He was gone.
“Charles!” she screamed as tears blinded her. The lump in her chest twisted. She couldn’t go on. She couldn’t. But she had to, because Charles would want her to.
She ran, picking up speed, the silver metal of the towers filling her vision as she searched for the right book stack. That way, Charles would not have died in vain.
The world grew hazy. The stink of gunpowder and metal in the air dazed her so that she crashed into a glass wall. She jerked back and stared, her sweaty palms squeaking over the smooth, cool surface of transparent glass that had stunned her.
A panel slid aside, and for a while she was not quite seeing it for what it was.
An elevator.
Berd threw herself inside and sank to the ground. Quietly, the glass door closed behind her, and the stink and noise of the bits was no more.
Charles was dead.
He had sacrificed himself for her.
He had loved her.
Chapter Fourteen
WITH A HUM, the elevator door slid shut as Berd lay on the mica-grey floor. The sense of emptiness in her heart only grew as the elevator shot up.
Seen through the glass walls, the plains stretched away, and the book stacks stood silent. In the darkening light, the Faraday car glinted like a fallen tear, mirroring the ones on her cheeks. Somewhere ... somewhere between the car and her, were Charles’s… remains.
It had only been yesterday, when he lifted a finger to calm the world.
Right now, all she wanted to do was to curl into a ball and give in to her grief, but the world of the Engine wouldn’t even let her have that.
Bits swirled suddenly, spearing out of the air, exploding and crashing against the outer glass of the elevator. She jerked upright.
The car rocked.
Cables screeched.
Blue smoke billowed.
Bits smashed against the glass walls, shattering into blazing clouds of blue, yellow, and grey smoke. Pray the elevator did not jam halfway! Were Charles here now, no doubt he would be cradling her in his arms, shielding her. He had spoken to her like an equal. And yet she had treated him cruelly. She had never thought such a man as he existed.
In a life-and-death struggle, Charles had given up his life to protect her whereas Gine would sacrifice her to protect Charles. This attack of the bits was most likely Gine avenging Charles.
But it didn’t make sense that Charles was dead. Gine would not have allowed Charles to be killed.
Charles had said that Gine would do everything it could to keep Charles safe. That meant it should have done everything possible to protect him. Charles may still be alive… Hope flared, only to die in the next second. Most likely the bits had been meant for her and slain Charles by mistake.
Charles had explained that it took a while to redirect the bits, so maybe that was what had happened. The bits were really meant for her, and now they were finally on target.
Berd sat in numbed silence as the elevator rocked and shuddered, ascending at twice the rate the Faraday car had taken to descend. Soon, the shimmering assault of bits halted. She pressed her face against the scorched glass, trying to peer past the yellow-and-black discolourations. Warmth from the heated glass permeated her cheeks and forehead.
She doubted that Gine had run out of bits. He’d be too clever to use them all. Still the elevator was travelling, which meant the Engine possessed energy. Gine was probably waiting for his next opportunity.
Pray the bits only attacked out in the open. And that the elevator kept ascending.
The sky was now a dull gold. As the elevator levelled with the top of the plateau, lightning stabbed a corner of the metal forest and illuminated a building sitting in the darkness.
A tower of cast iron and glass rose from amongst the metal trees, courtesy of her new perspective. Twice the height of the Crystal Palace in Penge judging by the trees, it was the strangest glass-house she had ever seen. Mist mysteriously shrouded its contents. Silver balls of lightning burst within the structure itself, tailing off in dazzling streams that veined across the surface of the glass walls.
The rough map Charles had attempted to sketch... He had thumped his finger on the centre of the cupboard door, indicating the centre of the Engine where they were now. There was only one answer that seemed appropriate: the structure had to be the Mill.
The brain and heart of the Engine. Its soul.
She sucked in a breath. The building hadn’t appeared. It had been there all along. She had seen its roof when she was up on the plateau, only she had been distracted at the time. And now she understood what Gine had been up to.
Gine hadn’t been reckless; he hadn’t used the energy to create trees to distract her from Charles, but from the Mill.
And that was far more important, for if she were within reach of the Mill, she could enter and rip out every part of Gine’s heartless machinery.
She was clenching her hands, imaging the havoc she would wreak when a door opposite sprung open into an ice-blue room about ten yards in diameter. Cool air, scented lavender, blew into her face as water rippled down the walls, sounding like a multitude of raindrops plopping into a multitude of ponds to gurgle away into a finger-thin channel that lined the room. This was not the devilishly complicated and deafening clockwork mechanism she had imagined. She was unsure if she were really seeing the true innards of the book stack, or if Gine was playing tricks again.
Her throat was so parched that when she swallowed, she tasted only stale, salty dryness. Charles had said he had gathered water when he was here last, but she wouldn’t be surprised if Gine was disguising the energy as water by making them appear alike. She cast one last look at the plains. That was when she saw it.
The figure.
She gave a little cry. Dressed in black, a figure stood right where she had last seen Charles.
Almost as she recognised him, she realised it could be a master stroke of a last-ditch ploy, for Gine looked identical to Charles.
