The Tremblers

by Raquel Byrnes

“What are you doing?” He fought with me, trying to wrestle it back onto my face.

  “There is no point. I am already exposed.” I handed it to him and when he wouldn’t take it, I replaced his with mine.

  His hand covered mine, holding me close. “Charlie…” his voice broke.

  “Enough of this, Agent Wells.” I forced a brave smile. “We have the world to save.”

  Breaking from his embrace, I strode to the stairs ahead of us. The catwalk above connected with an observation deck, and I climbed the steps two at time. I could not feel the smooth of the railing beneath my hands or the ambient temperature. Only the pervasive numbness and cold. I wondered how long Lizzie’s last injection would keep me from shaking apart.

  “He would place it as close to the additive as possible,” Ashton said as he stood before a bank of levers and dials at the top of the deck. A row of windows, cracked and smeared with red grime, gave a 360-degree view of the landscape. “This is where Rothfair infuses the coal with the additive. Look.”

  He pointed to the schematic of the facility. Two stories above ground, one below. The vaporizing containers and heating ovens were underneath the building.

  “Why, with the ground so unstable would he chance that?” I stared at the blueprints, heart sinking.

  “Secrecy trumps safety, I imagine,” Ashton said, pulling the chart from the wall. He moved to descend the stairs, but stopped, his face falling. “Lizzie!”

  The tower of the facility afforded a view of the sky above the vapors, and my heart caught in my throat. Dozens of Union Aero Squad ships soared toward the mining barracks. Cannons blasted rounds blanketing the area. Concussive blows shook the windows. An airship took fire, its zeppelin balloon exploding mid-air as it plummeted to the ground. The Union ships herded the smaller vessels, corralling them back toward the mine. Tracer fire like distant lightning belted from the ships.

  “They’re trying to keep them from escaping!” I ran to the window as anger boiled over. “They cannot do that!”

  “The Union means to take out Defiance and the infected at one turn; keep everything a secret.” Ashton growled. “Defiance is no match in a mid-air assault.”

  “We have to do something,” I cried. “We can’t let the Union execute all those people.”

  “So we stop this,” Ashton said, his voice ragged through the mask. “Keep them from blowing everyone to pieces to hide their treachery.” He started down the steps.

  My heart ached. Pulling Lizzie’s dagger from the bag at my waist, I unscrewed the end of the handle and dropped the small device hidden within onto my palm. I adjusted the wings, wound it, and walked to the window. A crack in the glass gave me the room I needed. I reached my hand out, letting the firefly loose. It twitched, its abdomen lighting up repeatedly as it flew away with my message. Ashton called to me, and I turned, wiping a tear from my face. Please, Lizzie. “I’m coming.”

  The schematics traced a path through various corridors leading farther into the building. I reached for Ashton, wanting to feel him and my arm wrenched out, banging on the wall with the unbalanced strength of a spasm. I let out a chattering cry and he turned, his eyes worried.

  “You should wait here.”

  “No.” My injured hand cradled against my chest, I shook my head, taking a few more steps past him. “I will see this through.”

  “Please just…”

  A far off clank and hum echoed from the stairwell leading down. The smell of grease hit me, and I stepped down, walking ahead as I lifted the headlamp from Tesla’s pith helmet from my bag. I wound the small case and it wavered to light. Deeper into the pit of the facility the stairs descended, and the closer we drew, the louder the ticking sound. Heat rose from the darkness, stifling.

  At the foot of the stairs, a metal hatch stood ajar, its glass porthole cracked. I pushed through, and my mouth fell open at the sight of the giant mechanism. The gear works clunked and tumbled in the center of a cavern carved into the ground. Rotating drive shafts turned amid a tangle of wires and liquid-filled vessels. A clockwork cavern set to implode. Impossibly complicated, I stood before it, dwarfed and dumbfounded. The walls closed in on me as I pondered the futility of our being here. Numbers set in a panel flipped in succession; a countdown rapidly ending. The sound of the ticking bomb reverberated in the cavern.

  Ashton stood behind me, his hand at either side of his head as he took in the explosive. “Ten minutes,” he breathed, the filter apparatus wheezing with his sharp words.

