Hearts of Smoke and Steam
Page 16
“To fix Mr. Darby's work…” He nodded solemnly, as if he were a knight who had just been given the quest to find the grail.
“Yes,” she continued, “but there's a piece missing. The piece that made him come to life, and I need to go get it—now, before it's too late.”
“No, Bella,” he said shaking his head. “You are still too hurt. You can't go alone.”
Sarah thought of trying to navigate her way quietly around New York with an immigrant boy on her arm—every eye would be turning her way. She might as well parade down Fifth Avenue as the Adventuress. “No. I can't take you. And anyway, you need to work on Tom.”
“What if another baloney comes?”
With his accent, she couldn't tell if he was joking or not, but either way it made her laugh. “I think we're safe from baloney for a little while.”
“And she won't be alone, idiot,” said Viola from the other side of the room. She stood there with her arms crossed, somehow managing to give them a stare that was both angry and amused. “I'm going with her.”
The Hall of Paragons had been constructed so that the members' quarters all faced the central courtyard. Having rooms designed to act as both an office and a vault had seemed like a stroke of genius when they had first conceived of the place, but in hindsight the problems with the idea were obvious: the rooms were dark and poorly ventilated, and the only source of natural illumination were three roundels that had been cut into the two-foot-thick granite slabs that made up the exterior wall of each one.
What little light trickled in through the stone tubes only served as a reminder that there was a brighter world outside the cold walls.
There had been plans to drill skylights into the roof soon after the Hall had opened, but there always seemed to be something more important to do.
Alexander Stanton referred to his quarters as “the dank cave,” and for years he had made every effort to occupy them as infrequently as possible. But after his ascension to the leadership of the Paragons, it had become far more difficult to avoid spending at least some of his time dealing with the paperwork that kept piling up at his desk.
Besides the standard headaches of managing a team of costumed exhibitionists, there were constant issues and responsibilities that arose from their celebrity and special status as agents of the law.
It seemed that most of New York either wanted them to forcefully subdue family members and neighbors, or show up at “once-in-a-lifetime” events such as birthday parties and weddings. The rest wanted to either take the Paragons to court or run them out of town on a rail.
But love them or hate them, if the Paragons insulted them by refusal to comply with their requests, it turned out that everyone had a famous or powerful relative to complain to.
As Alexander Stanton struggled to come up with a diplomatic answer for each issue, it became harder to imagine that this was the same job that Sir Dennis Darby had relished for so many years. Especially considering that the old man's mind seemed to always have been either on his next project, or chasing some mechanical flight of fancy.
The Industrialist had a suspicion that it was the Sleuth who had been responsible for the lion's share of the social work. This kind of meticulous nonsense was precisely the sort of thing that Peter had thrived on. But it was a suspicion that would be impossible to confirm now that both men had left this world behind.
Either way, this was work that needed to get done: a thousand signatures to scrawl on a thousand different documents in order to keep the Paragons alive. And Alexander Stanton was the man responsible for all of them. “I'm going to need to hire somebody to take care of all this before I go mad,” he mumbled to himself.
And then the building began to shake. It was subtle enough at first, and Stanton wondered if perhaps he already had lost his mind. But by the time the books started jumping down from their shelves, it was obvious that it wasn't all in his head.
A wave of relief washed over him as he put down his pen and went to strap on his gun. Action was something he understood well.
The protocols they were supposed to follow in cases of dire attack inside the building were clear—in fact, he had written them himself. Rule number one: in case of invasion, exit the Hall and gather outside.
Pleased that he was following his own advice, Stanton headed to the stairs, fully intending to leave the building. It was only when the distant sounds of someone screaming reached his ears that he stopped. The pathetic noises were loud enough to be clearly heard over the rumble, and as he listened, they switched from yells to a long, powerful moaning. It was a sound that men only made when they were suffering excruciating pain.
By the time he reached the bottom step, he could hear maniacal laughter mixed in with the terrified whimpering.
For a moment he turned toward the front doors, and then he stopped and looked back. He couldn't begin to count the number of times he had told the other members of the society that the point of having rules was to follow them unquestioningly.
More than that, he had written them expressly to protect the Paragons from succumbing to a ruse in exactly these kinds of dilemmas. He could remember Darby nodding in agreement as he had presented the plan. “In all things,” Darby had said during that meeting, “we must remember that we are always more powerful as a group than any single man, no matter how clever or skilled we believe our abilities to be.”
And yet the threat was here—so very close by. If he could assess what it was and bring that information back to the others, it would surely allow them to properly prepare.
The voice returned to screaming again, and this time he recognized the owner: it was Hughes. “God's wounds,” he muttered, turning towards the sound. He had written the rules—he could damn well break them.
Drawing his gun from the holster, Stanton held it tightly in his hand as he crept down the corridor. Bits of granite cracked and fell from the ceiling as the building shook, the crumbling rock masking any noise that he could possibly make. And as loud as it had seemed before, the rumbling continued to grow louder as he moved closer to the main council room.
