Lily Marin - three short steampunk stories. Book 2.

by Paul Kater

ray-gun. There, with her hand on the weapon, she froze. "Oh, no..."

  As she never had unannounced visitors in her house, the ray-gun usually was on its charging station on a small side table. Billy had to have seen it. Although, she then realised, he had not commented on it. Perhaps he had not seen it, as he was in so much pain. Maybe he didn't even recognise a ray-gun.

  "Get your head together, Lily," she scolded herself as she pushed the ray-gun in its holster, switching the weapon to standby so it would warm up. Then she put on her long leather coat and left her house through the small back garden. Once in a dark street, she kicked the heels of her boots together, took a moment to gain her balance on the extended legs that pushed up from the thick soles and then walked off into the darkness, after putting on the mask with the night-vision glasses.

  The archaeology museum was brightly lit. The police had put up beam-projectors everywhere, to make sure no wall was in the dark. Anyone wanting to approach the building would be clearly visible. As long as they walked on ground level, Lily noticed, or tried to fly in through a window. The police had not been abundant with details on how the burglar got near or into its targets. Probably because they simply did not know.

  Lily moved towards the building as close as she could without being caught in the spotlights. She did not want to be seen; the police were more than happy to bring her in, if only out of curiosity for the identity of the Masked Woman.

  She lay down on the ground and listened, her enhanced hearing amplifying any sound that might be in the ground. There was nothing. She circled the building and listened in as many places as she could, but there were no sounds that indicated tunnelling. So the burglar had to come over the roof. Or he was already inside...

  As she was trying to decide what her next action would be, Lily saw some movement on the roof of the museum. Someone was near the edge, waving a light and calling down something. That made it clear that the police had the roof under surveillance. At least they did that right.

  It also meant that either the burglar had a way of becoming invisible to get into the museum, or he was already in there. Lily switched to a glass in her mask that would show heat movement and waited for a while longer, but nothing moved except the now strange blobs that were the police officers.

  "You have to get in there, without being seen," the Masked Woman told herself. This would not be easy with the police lights all around. For once they were too thorough.

  From where she was hiding, Lily saw the back of one of the large lights. With a grin she had her plan. There was only one unit illuminating the nearby corner of the building. It's cable would only need one good pull...

  The light went out.

  After a short dash Lily found herself inside the museum, in what looked like a storage room, while outside the assembled law enforcement was making too much noise over getting the light switched on again. The door she had used to somewhat forcefully enter the building had sustained some damage, but nobody would notice that for now.

  With both light enhancing glasses in her mask and her ray-gun in hand, she moved through the deserted and silent building. The burglar had announced that he would strike in the Persian section, so that was where she had to go. Archaeology was not Lily's strongest subject, so she had to consult the signs to find the proper floor and halls.

  The Masked Woman moved quietly, stopping at times to listen. Perhaps she could hear where the burglar was.

  No matter how silent she remained, there was no sound, except from the ticking of clocks that were present in every hall and the occasional hiss of small leaks in steam pipes that supplied a constant temperature everywhere.

  Lily crossed the Egyptian area of the museum and then found the Persian section, with an exhibition of artefacts from the time of Darius the First, as the sign had announced. Strangely enough, there were some lights on. She felt confident now, the burglar was indeed already in the building. And in this section.

  Again she waited, holding her breath. No sounds were there, except what she'd encountered so far. She crouched down and looked around the corner, into the large exhibition hall. A few candles, placed on the ground, threw their flickering light around. Next to one of the candles was a chair, a woman sitting in it. She was bound and gagged.

  Lily suppressed the impulse to rush over to the woman, who looked dressed like a security guard of the museum. First she scanned the room from where she sat, as well as she could. If the burglar was still there, she'd have to disable him first. After a few visual sweeps of the room, one with the heat displaying glass, Lily decided that the woman in the chair was the only person present. She pulled up her scarf so the lower part of her face was covered and went into the room.