  “Do you recognize the design at all?”

  “Somewhat.” He stared at the innards, stepped back, craning to view the top of the device. “There are blasting caps set into the ground as well.” Taking a turn around the hulking form, he shouted from behind it. “It is rigged as a series of explosions to detonate the tumbler holding the additive as well as the floor. I am guessing he means to use the explosion to set off the seam below the building. He wants to vaporize the entire facility to ash.”

  “The blight will become airborne.” And they will all perish.

  “I need tools, pliers, I think. Perhaps if I interrupt the power charge?” He pulled on the drum with the additive, the size of a milk pail; it held fast to the wall of the cavern with thick brackets. “Or if we get just the toxin out, stop it from dispersing…”

  Something about the fluid in the glass receptacles sparked a memory. I rubbed my eyes, startled at their blurriness. Think, Charlie, I railed inwardly. Blue to green…

  Below the din, behind the ticking, a shuffling made the hairs on my arms stand up. Out of the corners of the cavern, forms moved and my blood ran cold. Tremblers shambled toward us from the shadows. Men and women dressed in factory uniforms, their eyes black as night.

  Howling need churned through me, tearing my thoughts away. Ice shot through my veins, sending a jolt of frigid pain to every nerve in my body. I wavered on my feet, my jaw snapping on my tongue. Moaning, I doubled over, the ache in my core unbearable. The din of voices started, whispers blazing to screams as images of broken bones and reaching hands swarmed in my mind.

  “Ash!” I screamed. “Ashton, run!”

  He flew out from behind the explosive, his glance at the timer panicked. “Go, Charlie.” He pulled a revolver from his holster.

  “I am staying.” Refusing to look at the shambling forms, I concentrated on the device. Some wires snaked to a receptacle holding silver powder.

  “It only takes one to diffuse this.” Grabbing my hand, he scrambled for the door.

  Tremblers shrieked and clutched for us as we pushed past them.

  “I said go!”

  Running with him, I cried, terrified, and as he crossed the threshold, I yanked away, shoving him with all my might. He went down on the stairs, turning just as I slammed the hatch shut, spinning the wheel to lock it.

  “Charlie, no!” He flew at the door, banging on the porthole window with his fist until it shattered. “Don’t do this!”

  “Please don’t be angry.” I stood on my tip toes, peering out at him. I tried to remember him in that moment I first saw him. The dark of his eyes, the curve of his mouth, the angle of his jaw. I’d seen adventure and hope with my dangerous stranger. I had lived more in the short time I’d known him than in all the years before.

  “You are not dead yet, Charlie!” He shouted frantically, pounding against the metal hatch over and over. Voice cracking, he reached in through the broken glass, trying to grasp me. “Do not do this!”

  Shivers wracked my body and the rising moans of the Tremblers sent horror hurtling through me. Tears streaked hot down my face as I took his hand in mine. Holding his palm to my cheek I reveled in his warmth. “I would have l-loved the adventure of you,” I told him. “It would have been grand.”

  “Please, Charlotte, I’m begging you,” Ashton called, but I let go and went back into the cavern. I stood in front of the deadly ticking behemoth.

  Tremblers encroached on all sides, the fear stole my breath…

 
You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day.

  “Nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,” I whispered as I reached for the vessel of liquid. “Remember, Charlie, what it felt like not to know doubt.”

  39

  Their ragged blue skin flashed in the petering light of the small lamp in my hands.

  Tremblers ambled around me, leaning in with their putrid faces only to snap at air and then stumble away.

  Dread rattled down my spine as I poured the silver nitrate onto the brackets holding the additive drum, and then drizzled the green liquid at its edges. It sizzled, going up in a blinding flash, and melting the metal. The light spurred some of them toward me, and I whimpered, ducking their flailing limbs.

  The countdown clicked ever onward, less than three minutes.

  Ashton had quieted, a steady scraping at the hinges as he tried to disengage the door was the only indication he had not left.

  I closed my eyes. The additive drum dropped down, rolling on its side along the pitted floor of the cavern. I chased after it, dodging Tremblers.

  They wandered to and fro in the darkness tripping over each other and banging into the cold pipes snaking along the walls.

