by Giselle Ava
Does the whine know how I die?
The force of a planet crashes through the ceiling and all time stops. This is where everything changes. I know this because the whine knows this, and I’ve stopped asking questions.
Reach.
You reach for a spot you suppressed because it made you a killer, made you a monster, made you the virus that’s been tearing this city apart.
You reach for the horrible darkness that’s been surging through your blood ever since you were born, that thing that killed that boy in the schoolyard all those years ago, ripped his bones apart, sent you to the battlefield where they made you their pawn.
Reach, says the whine.
So you close your eyes and reach. There’s the weight of universes bearing down on you and you can feel the heat from it. Everything goes white but you can see the imprint of John Montgomery, Walter Milne, and Redvers Lennox burned into your retinas.
You reach for the poison that ruined your life.
If I wasn’t born like this, none of this would’ve happened. If I wasn’t born with this poison in my blood, I wouldn’t have killed that boy in the schoolyard, they wouldn’t have taken me from my parents, they wouldn’t have sent me to the war, they wouldn’t have turned me into this monster, a monster with metal in his skin, the only thing keeping him alive.
If I wasn’t born like this, I wouldn’t have destroyed the revolution.
There would be no Arthur.
There’s a room. In this room is Mildred Piper and another man, a man in a brown coat and brown hair, high boots. He’s smoking a cigarette as he paces back and forth, from one wall to the other wall. There’s a clock ticking. I’m in this room.
The man looks at me.
This is Charles Fortescue.
When you use these powers, these gross, perverted powers, it destroys you. Your skin melts. Your muscles erode. People like Alan Piper put metal in you and this metal is the only thing that’s keeping you alive, the only thing holding you together, like gears in a clock.
Flesh and blood isn’t what makes us human, Arthur.
If I become nothing but metal, am I still human?
You can love. You can hate. You can fear.
Animals can. But I can’t love.
I only have the power to destroy, and to divide.
You reach for that distant song you haven’t heard since the darkest part of your life, and suddenly you’re reminded of it. There’s a war. You’re on the front lines. You’re killing innocent people. You have your orders and you don’t know why you’re still fighting, but you have your orders and you do what you’re told, like a good soldier.
Arthur, you have to kill Fortescue.
You reach, because that’s all you have left.
I feel my blood turn to fire. I feel my flesh rip apart, my muscles quiver, everything that’s left of my human self consumed by hellish maws. I imagine bright white spears erupting from my body, grabbing every fibre of the room, clutching them tight. The bomb as it breaks through the ceiling, it becomes latched by one of these spears and stops. The debris, spewing outwards in all directions, is caught in my web of white spears.
Mildred Piper, what did we do?
I fall to one knee and let out a scream as fire surges through my body. My arm comes loose. Tiny copper gears clatter to the floor, each one as loud as church bells tolling. My muscles screech. I grit my teeth together, feeling my chest catch fire.
What happened in that room?
The sound is comparable to one million lightning bolts striking the same spot simultaneously. The world flashes white and the bomb explodes, fire cascading across the sky. Tables go flying. Pens rip apart. Papers melt. Any evidence that Fortescue’s lot had set up an outpost here is gone. The walls explode. Three bodies go flying, their bodies hammered by a force that’s powerful enough to break bones.
This is what I can do.
This is your purpose, says the whine.
White smoke curls around my ankles. I’m gasping for air. There’s blood and metal on the floor and I try to stand but I can’t put any weight in my leg. It burns, like the muscle has ripped apart, melted by hot irons. So I grab a flag pole and use it as a walking stick, and I feel the ground beneath my feet. It feels beautiful. I imagine that this is what it feels like to be alive.
You’re their monster, Arthur.
I am their monster.
Kill them.
I will kill them all.
Walter Milne slowly gets up, staring at me with wide eyes. John Montgomery is on the other side of the room, clutching his ribs and breathing hoarsely. He has never seen something like this before. None of them have. This is what the whine impresses on me.
