As the secret room was revealed, so was the form of a man. And as the wall finished rising, Sarah visibly recoiled.
“Who, or what, are you?” Sarah said, with the sort of challenge in her voice that she might use on a lawyer, or one of Eschaton’s villains. Jenny was sure that Sarah was about to be as surprised as Jenny had been only a few days before.
“It’s me, Sarah,” the transparent man said to her.
“It’s who?” Sarah asked, but Jenny could see that the realization was already dawning, even as she said it.
“Nathaniel!” Sarah threw herself at him without hesitation, wrapping her arms around the boy. “It’s you! You’re alive!” She squeezed the crystal boy tightly, then leaned back to once again take in his transparent form. “But whatever have they done to you?”
Chapter 17: The Impossibility of Flight
CHAPTER 17
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF FLIGHT
Abraham clutched the Mercurial Man as tightly as he could as they flew up into the night, but truth be told, it was more the straps than his own strength that kept him from being torn away and dropped onto the streets below.
The heat that Nathaniel generated was almost suffocating, but at least it wasn’t burning him. He wondered what would happen to him if the boy did suddenly begin to heat up.
Would he let go, or simply be burned to death there in the sky? In his mind’s eye he saw himself tumbling into the streets below. He realized that in his imagination he was still fully dressed as Anubis, covered from head to toe in his leather suit. But that had been taken from him; he had no secrets any longer.
And some part of him was glad for it. Hiding the color of his skin from the world hadn’t felt right somehow. And yet, he couldn’t deny the utility that his secret had brought him. He had, after all, never pretended to be something that he wasn’t—he simply hadn’t revealed himself to be anything at all. It had been the world that had assumed, decided, and turned him into whatever it wanted him to be.
Now the world knew who and what he really was. Anubis was gone, and Abraham dangled in the skies, wondering where he was going to go next. “Where are we headed?”
“East,” Nathaniel said.
He wondered if the boy was enjoying getting to pretend to be his old self once again. “We need to land.”
“You’re right. I’m heavier than I used to be, and this suit wasn’t designed to carry two people for very long. But where should we land?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“Where’s that?” Nathaniel said, a hint of anger in his voice.
The night of the battle in the theater, Sarah Stanton had invited Anubis to come visit her in a Brooklyn junkyard. It hadn’t taken him long to find her, and although he had fully intended to visit her only with the mask on, there was something about the girl that had gotten him to reveal his true identity to her on his very first visit.
He had visited her secretly a number of times after that, riding out to the house on an old wagon owned by a junk collector by the name of Mr. Niles.
Sarah hadn’t talked much about the Paragons (besides the Automaton), but she had mentioned Nathaniel more than once. “He’s a selfish, petulant child at heart,” she had told him, and she clearly felt she had been more than a little responsible for what had happened to him. “But there’s something truly noble inside of him just the same.”
He wondered what she would make of Nathaniel’s current state. As far as he could tell, even this total transformation had yet to turn him into the nobler man that Sarah Stanton believed Nathaniel could become. But maybe he could turn that to his advantage, “I know where Sarah Stanton is!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your step-sister, I’ve met her.” He looked up into the man’s transparent face. Glowing and silver, with his metal wings spread out behind him, it was hard not to look at him as some kind of angel—or demon. “I know where she’s hiding.”
He turned to look down at him, his eyes flashing with silver. “If you’re lying to me . . .”
Abraham supposed that men and monsters were all simply trying to get by for one more day. “Then you can drop me in the river, or you can drop me right here. At least we’ll be moving faster.”
Nathaniel frowned at that. “Are you making a joke?”
Anubis nodded his head in the direction of the river. “She’s in a junkyard just on the other side of the East River. If we go there now, we might be able to make it.”
“I’m not sure how far this suit can fly with both of us,” he said, and tilted them in the direction of the river.
Anubis found himself getting angry at the boy’s attitude. Was he always like this? Despite Sarah’s warnings, it was hard to believe that this whining brat had once been hailed as one of the world’s greatest heroes. He had known that the Paragons were men of privilege, but he had never imagined . . . “If we make it,” he growled, “we’ll find you some bourbon.”
“You’re sure that’s where Sarah is?”
“She was the last time I saw her.” Anubis looked down. They were still flying above the city, but the rooftops looked closer to them now. “Why are we falling?”
He could feel Nathaniel’s arms twitching as he clutched at the controls. “That’s what I was worried about. I think we’re already running out of fuel.”
Anubis made a silent prayer to God. He was surprised to realize that there was some part of him that was almost looking forward to his failure. If he died, it would be over and he could leave all of this behind. He had become a hero to help the common man, not to fight with monsters.
And why was he even here, floating hundreds of feet above the Earth? Perhaps the Paragons were trying to protect their world, but it wasn’t a world that Anubis was interested in redeeming.
Truth be told, if he had a true affinity with anyone’s agenda, it was Eschaton’s: he and the gray man were both anarchists of sorts, save for the fact that Eschaton saw no harm in killing any number of innocents to get his way. And after all the things he had seen, he was beginning to wonder if the only way to change the way of the world was to smash it to pieces.