  The cavern floor tilted, angling away and the metal tumbler went skidding down a dark path.

  I ran, stumbling onto my knees as I reached for it. The echoing click and whir of the bomb followed me into the dark. If I could get behind an outcropping, shield it just enough…

  A light on the ground caught my eye, and I faltered as I ran past.

  A form moved, and a moan, one of pain, made me freeze. In the light of the dimming lantern, Rothfair dragged himself along the edge of the wall, his face and arms torn viscously. He bled from his mouth, his neck, every pore it seemed. “Charlotte,” he gasped and reached for me with hands missing fingers. “Help me.”

  “They got you, your own creation. Did they descend as you installed the bomb to kill them?” I stared down at him. The numbness in my chest went all the way to my soul. I did not feel for him. I did not hate him. He was simply in my way.

  “We can still e-escape,” he gasped, pointing ahead. “The ridge leads to water.” Grasping for my foot, he tried to right himself, but I stepped back. Of course, that is how he erected all of this without notice. Not across the wasteland, but up the cliff, from the sea. The frigid water. My gaze went to the additive drum resting on the opposite wall.

  “I’m s-sorry,” I tried to say past my chattering teeth. “I am so sorry…” I grabbed the drum, running with everything that I had, the ticking of the bomb pushing me past the pain in my legs, the air that wouldn’t come, the searing in my mind. My heart leapt at a circle of light ahead. I was nearly there…

  The blast hurled fire down the cavern tunnel, lighting up the dark with an inferno that barreled behind me at breakneck speed.

  Dancing with my father, the beach with my mother, Ashton’s face close to mine...the images flew before me as I raced for the opening.

  “O-one for many,” I panted, the additive clutched to my chest. The edge in sight, I felt the whoosh of my dress as it flared alight with the blaze. At the threshold of the cliff face, I hurled the additive with blistering hands. Flames engulfed me, bursting from the cave, roiling around me as I fell away into the abyss.

  40

  Ashton threw himself at the door, the shrieks of the Tremblers urging him on even as the clang of the clockwork explosive edged toward detonation. “Charlie!” He shouted and banged at the hinges of the hatch with the butt of his revolver.

  The sound of footfalls on the stairs brought Lizzie and two of her men scrambling toward him.

  “Ash, where is she?” Lizzie shouted, her glass facemask showing her panic.

  “In there. She’s in there with the bomb and the monsters,” his voice cracked. “Help me, there are only minutes left!”

  “Take him.” Lizzie nodded to her men and they descended on him, dragging him up the steps.

  “What are you doing?” Ashton screamed. He wrenched, attempting to free himself. His shoulder tore, the pain excruciating as he struggled.

  “Keeping a promise,” Lizzie said, and held up a mechanized firefly. “To keep you alive.”

  An explosion blasted flames through the port hole, bulging the metal door.

  Ashton flew with his captors against the stairs, the walls bowing with the force of the detonation. Goggles askew, he tried to right himself. Horror ripped through him. Not Charlie. Not like this…

  Below him, the ground rumbled, shifting as a tremor rolled across the floor.

  “It’s a quake,” one of the men shouted, standing. “We must get aloft.”

  “No, please!” Ashton scrambled for the door. He pulled it open and staggered back.

  An inferno raged within the cavern. Flames engulfed the walls as a rift’s fiery maw gaped in the ground. Broken glass melted at the edges of the chasm. The stench of burning flesh crackled in the firestorm as all around, Tremblers flailed and screamed.

  “Charlotte!”

  The container of additive was gone. He searched frantically, batting away the roasting limbs of the Tremblers as he screamed her name. Another tremor shifted the floor and the wall buckled. Pieces of the lighting and sheets of metal rained down on them.

  “Ashton, we have to move.” Lizzie yanked him out of the cavern and up the stairs. “She is gone.”

  “She can’t be,” he stammered as they wrestled him up to the observation deck and their tethered airship. “She can’t be gone.”

  “Get aboard, Ash,” Lizzie ordered. “They need us!”