“Excellent! Excellent!” boomed a familiar voice from out the door. “Don't worry, Hughes, it will be over soon. Comfort yourself in the fact that you sacrifice yourself in the name of all humanity!”
Stanton took another step forward. He knew he should leave. He would have told any other Paragon that attempting to try to deal single-handedly with whatever lay beyond the meeting room door was an act of utter folly.
The rules were the rules for a reason. Trying to outsmart the system they all had lived under for the past two decades was childish and selfish. He had repeated the message to the new members only a week ago. “We're a team,” he had said to them, “and without the people you see here around you, you are nothing more than a man in a costume. How are the others supposed to rely on you if you aren't willing to rely on them?”
But Stanton had already made his decision at the bottom of the stairs. The voice in his head, the one screaming at him to leave, was simply justification for cowardice.
As he took another step toward the meeting room, a huge gust of white steam blew out through the door. It was cold and wet, like a billowing version of the London fog. The cloud rolled past him and settled across the floor, melting away into the ether.
As he breathed it in, Alexander could taste a familiar hint of metal on his tongue. This was a cloud of fortified steam.
“Help me!” screamed Hughes. Stanton began to run, and then stopped short when he heard his next words. “Help me, Lord Eschaton!”
“Eschaton is here?” he whispered to himself. How could a villain have infiltrated the Hall? It seemed impossible. But if he was here, he'd be no match for the Industrialist's bullets.
Another cloud of fortified steam billowed out the door, and Stanton stumbled into the room. It took him a few moments to make out what was going on, although when he finally made sense of it, what he saw was almost beyond comprehension.
Sitting in the throne was Hughes, twitching with panic as a metal forest grew up around him. Some of the shafts pierced his body. Stanton watched in horror as one of the brass rods impaled the poor man's throat. It silenced his screams and emerged from the other side of his neck, covered in crimson blood.
From somewhere unseen an arc of electricity ripped through the air, striking the metal chair. Hughes silently twisted and squirmed, his open mouth twisted in agony.
Stanton caught a flash of purple and gold before another cloud of steam obscured his view. “Jupiter, is that you? You need to help me! This man is dying!”
“The Industrialist,” a voice boomed back at him. “I'm so glad to see you've decided to join us.”
“What's going on, Jupiter?” he shouted back. Their first real crisis, and already the new man was falling to pieces. “I heard Hughes say that Lord Eschaton is here. We need to stop him!”
The dais was sinking down into the floor now, taking Hughes with it. The impaled man let out a choking groan as he descended, and Stanton realized that the frame Hughes wore appeared to be growing around him, reaching up to his shoulders, bands of metal wrapping around his body almost like a living thing.
The shaking paused, and as Hughes vanished out of sight, the only sounds Stanton could hear were a mechanical clanking and the hiss of steam.
The moment the clanking stopped, the rumbling began again, but softer this time, and the pit closed as the two halves of the table slowly rejoined over it.
There was an instant of quiet when the two sides met, and then the skylights shattered, glass falling down to the floor in a crystal rain. Stanton's striped leather top hat was knocked off his head as he dived under one of the tall chairs.
He could feel shards of glass battering his costume and could hear it hitting the stone floor all around him. None of the pieces were large enough to pierce his jacket, but the wounds he had received from the battle with the White Knight started to complain from the exertion. He could only imagine what the doctor would say if Alexander managed to pull muscles that were on the verge of healing.
Looking out into the room, he saw King Jupiter emerge from the steam cloud. The giant stood in the center of the room, his arms spread wide as the glass rained down and bounced harmlessly off his flesh.
From out of thin air, a new voice began to speak. The tone was scratchy, and it sounded far away, as if it were an echo that had travelled a great distance. But the words were understandable, and it took only a few syllables for Alexander Stanton to recognize who was doing the speaking. “This is Sir Dennis Darby,” the disembodied voice said. “If you are hearing this audio image, please, I ask that you not let yourself become alarmed. It simply means the following events have occurred: firstly, I am dead.
“That is most unfortunate, although it was inevitable that it would happen to me one day, as it must happen to us all eventually. I only hope I left this world with dignity.
“Secondly, and more importantly, the activation of this audio impression means that the Paragons have decided to follow my instructions as they were laid out in my will. Not only have you placed Tom's heart into his new body, but he has ascended the dais as the new leader of the Paragons. Congratulations!” Darby sounded pleased as punch, as if these events were a foregone conclusion. Stanton wondered how shocked the old man would have been to find out that his old brother-in-arms had done everything in his power to make sure that Sir Dennis's desired outcome would never come to pass.
So then, why was this message playing? The Automaton had been destroyed, the mechanical man's heart stolen. Why was it accepting Hughes instead of Tom? And more importantly, what was it trying to do to him?