The suit lurched, and they began to fall fast enough that it was clear that crossing the river had been far too ambitious a goal. “We need to land!” Abraham yelled out.
“I’m trying!” Nathaniel shouted. But despite his intention to save them, the stress of keeping them in the air seemed to be having a different effect on the Mercurial Man. Silver streaks were gathering together in his arms, turning the limbs silver. It would be only a matter of time before they began producing heat, leaving Abraham trapped between two unpleasant deaths.
Anubis could see the rooftops too clearly now. It would be only a matter of seconds before they would be close enough to crash into them. He needed the boy to concentrate, and he had decided that if he was going to die he’d rather it was by fire than by stone. “Sarah told me you’d fail us,” Anubis said, letting the words wander between a whisper and growl.
“What?” Nathaniel replied.
“She said that you always found a way to give up, and that if I met you, I wasn’t to expect too much from you.”
“You’re lying! She would never say that.”
Anubis laughed. “You know I’m not. I don’t know you well, Nathaniel, but it seems pretty obvious to me that you’ve failed everyone who’s ever loved you or cared about you. At least Darby and the Industrialist were men who could take care of themselves, but Sarah was an innocent until you let her get involved in all of this.”
“Shut your mouth!”
Anubis smiled, knowing that being mocked by a Negro would be twice as galling to the boy. “And when Sarah ran away, did you even look for her?”
“She chose to leave!”
“You didn’t even try?”
“I thought she was dead!”
“You pretended she was dead so you wouldn’t have to feel responsible for her!” As he laid out the case for Nathaniel’s failures, he
found that his mock resentment of the boy was becoming very real. “If you loved her you’d have gotten your sorry self together and saved her!”
“Don’t make me hurt you,” Nathaniel said, his words turning low and cold.
“Are you going to burn me to death?” Anubis pulled himself up by the straps so that he could look the boy in his transparent eyes. “If you’re a hero—a Paragon—then act like one. If you can’t even save me, and yourself, then you’ll lose everything you’ve ever cared about, forever.”
Nathaniel frowned, but Abraham could see that he had managed to reach a part of the boy that might be willing to try. “This may not work.”
“Then when you reach the gates of heaven you can tell them that at least you tried.”
More silver threads slipped up into his arm. And when they ignited it happened so quickly that the bright light blinded Anubis.
Nathaniel’s plan seemed to work as intended, the heat coming off of him giving a burst of energy to the wings on his back. And as the suit lifted them back into the sky, Abraham though that Nathaniel might be a true Paragon after all.
The Mercurial Man’s light was growing brighter and brighter. Wherever they went, the Children of Eschaton would be able to find them. At least he had managed to maintain control of his heat, and so far Anubis remained unburned.
Looking downwards, he could see the area nearby had been lit up as if by a flare. There was an inviting rooftop, only yards away. If they could reach it, he would let go and . . .
They smashed into the church roof with a hard thud, and suddenly the whole world tilted sideways with a terrifying lurch.
Anubis could feel the roof against his feet, but it seemed impossible to gain any purchase on the slanted tiles. But they were still moving forward, and he could see the steeple heading straight toward them.
Reacting on instinct, he let his hands fall out of the straps. Freed from Nathaniel, he felt himself falling for an instant, and then he smashed into something hard, the impact knocking the air out of his lungs. For a moment he wondered if he would be rescued by Nathaniel, but as he fell farther he realized that the boy, now no longer weighed down by his extra passenger, had flown high up into the air, while he had been dumped against the deeply sloped sides of the steeple. Caught without any support, he was left sliding down the side of the cupola, and once he reached the edge there would be nothing to stop him falling into the street below.
His hands grasped desperately for any nearby purchase, but the shingles seemed to disintegrate under his hands, and without the usual protection of his gloves he could feel the skin of his fingers being torn away.
It wasn’t until he had already slid over the edge that his momentum finally stopped, leaving his legs dangling high above the streets below.
Abraham took a moment to catch his breath, gasping in lungfuls of the night air even though the rooftop was cutting into his chest and making it hard to inhale.
Turning his head, he could see Nathaniel heading up farther into the sky, a glowing star leaving behind a trail of fire. Then, whatever fuel remained in the suit sputtered out and Nathaniel dropped, still glowing as he fell to the streets below.
Anubis still had his own problems with gravity. Despite his efforts to drag himself up, the earth was pulling hard at him, intent on dragging him off the roof. His arms were already tired from hanging onto the suit, and he wondered if he still had the strength he needed to pull himself to safety.
Grunting with what felt like almost-infinite effort, Anubis swung his leg back up onto the edge of the cupola. Then, using his newfound purchase, he gave a few twists and turns and managed to get himself seated on the edge. He had taken only a moment to catch his breath before he felt the wood beneath him begin to sag and crack.