  Across his field of vision at the mine, the air battle thundered. Blimps and zeppelins circled above the ground as cannon blasts rumbled through the air. Tracer flashes and smoke mottled the sky. Soldiers leaned over the air ship sides shooting people on the ground as they fled. Rescuers dangled on ropes beneath Defiance ships, caught in the crossfire as they grasped for screaming children.

  They shoved him aboard the Stygian and he collapsed against the railing.

  Dozens of people surrounded him. Battered and frightened, they shouted as the clash with the Aero Squad raged on. Below, the building collapsed in on itself in a rage of billowing smoke and fire. Rifts skittered outward from the site, the chasms flooding with molten rock.

  “Charlie saved us,” Lizzie shouted. She veered the Stygian toward the melee and tossed him a rifle. “Don’t let it be for naught.”

  Gritting his teeth against the ache in his chest, Ashton steadied his hands, tracked across the barrel, and took a breath. “For Charlie,” he growled, and pulled the trigger.

  Epilogue

  The air tore through me forcing a gasp as it sliced into my lungs, burning along every fiber of my body. I screamed, a bone-jarring wail that brought blood to my throat. It echoed back, muffled, and I flailed, hitting the sides of my enclosure.

  “Easy, Charlie,” a drawl drifted to me. “Open your eyes.”

  I tried, pain searing across my lids. Blurry forms became strange shapes as I took in the huddle of people around me. I reached out, connecting with the glass case surrounding my bed. A soft hiss emanated from small tubes feeding in from the outside. The cool mist settled on my skin, and I realized I wore nothing but bandages and a sheet. “Wha—” My mouth garbled the words and my head lolled. Impossibly weak, I peered out at the crowd like a dying fish in a bowl. The whole world seemed to thunder and shake around me.

  Clanging and shifting gears moved on every surface of the rusted walls outside the tank. Tesla stood at a bank of dials adjusting a valve.

  “I would not have believed it possible,” a woman’s voice sounded. She leaned in, her strange garb reminiscent of Bedouin traders. “Were I not witnessing it myself.”

  A familiar face came into view. Striking green eyes under a ragged wave of copper hair. Sheriff Sebastian Riley. He favored me with a crooked smile. “Welcome back to the living, baby Blackburn.”

  “Where am I?�
� I managed, my mouth dry despite the sheen of strange smelling vapor landing on me.

  “We’re on a Wind Reaper,” he said and his expression softened. “But you should really be asking when are you?”

  “When?” I struggled to grasp what he was saying. Holding up my hand I saw that bandages enclosed my fingers. I touched my palm to the glass. The burns on my wrists and arms were gone, replaced by pink, hairless skin. “Ashton?”

  “He is missing, Darlin’,” Riley said softly. “For almost five months now.”

  I shook my head, not understanding. “That long?”

  “Yes, and Tesla thinks you’re ready to help me.” Riley nodded to the woman behind him. She stood, watching intently on the outside of the chamber, her intelligent eyes on me.

  “Ready…I don’t…” My mind felt hazy, garbled. Echoes of screams droned behind my thoughts. “Help you do what?”

  Riley held something up. A chain clinked against the glass. Ashton’s shackle, the symbol of his calling. It was broken, the silver link ripped open.

  “Save his life.”

  Author’s Note

  Dear reader, In recent years, I have enjoyed many fictional works in which Nikola Tesla has made an appearance. I, too, wanted to pay homage to this historical figure who is one of my favourite men of science. Although the role played by Tesla in the Blackburn Chronicles is entirely fictional, I hope you enjoyed the celebration of this great visionary and that perhaps it spurs you to investigate the real Nikola Tesla and the influence he and others like him had on modern science.

  Sneak Peek at

  The Wind Reapers

  Prologue

  VirHio City-State, Bendenhurst Abbey - May 1886

  Charred support posts jutted from the earth like reaching fingers of a skeletal hand, smoke wafting from the ruined wood as it smoldered. Two men walked amongst the rubble of the once great building. Viceroy Arecibo stepped delicately over a toppled river rock fence, allowing time for his young novice, Marcellus, to carefully lift the train of his robe away from the soot. Melted shards from the stained-glass windows littered the street and cast a myriad of colors along the blackened walls as meager sun shafted through the Telsa Dome’s energy grid.