Redvers Lennox is to my left, standing. “Christ.”
The radio is on the floor, the copper wires ripped apart, but I can hear his voice. Five minutes ago, there was an attack on the Crossroads. We borrowed a shipment of your bombs. They never even had a chance. Everybody who was there is dead.
Frederick.
Thomas Cobbe.
Vanessa. Willcocks.
Leslie Barrow, the pianist.
You don’t have the power to unite.
Marianne Hopkins? No, she would have escaped.
You only have the power to destroy, and to divide.
There’s a room, and there’s Mildred and Fortescue.
You never stood a chance.
The wall has been blown apart and there are people on the other side of it. I’m still catching my breath as I walk towards them. Walter grabs Montgomery. Redvers doesn’t go anywhere. His mouth is still shaped like my name, a name that Fortescue fears.
The light spreads across the group.
Thomas Cobbe is standing there. Vanessa towers over him, her dark skin and dreadlocks blending with the night. Willcocks is there. And a black car with its headlights splashing us in a golden aura. “Arthur, what the hell is going on?” Thomas says. But I’m not looking at him. My eyes find somebody else among that crowd.
My eyes find Marianne Hopkins.
She stares back at me.
My fingertips tingle as I extend my hand towards Thomas Cobbe. “Give me your gun,” I tell him. The man looks at me oddly. I spot him in the corner of my eye, not moving, his mouth opening the smallest amount. Somebody else moves first.
It’s Willcocks, moustached and stern. He holds his pistol out to me and he meets my eye. His are icy blue, like the oceans in the Antarctic. He says nothing.
I take it from him and stride to Hopkins.
“Arthur,” Thomas says.
I’m standing before Marianne Hopkins with my gun aimed at her face. Thomas moves behind me but for the first time he doesn’t say anything. There’s a spotlight shining down on us, flickering intermittently. Marianne stares at me.
“What are you doing?” Marianne says.
I pull the trigger and she drops to the ground.
The gunshot echoes across London, the flash lighting everything in sight. I toss the still-smoking pistol back at Willcocks and he catches it swiftly. A puddle of blood runs from Marianne’s face, where the bullet entered, splitting apart her skull. Her fingertips still twitch, as though not realising she’s dead. Thomas walks past me to Marianne’s body, cursing underneath his breath. He looks at me, suddenly pale.
“What the hell have you done?” he tells me.
“She’s been working for Fortescue,” I tell him.
You don’t know that for sure, says the whine.
I know it sure enough.
Thomas strides towards me. “You didn’t have to shoot her!”
“If we’d kept her alive, she’d find a way to escape.” I know this because I know people like Marianne, though I’m not sure how. Maybe it was from during the war. Maybe before that.
“You fool,” Thomas says, retreating. Vanessa is staring at me and I avoid her gaze, feeling a heaviness setting in. It’s difficult to catch my breath. I touch the space between my nose and my fingers come away soaked in hot
, coppery blood.
“How did you find us here?” I say.
“It might have had something to do with that body on the ground,” Thomas replies. His eyes are cupped by deep bags, crow’s feet snaking off from the edges. I feel a pang of guilt—but no. Marianne Hopkins told Stirling his friends had been captured. She lied. She told me to find Montgomery. She told Montgomery I was looking for him. She told Fortescue I would be here. She helped us, but she helped them, and she was too dangerous.
Arthur, Arthur, Arthur...
That’s how it all falls apart, the one flaw in the plan.
Always looking for ways to justify your evil.
I ignore the whine in my ear and turn my attention back to Thomas.
“Where’s Frederick?” I say.
“Frederick is dead,” Thomas tells me.
Somehow, I already knew this.
“He stayed behind. He knew the bomb was coming before it did but he refused to leave. The others have scattered to the various other cells, but what is to say they haven’t killed them too?” Thomas pauses, running a hand through his hair. His eyes catch something behind me. I turn around to see the others. The Lennox brothers, Dead George, Nicholson and Stirling, and John Montgomery being restrained by Walter. Behind them is an army.