  The bound woman stared at Lily, her eyes large as she tried to pull her hands free from the armrests.

  "Calm," Lily whispered. Her voice was different now, as she had fully become her alternate personality. She took her dagger and cut the ropes that restrained the woman. "Be silent," she then said, before taking the gag from the victim's mouth.

  "He caught me," the woman whispered, trying to grab Lily's arm, "and he tied me to the chair!"

  "Where is he?" Lily asked as she moved back. The Masked Woman did not like to be touched. She wanted to be certain no one would try to unmask her.

  "I don't know. I think he's gone," the woman said. "He went that way, there's a door in the corner."

  "Try to get out without being seen," Lily said, "the police are outside, tell them what happened. I'm going after him."

  "Be careful, he is armed," said the woman as she started to move towards the exit of the Persian exhibit hall.

  Lily quickly crossed the room, to the far corner. As she went along, she tried to locate if anything was missing, but all the pedestals contained items, and the showcases seemed to be untouched.

  She reached the corner. There was no door. As she turned to see if she had missed something, a loud hiss reached her ears, and she noticed a strange, oppressive smell. A fog spread through the hall, emanating from several places at once.

  This was not a safety mechanism from the museum, Lily was convinced of that. She took a deep breath before the dense fog reached her, and dashed to one of the high windows. Without thinking of any consequence, she jumped, crashing through the glass, and fell down two floors.

  The lawn around the museum did not much help in breaking her fall, but that was of no concern, her body could take this with ease. Worse was that now she was in the spotlights of the police, and her exit from the museum had also not gone particularly unnoticed.

  "There he is!" someone yelled, "the burglar!"

  More and more men started yelling, while Lily's sensitive ears picked up the sounds of fire arms being readied to shoot.

  She cursed herself for not bringing her jet pack. She'd have to find a way out on foot now.

  "Put your hands up!" a police officer yelled. "We have you surrounded."

  Unfortunately he spoke the truth.

  Lily quickly looked around her and saw she had landed near the entrance to the museum. Not eager to end up in police custody, she pulled her ray-gun and fired at the door as she ran towards it. Several shots followed her, but her speed and the distance to the shooters were in her favour.

  She near tumbled inside the entrance hall and pressed herself against the wall as bullets followed her and buried themselves in the opposite wall.

  "Fabulous," she growled to herself, "the burglar is still at large and I am under siege. What else can go wrong now?"

  Lily knew she had to improvise and be snappy about it, because the police would soon have gathered enough courage to come in. To the left was a dead end, the ticket office. To her right was an empty display cabinet. Ahead, where some bullets proceeded to shatter glass and unleash puffs of wall, was the official entrance to the museum. She pushed against the heavy front door so it closed, and then ran into the museum's great hall, which lay just beyond the space she was in.

  The door caught some bu
llets for her.

  It turned out that Lily was not the only person who found refuge there from the bullets that the police were still firing. Someone who sat huddled in a corner, nearly jumped to his feet. Or her feet, in this case.

  Lily's light-enhancing glasses allowed her to see the woman she had freed from the chair. And she carried a large sack with her.

  "Hey, you!" the Masked Woman said and then ducked as the woman used the sack to take a swing at her.

  Lily brought out her whip and swung it at the bag. It caught, and she yanked hard, pulling the sack from the woman's fingers. It crashed onto the marble floor, with the sound of breakables going through some serious breaking. Lily looked up. "You are the burglar!"

  "Yes, I am. And I don't know who you are, but you are not going to take me in," the woman said, as she reached into a pocket and brought out a small bottle.

  Lily was fast, but not fast enough to prevent the woman from taking off the cork and hurling the bottle's content towards Lily's mask. The strong smell of ammonia momentarily took Lily's breath away and she collapsed into a coughing fit while fighting to get some proper air into her lungs. By the time she had achieved that, her lungs still burning and her eyes filled with tears from the smell that was still around, the thieving woman had disappeared.

  The noise from outside, of people approaching the building, made Lily aware that leaving the building herself was