“You clever devil, Gine,” Berd muttered, torn between entering the room to find the setting she needed and going back down. If that was really Charles below, then her decision was clear.
She paused in the middle of the elevator doorway.
If she could see the colour of the figure’s eyes, she would know.
Charles: Blue. Gine: Green.
And Gine knew she was trying to find the settings. This dilemma was the one thing that would prevent her from searching the book stack.
She was chewing at her lower lip, trying to decide, when a section of the room’s wall bulged. A figure peeled off and strode towards her. It took no great science to recognise him.
She jumped back into the elevator, fear and relief flooding through her. Fear, because it was Gine who had appeared. Relief, because she knew, now, it was Charles who waited down below.
He wasn’t dead!
Gine, attired in a morning coat and grey pants, stood in the doorway and calmly pressed one hand against the door, effectively preventing the elevator from closing. “Thank-you. At least, I think. It was a compliment, the bit about me being a clever devil?”
Berd could almost smell the burning in the air from his scorching gaze. She clenched her hands and lifted her chin defiantly. “You made me think he was dead.”
Gine said nothing, but calmly strode past into the elevator. At the glass edge he peered down then shrugged. “He looks perfectly fine to me.”
She ignored him, instead searching the glass walls for a lever or panel of buttons, anything to get the elevator moving, even if it meant travelling down with Gine, who was currently observing her as if entertained by her discomfiture.
“What’s the hurry, my lady? You just got here.” He waved to the left of the door, and a series of buttons protruded from the surface of the inner glass wall of the elevator.
Only one button had a letter on it: the letter ‘G’. Berd stabbed at it, scowling when she heard Gine laugh. When the door closed and the elevator be
gan to travel down, she braced herself, unsure what kind of attack to expect from Gine.
“Can you explain your obsession with killing, my lady? The first time I met you, apparently I was trying to kill you. Now I am ‘trying to kill him’. Are you afraid of something?” he smirked, leaning near. “Death perhaps?”
Gine’s words stung and for a moment Berd was stuck fast to the floor, all her limbs trembling.
“But whose?” he continued, his hands behind his back. “And by whom?” He turned back to her, suddenly serious. “I think perhaps you are so afraid of your own death, you’re striving to cause ours!”
He’s only trying to confuse me. I’m not a killer. But he could be.
There seemed nothing lethal in the way the young man folded his arms across his chest, and leaned against the glass wall that had a view of sweeping metal plains behind it. Nothing, until he tut-tutted and his gaze swept down to meet hers. His bright eyes turned liquid, and a strange, mesmerising tingling hollowed out her stomach, frightening but a little warm.
The attack had started.
Berd opened her mouth, about to reply when she caught a whiff of something devastatingly familiar. So familiar that whatever answer she had planned completely slipped her mind, and though she tried to recall her words, her mind remained filled with the scent and its memories. It occupied her entire focus. Her nostrils twitched frantically as she tried to place it.
She inhaled deeper, aware Gine was studying her, ever smiling. “Stop playing games, Gine. This isn’t funny. What is...?”
She recognised the black leather from Charles’s suit, and of course the ubiquitous paraffin, but mixed within the blend was something else... a note of something unique, important. And then with a gasp of horror, she knew.
She knew what it was. Whose it was…
Charles.
She blinked rapidly at her discovery. This was not possible! The scent had to be Gine’s doing. If he could manufacture other scents, he would be able to imitate Charles’s. It might be just in her mind, or it just might be that he was able to simulate organic compounds in very small amounts. The revelation that such a thing was possible stunned her. But why wouldn’t it be possible here, if nowhere else.
She was in a world where Gine was God. And right now, that God was watching her as if she were the most interesting thing he had ever seen. But then he hadn’t seen many living beings. She just hoped he was more interested in living things than dead.
Gine cleared his throat and the scent faded away. “I agree. Not funny. Not funny at all. There are things here I can do that you do not understand, wonderful things, and I would like to keep doing them. What do you think will happen if you destroy the Mill? Effectively, you will be killing me. And him. And yourself. Now, I haven’t killed you, or Charles for that matter. You, on the other hand, have thought about killing me on several occasions. Who’s the real murderer here?”
Berd frowned, trying to stay calm even though she did not feel it. It horrified her that he knew she had been thinking of destroying the Engine. But he was the paranoid one.
“It is true,” she said cautiously. “I did think of destroying the Mill, but you’re only an engine. You make it sound like a crime to turn an engine off.” She glanced at his chest, long enough to confirm it wasn’t moving.
Gine is an engine. An engine. He’s not alive. Or a god.
She took one last gaze out the glass wall, and then forced herself to face him.
To her shock, Gine’s face had paled. The muscles in his throat had tightened, as if her words had stabbed him.
It was almost as if the Engine had feelings.
“Turn an engine off. Turn the power off. What would happen if we were to do either now?” His voice faltered, and he drew in a long, shuddering breath. “I would have thought that you of all people would know how it feels to be a possession.”
Even a possession can have feelings. My exact words.
In disbelief, she stared at him. “How did you know I wanted to destroy the Mill?”
“The movements of your hands gave the game away.” He mimed her throttling him.