He tried to move, but it gave way an instant later. “Dammit,” he yelled as his hands grasped the exposed wood, driving a splinter into his already-raw flesh.
His entire body was hanging down now, and his legs swung freely, dangling over the four-story drop. Only a few feet in front of his face was a stained-glass window. It depicted a shining cross hanging over a field of sheep and lions lying peacefully together.
Abraham cursed again as he realized his fingers were already beginning to lose their grip, the pain of the wooden sliver in his hand adding to his weakness. It seemed unfair that after surviving so many insults to his person, he would finally be broken by a simple fall.
“No!” he shouted, hoping that a primal yell might give his body the morale it needed, and grasping tighter than he had before, he kicked his legs forward. Pain shot down his arm, but he managed to use his momentum to smash his feet into the tinted glass.
The lead lining that held the window together was stronger than it first appeared, and although he had managed to bash a hole into it, it had simply grabbed hold of his foot rather than shattering into pieces.
His hand was screaming now, and no amount of will to survive would keep him suspended above the street once the strength in his arms was gone.
Somehow he managed to wrench his foot free, losing the cheap leather shoe that Eschaton had given him in the process.
As his leg dropped down, adding its weight to the rest of him, his grip slipped, and his right hand fell away. He grunted with shock as he found himself dangling by only one arm, the fingertips somehow managing to support the entirety of his body. The free hand throbbed with pain.
Miraculously he managed to pull himself up enough to grasp the beam with both hands once again, although now his left shoulder had added another voice to the chorus of pain his body was singing. At least it kept his mind off of his hand. Sweat rolled down his face as he stared at the broken window in front of him. He realized that his terror had evaporated. The only thing he still had left was desperation.
With the last of his strength Anubis swung himself backward, and then propelled himself forward as hard as he could, lifting his legs so that his toes pointed in front of him.
His hands came free as his feet crashed into the window, and for an instant he simply flew through the air, until his body managed to shatter the stained-glass image. He made a small apology to God as he passed through the disintegrating visage of peace and harmony and into the darkness beyond it.
Chapter 18: Steeling the Flesh
CHAPTER 18
STEELING THE FLESH
As the boy flew up through the skylight and into the night, Eschaton could no longer deny the damage that had been done to him. Something inside him was very, very wrong.
He managed to rise up to his knees, but then fell back to the ground.
The White Knight was the first to reach him, “Are you all right, lord?” He grabbed Eschaton’s arm and started trying to yank him up to his feet.
Even when he was trying to help him, Eschaton found the man insufferable. But there was more at stake than just his pride, and even if Clements was only barely competent, it would have to be enough.
“I’m fine, you imbecile.” Eschaton shrugged the man off, although he truly wasn’t sure if he’d be able to rise without him. “Go after them, and take some of these other idiots with you,” he continued, pointing at some men nearby. “What are your names, Children.”
The men looked shocked that they had been called out. One man held up his boxing glove–clad hand. “I’m the Pugilist, and my friend here is the Riveter.”
“You see, Clements, a fine pair of heroes.”
“And how are we supposed to find ’em in the dark?” Murphy asked.
“You’re not. I need you and Jack with me.” Eschaton dragged himself up to the pews and collapsed into one of the seats. The wood groaned under his weight. “Besides, that suit of his leaves a trail of fire behind it.”
“Don’t you worry, Lord Eschaton, I’ll find them.” The White Knight pulled on his mask. “Come on, boys, this isn’t over yet.” At least the man had enthusiasm—it was, in fact, his best feature.
Looking around the smoking ruins of the room, Escha
ton admitted to himself that the day had not gone as planned—not nearly. And although he had considered some contingencies in his plot to remake the world, it had never occurred to him that things might go as totally wrong as they had today. The events that had occurred over the course of the evening had shaken his convictions even more than his stamina.
His head still rang with the pain from the attack, although at least his flesh seemed undamaged from the heat. Still, it had been a close thing. He had almost been . . . broken. There was no other word for it.
And the tragedy of it was that the process itself was working. There was no doubt that he had transformed Nathaniel into something better. Perhaps not completely purified—not yet—but he was very close.
But at the same time, it was clear that purifying the bodies of men was not the same thing as purifying their souls. Eschaton had hoped that turning men into gods would have had an effect on their minds as well as their bodies. It needn’t have been as profound as the awakening that had overcome him when he had gained his powers, but in order to work on their minds he needed something . . . an edge to grab onto. Nathaniel, it seemed, had a mind as smooth and transparent as his body.
As Eschaton began to review his options, Donny ran up beside him, a desperate gleam in his eyes. “What about the retht of uth, thir?” he spat out pathetically through his shattered teeth. “What are we thuppothed to do?”
He was an instant away from telling the boy he could go rot in hell for all he cared, when another thought came to him. Eschaton looked deeply into the boy’s eyes. What he saw there was the same lost innocence that he had come to see on the faces of all men, only on this boy’s face it was more honest than on the other human flotsam and jetsam.
Power Under Pressure (The Society of Steam) Page 27