“Who is that?” Thomas asks.
“John Montgomery. He’s one of theirs.”
I spit blood onto the gravel and watch it bubble under the moonlight. I raise my eyes to the city in the distance. Somewhere there, I know is Charles Fortescue. He knows what happened here. Frederick is dead. The bastard murdered him.
“You all right?” Walter tells me.
“Yeah,” I respond. “Thomas. Get these people distributed across what we have left. Have multiple people monitoring word from Fortescue Plaza. If the place is still in darkness, it won’t be for long. I sense something is about to change.”
Thomas gives me a testing look, but nods.
I begin to walk to the car but he grabs my arm.
“Arthur,” he says in a stern voice. I look at him and we’re inches away. The voice in the back of my head is trying to say something but that look in Thomas Cobbe’s eyes stops it. His grip on my arm is tight, his gaze penetrating. “The people are scared. If you’d only been there, you would’ve seen it on their faces. They don’t know what to do. Fortescue overpowers us. And what when this is over? What people can we lead when the people we’re meant to be leading fear us? We can’t let this dissolve back into another war, I’m telling you this for a fact.”
“How much blood will you allow Fortescue to spill before you act?” I ask him, shaking his grip from my arm and propping myself up with my flag-pole walking stick.
“We failed last time,” Thomas says.
“It’s because of you that we get another chance, Thomas. You’ve got what’s left of the revolution in your fingertips. Now take hold of them. Remind them what they’re fighting for. Make them remember what Fortescue did, how his regime broke them. Inspire them. It will only take one calculated attack on Fortescue Plaza. We can end this war, Thomas.”
“And then what?” Thomas says.
“We figure that out when it comes.”
Thomas locks his jaw, but nods. His eyes move from myself to the group that’s surrounding us. I’ve looked into many eyes. I’ve seen many things. I look into those eyes of Thomas Cobbe and I see everything he’s ever lost, and how scared he’s become to lose everything he has left. How long have you been fighting? How do you know who I am? How did you know Mildred?
He’s looking at me again. “Where are you going now?”
“There’s just something I have to do,” I respond.
Thomas thinks about this for a moment. “I’ll deal with this situation. When you’re ready, come find me.” He slips a white card into my hand and I take it without looking at the address. “This is where we’ll be. Myself, Vanessa and the others.”
I slide the piece of paper into my coat.
“Be careful, Arthur,” Thomas says. His lips work but nothing comes out. His eyes turn downwards to my coat pocket. He sighs. “We need you,” he says at last.
I consider his words, and then turn on my heel and limp to the vehicle. Its headlights divide around me, spreading my shadow across the wreckage of the school. You can still smell the fire from the bomb in the air. You can feel the air tremoring because of it.
I climb into the vehicle and drive.
The Room Where It Happened
Do you remember where you were when it all fell apart?
How could I forget, I respond to the whine. I remember the night. I remember the cold, bitter smell on the wind. The wind that brought the night that destroyed the revolution. The melody that foretold the death of Mildred Piper.
I was there.
I was in that room.
It’s just after ten when I pull up outside the town house in central London. I step out of the car, flag-pole digging into the gravel. The door slams shut and I’m gazing up at the two-storey building, feeling things slowly begin to come back to me. I remember the date. Late September. A cold night. I came alone. Nobody else knew this meeting was taking place. I didn’t tell anybody where I was going. I couldn’t risk it.
I limp up the steps to the front door and gently push it open. The house has been deserted but the lights still work; they flicker on slowly as I enter. My flag-pole walking stick prods the soft carpet without a sound. The townhouse’s vestibule seems smaller than it was the last time I came here, but the feelings are all the same. The hairs on my arms rise. The portraits on the walls stare at me. They remember me from the last time.
Second floor. A wooden door. A room.