“The glass walls of the elevators ... and the railway carriage...” she breathed, finally understanding.
Gine lifted one finger and prodded the air. “Each time Charles lifted his head to the sky he did so because he was referring to me. He talked to me through the glass walls. Sound is just vibration and I am the Engine itself, so I can hear anything pointed at a wall capable of catching vibrations and ringing with them.
“And this.” He waved a hand at his form. “Is a new development, made possible thanks to the energy you brought with you!” He smirked and bowed, appearing extremely pleased.
The energy she had brought with the second lightning strike.
All this while she had been in a goldfish bowl, and it had been Gine who was looking in.
The Engine was a doll’s house, a child’s plaything with Gine, the child, moving his toys about. Perhaps that was why Charles had referred to Gine as child-like. Gine, a young boy, filled with dreams of glory, moving his little tin soldiers across a battlefield, and not caring if the pieces got destroyed.
“You’ve been spying on us.”
“I prefer the term protector.”
“What from? The only danger is you.”
Gine gave an over dramatic-flinch, but his emerald eyes danced. “Ouch! She bites and has claws! Has Charles ever seen this side to you?”
She dug her fists into her hips. “I’m not playing games, Gine.”
“Did your world end when you thought he was dead?” he taunted.
“You know nothing of human emotion. You’re like a child who only knows relationships from his nanny and what he reads in trashy nickel novels!” she huffed. “So let me ask you this: why did you rescue me when I was electrocuted?”
“Did you ever ask yourself why I would rescue you, only to want to kill you?” His smile broadened.
Once again Gine had a point. It made no sense for him to rescue her, because if he wanted her dead, he could have let her die when the lightning struck.
Gine gave a lazy wave of his hand, the movement so exactly like Charles’s that Berd’s chest grew tight. A heavy thump shook the ground as a book stack stumbled into view.
A tiny dark figure was riding down its elevator.
The figure was dressed in a mauve blouse and fawn pants, the silk shimmering like a war standard as it caught the light. Long coal-brown hair lay loose across the figure’s shoulders.
It was a doppelganger of her!
Berd drew back, shaking her head in disbelief. “Stop, do not do this!”
“Do you think he will be able to tell you apart?” Gine tapped his lower lip with one finger as if musing.
When the faraway elevator reached the ground, the door opened and the figure started running straight towards Charles, who pivoted towards her.
“You know, just a thought...” Gine’s breath tickled her ears, causing her to jump. “If he picks the other you, why ... there’s no need for you any more, is there?”
He pushed himself backwards into the glass. Like the Cheshire cat, he took on the colours of the glass and melted away, until only his features remained. And then, even they vanished one by one, leaving only his glowing green eyes. They seemed to swallow her up...
The door to her elevator opened, with an enormous moan of a bell.
Berd shook herself. She’d been drowning in his eyes so long she hadn’t even heard the elevator reach the ground. There was no time to wonder on it.
She was back on the ground.
***
The overpowering scent of fresh pine blew into her face as Berd stepped out of the elevator, but as her foot touched the ground, the plains tilted, physically. Her body swayed. The sky stretched dizzying over her head. She almost went down. The ground around her rippled as if someone had shaken a cloth.
No doubt Gine was using another trick to delay her. She had to shift her bod
y, wondering if this was what being drunk must feel like, as she struggled to stay on her feet. Across the way, the doppelganger was already running, her path unobstructed towards Charles.
Berd ran on, at an angle, constantly about to topple. Her ankles wobbled, on the verge of twisting, yet she managed to pound her feet as she raced against her mirror image, each trying to reach Charles first. As she neared, she noticed his right arm was bare and her heart swelled as she remembered how he had wrapped her up with the leather.
The doppelganger reached Charles first. “Charles!”
At its tinny cry, Berd almost laughed. There! The doppelganger did not sound like her at all. Surely Charles would know which was her. All she knew was that she longed to rejoice in his survival, not try to persuade him it was her. And that would make the difference!
He will know.
As Berd reached them, the doppelganger twisted to look at her. Close-up and face-to-face, it was impossible not to stare, especially since the doppelganger had flesh just like her.
So it was true then. If Gine can create such a life-like being out of energy, I should not be surprised that I seem real to myself.
The doppelganger’s nut-brown hair, loose like Berd’s, had frizzed during the run and now resembled an unkempt lion’s mane. Its dark eyes glinted, wolf-like in its wildness. Through the rips and tears in its own mauve silk blouse, its undergarments gleamed bone white. Its hands were curved as if ready to claw...
Then the world tilted even more: a massive uplifting of earth roared to life. As the glass green floor slanted, all three slumped to the ground.
Berd screamed.
The doppelganger screamed.
At the synchronised scream, both women cupped their mouths. Both elbowed the ground together. Both turned to Charles. Both pushed back up with one hand, desperate to remain upright.
A hand grasped Berd’s arm.
She looked up to see Charles had hold of her, but he also had hold of the doppelganger. Her heart sank slightly, but she refused to give in.
She squeezed his hand reassuringly, only to find cuts and burns there. “Charles, it’s me.” But before she could go on, the doppelganger interrupted.
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