The recording continued, the voice of the dead man blissfully unaware of just how badly his plan had failed. “I know that it cannot have been easy for you to follow through on what must have seemed like the scheme of a madman, but I knew that the Paragons would be able to overcome their prejudices and realize that for such a powerful group of men, there could be no better leader than an impartial machine.”
“It was madness,” Alexander whispered. The rain of glass seemed to have stopped, and the Industrialist crawled out from underneath his chair.
When King Jupiter turned to look at him, Stanton could see the gleam in his eye. “Hello, Mr. President. Welcome to the beginning of the end.”
“The end?” Realization dawned on the Industrialist, opening up a pit in his stomach that felt wider than the one that had just swallowed Hughes. “Eschaton…”
Jupiter held up his hand. “Be patient. I think we're about to hear the best part!”
“I have,” Darby continued, “unbeknownst to the other members, secretly designed a series of improvements into the structure of the Hall of Paragons.”
Stanton reached for the gun on his waist.
“Mostly these are minor cosmetic changes, but my primary goal was to make sure to offer a mechanism whereby all the members of the Paragons could have unlimited access to the fortified steam they needed without having to store large amounts of it in my laboratory.” A panel opened in the wall, revealing a shining brass nozzle in a small nook. “These units are placed throughout the building and will provide fortified steam to any member of the Paragons who requires it, provided you have access.” Steam poured from the nozzle, and Alexander shook his head, amazed that Darby's flair for the dramatic could reach so far beyond his death.
“But, you may ask, how will we keep those who might be undesirable or unworthy from tapping the bounty of what, I admit with some sadness, must remain my greatest discovery? In answer to that I ask you to please stand back.” The floor began to rumble once again, and a few remaining shards of glass gave way from the ceiling. Stanton shielded himself, but they fell harmlessly to the floor.
“Eschaton!” Stanton shouted.
The gray-skinned man turned to look at him with a smile. “Lord Eschaton.” Stanton realized that all his suspicions had been confirmed. “I'm a little surprised that you didn't recognize who I truly was when you saw my powers in the courtyard…”
Darby's voice cut off Stanton's reply. “The Automaton's consciousness has now been integrated directly into the Hall of Paragons.” The edges of the meeting table didn't just part this time, but flipped upwards and disappeared directly into the floor, revealing the pit. “Tom will not just be the leader of the Paragons, but will literally become the heart and soul of our headquarters.”
“I give you my greatest creation, the Paragon!”
The shaking became more violent. “Eschaton, what have you done?”
“I've made Darby's dreams come true,” the gray man said, laughing. “That man always had a delightfully perverted sense of progress.”
Stanton looked down into the pit, but could see nothing but blackness.
“Hughes, are you down there?” Eschaton shouted out.
He was rewarded with a scream as the dais rose back into the light, birthing an abomination into the middle of the meeting room.
The thing that came back up through the floor was twitching and grasping at the air as it ascended, obviously in incredible pain.
Its mechanical legs were gone now, and instead the torso was fully integrated into a metal pylon that had replaced the throne. Oil and steam leaked out of its sides, mixed with what seemed suspiciously like blood.
Hughes's face was entirely hidden, covered by a silver mask. A slit in the middle of it allowed his terrified eyes to stare through.
It reminded Alexander of an iron maiden, with Hughes as the tortured prisoner, forever trapped inside the metal body.
“Hughes, you're alive!” Eschaton yelled out. “And you thought my smoke had made no difference! You see, Stanton!” the giant said, holding
his hands out towards the pathetic figure. “Working together, Darby and I have given birth to a new entity! We have created a fusion between man and machine.”
Darby's disembodied voice pierced the air once again. “And now, gentlemen, I must say my good-byes to you for the final time. I leave you, and the future, in the capable hands of my creation.”
“Very good, Darby.” Eschaton said, clapping. “Truer words have never been spoken.”
Hughes raised his arms, and the rumbling grew louder, the nozzle on the far wall spewing out a cloud of steam. Cracks appeared in the walls around it, and a moment later the entire apparatus disappeared under a pile of stone.
“Hughes, you need to stop, or you'll tear the building apart.” But Stanton doubted that the poor man could still be reasoned with.
Eschaton walked closer to the monstrosity that had been the Iron-Clad. “Give him a moment to adjust. I'm sure there's a great deal for him to try to understand.”
“Can't you see that he's dying in there?”
“I don't think so, actually.”
A jolt underneath his feet sent the Industrialist tumbling to the floor.
Stanton felt a surge of panic. He was sure that both Nathaniel and Grüsser had been in the building somewhere…Surely they must have gathered outside by now. Didn't they realize that something terrible was going on?
The rumbling grew louder than it had ever been—powerful enough that the members' chairs were toppling and bouncing across the floor. He could see that pieces of his own chair were cracking and falling away. Dangerously large cracks had appeared in the walls.
Eschaton took another step towards Hughes. “Look at me!”
The mechanical head turned, and the rumbling seemed to diminish a bit. “You need to regain control! I need you to obey me!”