The room is square and has minimal furnishings, just a couch and a table and a lamp post in the corner, currently on. You can hear the buzz of bad wiring. I pull the curtains aside to reveal the city’s lights, which shine against my eyes.
I turn around and Mildred Piper is there. Her short, tangled auburn hair becomes fire-like in the light. She wears a brown coat and red scarf and she paces to the edge of the room. Suddenly there’s a flame in the fireplace, filling the room with warmth.
“Warm enough?” she says.
I stare at her, unsure of what to say. She turns to me as she stokes the fire, her face full of firelight. “I think I’m fine,” I whisper.
This is how it happened.
There’s a man sitting on the couch in the corner and he wears a black coat. You can’t make him out in the shadows. You can only see the burning end of his cigarette. Mildred walks over to this man. My eyes immediately glance at her hand. She’s wearing a silver ring.
Mildred Piper is engaged to a man who is not here.
“Come into the light so I can see you,” Mildred says.
The man breathes out cigarette smoke and stands, the old couch groaning in relief. He’s a tall man in a black coat with white lining, the material tight around his thin frame. He is older than myself by five years, but I don’t know why or how I know this. His cheeks are sunken but not unhealthily. His eyes are like burnt wood. He doesn’t smile much.
I reach for a gun but I’m unarmed.
This is Charles Fortescue.
Mildred doesn’t flinch, and I know that this is what I’ve come to expect of her. There’s only one person in the world who is larger than Charles Fortescue, and that is Mildred Piper. You can see the metalwork underneath her skin in the way that only other mechanicals can see it. You can hear the whir of clockwork as she moves, breathes, weighs up the leader of the anti-mech regime. Charles Fortescue came to power after the war. He was always young for a politician, but people knew his name and what he stood for, and that’s how he got to power.
Fortescue is no fearmongering tyrant, but he weaponised fear.
“I’m glad we could come together for this,” Mildred says.
Fortescue nibbles on the end of his cigarette. He doesn’t look at me, and I remember how, throughout the course of this entire mee
ting, he did not look at me once.
“There’s been enough blood spilled,” says Fortescue.
My fingers touch the gun in my holster, and my heart jumps. It wasn’t there before. I hurriedly remove my hand and use it to grip my forearm. A streetlamp goes on outside the window, throwing more light into the room, but only a sliver. I notice Fortescue has a pistol too, and Mildred does not. I’m pretty sure Mildred asked him to come unarmed.
She doesn’t bring it up. I may be remembering wrong.
“Take a seat,” Mildred says.
Fortescue eyes her, then nods. His hand reaches out from his coat and grabs the backrest of a wooden chair, sliding it out from underneath the table. Then he sits, and on the other end of the table, so does Mildred. But I stay standing by the window, knowing the distance between my hand and my gun, ready to draw it as soon as it’s needed.
The fire in the hearth crackles.
“So what do you propose we do?” says Fortescue.
“Call off your troops,” Mildred says in a stern, comfortable voice. “There’s no more war. There will be no more fighting. We want equal rights. We want to be acknowledged for what we did for this city. We want to put an end to all the fear that you’ve helped perpetuate.”
“I can’t control the people.”
“You have extraordinary influence over them. No, it won’t be fixed overnight. But if we work together, we can rebuild this city and have peace.” Mildred smiles, and I see her eyes brighten, and I realise that was the only time I ever saw her smile. “Don’t you want that?”
Mildred rests her hands on her belly.
I remember she was pregnant.
Fortescue doesn’t seem to notice. He’s staring straight across the table, seeing nothing but the way the firelight glistens in her green eyes. “What of the people who fight for you?” Fortescue says, his voice soft. “You can’t control them. Will they rebel?”
“No,” Mildred says firmly, and I’m wondering how you can be so sure, but I believe her. I don’t understand Mildred Piper. I never understood her. How you can bargain with the enemy, make peace with the one who hurt you and everybody you loved so terribly?