the slightest bit of sense to you.”

  Nothing that makes the slightest bit of sense to me, either, Palermo thought, but would never say.

  Krebosche blinked. “Try me.”

  “Enough of this,” Palermo said, a darkness crossing his features. Krebosche knew he’d lost him – and probably his last chance of survival. “Enough of this Bond-villain explaining-all-my-motives drivel. Hands on your head. Start walking.”

  Palermo motioned again with his gun, this time to turn around and walk in the direction of the caboose and the warehouse.

  Or wherever he’s decided to shoot me in the face, Krebosche thought, but did as he was instructed. As he turned, his peripheral vision caught something on the roof of the warehouse: a quick gleam of light from a pair of binoculars. So there you are, you fucker. One of you, anyway.

  The moon hung low in the sky. It looked like a true blue moon. A rarity. One more shot at random distraction, Krebosche thought. If this doesn’t work, I’ll have to tell him who I am. What I really know. Hope it’s enough to throw him off, give me a shot at the boot knife.

  “When I was a kid,” he said, as he marched through the thickening snow, “I used to live for nights like this. Full moon, big and fat, just hanging up there in the sky like–”

  “Shut your mouth, or I’ll kill you right here, Mr Famous. Mr Idiot.” Something was boiling up inside Palermo. Some nameless anger that he was finding hard to control. It had started creeping up his back the moment Krebosche had brought up the “mind scrub” thing. Palermo himself had no idea what caused it, nor did anyone else, as far as he knew. It was certainly something he and his kind welcomed, but his failure to understand why it happened was something that gnawed away at him. To him, something about it felt off. Like there were reasons beyond his fathoming for the Inferne Cutis’s existence – some purpose beyond his capability to understand. But that wasn’t entirely it; he felt, too, that there was a kind of manipulation at work. Some sort of–

  Krebosche sensed the crack in Palermo’s attention as finely as if he’d been observing him during direct, face-on contact. He took one quick glance at the position of the man with binoculars on the roof, then made his move: he feinted left, then dipped immediately right and low, came up quickly with the boot knife. Palermo got a shot off, but it went wide. The next second, Krebosche – knowing his only hope at not getting pegged by the guy on the rooftop, and anyone else with eyes on them, was to make sure he had no clear shot – lunged forward and tackled Palermo, taking him out at the legs. They went down together in a heap, Palermo losing his grip on the gun in the struggle. They rolled a few times, then Krebosche maneuvered himself on top of Palermo – just long enough to drive the knife into Palermo’s thigh. Not enough to hobble him (he knew if he had any shot at getting out of this, Palermo would need to be able to walk), but enough to hurt like a motherfucker. Blood erupted. Palermo screamed.

  “Tell them to stand down!” Krebosche barked into Palermo’s face, then quickly slipped underneath and to the right of Palermo, so as to make a clean shot still impossible – or at the very least incredibly risky. He wrapped a hand around Palermo’s throat. “Fucking tell them, or I cut your head off right here and now!”

  The thought then occurred to Krebosche that Palermo’s men could just open up on the both of them without fear of killing Palermo – the bullets would just add to whatever was already inside Palermo, but Krebosche would be riddled with them, and would die instantly. But what else could he do? This was the situation he found himself in, and if they opened up and this was the end, then that’s the outcome. He had gone for the knife in his boot instead of the gun in Palermo’s waistband because Palermo was lying on his back. The gun would certainly have made him feel more secure, but he’d foolishly envisioned an uneventful lead-up to his planned murder – not this ridiculous sideshow.

  Now all Krebosche could do was hope the threat of the knife was enough.

  “Hold your fire!” Palermo yelled. He repeated it twice more to make sure he was heard.

  * * *

  Krebosche quickly reached over and down and pulled the knife out of Palermo’s leg, moved it up to press against his neck. Palermo screamed again, tried to kick out once. Krebosche pressed the knife against Palermo’s throat until it drew blood. “Do that again. Go ahead, you shiteating fuck. Do it.”

  Krebosche’s voice was thick with hate. Palermo felt spittle fleck his ears as Krebosche spat the words out. In that moment, Palermo recognized that this wasn’t just some jumped-up reporter, too stupid to know better than to come sniffing around his warehouse – or anyone even close to that; there was genuine and intense loathing in Krebosche’s voice. Palermo didn’t know why yet, but he knew he – specifically – was Krebosche’s target.

  “Who are you?” Palermo said, his voice just edging into territory that would betray fear. He tried to control it, tamp it down. “What do you think I did to you?”

  “I won’t tell you either of those things here, but I’ll tell you soon. I want you to know. Before I kill you, I want you to know.”

  Palermo could think of nothing t
o say that would help his situation, so he said nothing at all. Just waited for whatever came next.

  In the darkness, Krebosche saw shapes moving about – Palermo’s men advancing on their position, no doubt.

  “Not much time,” Krebosche said quietly in Palermo’s ear. “You’re going to tell your men to keep back, then you’re going to request a vehicle be driven out here and parked very close to us. The headlights are by no means to be trained on us, or anywhere near our position. If I see a weapon of any kind on the driver, I’ll end you. Do it.”

  Palermo yelled out the instructions. Made it particularly clear that the driver was to be unarmed. A couple of minutes later, headlights slashed the darkness, and a small jeep bounced its way toward them. The storm was picking up, and the snow would make it even more difficult for Palermo’s men to get a bead on Krebosche.

  The jeep slowed to a stop near where they lay in the snow. The driver put it into gear, left the engine running, then very slowly got out and stood where Krebosche and Palermo could see him.

  “Turn around,” Krebosche said. “No sudden movements.”

  The man spun around once, as carefully as he could. Krebosche saw no obvious weapons.

  “Now fuck off and don’t look back. Turn your head around even once, I open him up.”

  The man nodded, immediately started walking away from the jeep, back in the direction of the warehouse.

  “Now you and I are going to stand up very slowly and very delicately,” Krebosche said to Palermo. “My cheek will remain pressed to the back of your head the entire fucking time. And you don’t want to go for the gun in your waistband. Believe me. Do you understand?”

  Palermo nodded.

  “Right. Stand up at the same time as me. Take my lead.”

  Both men moved in unison to achieve a standing position. Krebosche waited for the back of his head to open up. It didn’t, and within moments he was shuffling them toward the open driver’s door of the jeep.