by Giselle Ava
“Cecelia—” is what comes out of my mouth.
She fires again and the bullet clips my shoulder.
It’s like having the most beautiful symphony in the world playing in your bones, your blood the melody, your body the band. It’s a beautiful thing that’s been inside me ever since I was young, and I’ve known it ever since I killed that boy in the schoolyard. That’s when they started calling it a sickness, and they started to fear me. My parents abandoned me. They all hated me. Then they used us in their war because of what we could do.
This beautiful power surges through me now.
I spring forward at Cecelia and grab her wrist, forcing the pistol skyward as she lets out two more bullets in quick succession. Hot light and rain splashes in my face. Her eyes are locked on mine, cerulean blue, like the oceans you seldom see anymore.
I remember those eyes from when she saved my life. I remember that small hovel underneath the dress shop. She wore long fashionable skirts and handmade coats, and there were rings on all of her fingers. Not anymore. She’s a soldier now.
There’s something in her eyes that wasn’t there before. I remember Cecelia Craxton offered me the train ticket and told me to leave London, and if I had, then none of this would’ve happened, and I could’ve been a thousand miles away.
Her eyes…
Suddenly, every single glass in the Lamb & Flag shatters and the flame in the lantern is snuffed out. Cecelia swings her fist and strikes my stomach. There’s a thunderclap and I’m sent flying across the room, smashing into several wooden tables and throwing beer and coins all over the pub floor. Immediate pain engulfs every inch of my body. I’m staring up at the ceiling, where there’s a swaying light. Everything is going in slow motion.
What the hell just happened?
You’re going to have to get up, Arthur.
Glass shimmers across the wooden floorboards. I can’t find my walking stick but it doesn’t quite matter at this stage. I roll over onto my hands and knees, glass shards cutting into my skin. Blood dribbles across them, shining red light back at me.
“Arthur!” That’s Thomas.
He grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet.
As soon as I regain my balance, a sharp pain courses through my leg and I fall back down, grabbing onto the edge of one of the toppled tables so as not to slam face-first into the soaked floorboards. I turn around and see the Craxton girl in the middle of the pub. She’s surrounded by a sphere of debris and her feet are floating in the air. Everything is floating. Beads of alcohol and shards of glass. Cecelia in the midst of it all.
Shit, is the only thing that comes to mind.
No. There’s something else, and it’s coming to me right as I stand amidst the debris, as I stand before Thomas Cobbe and face Cecelia across the pub.
How do you fight something like this?
How do you fight a storm?
Cecelia shrieks and propels an entire table at me. I extend my arm in an effort to stop it but there’s a blockage in my mind, a tiny bit of metal that’s trapped between the gears. I feel the world shift around me, but not by enough, and the table smashes me head-on.
I land halfway across the pub in a bath of debris. Wood chips are flying, being sucked into Cecelia’s odd gravitational pull. Glass hisses past me. Beads of beer coagulate and conjoin, splashing through the air as Cecelia drifts towards me.
Get up, says the whine.
I’m trying. I get one leg underneath me, my boot down on the ground, and lift myself up. Everything is burning. I’m in trouble here. I know this because when I blink I can see the backs of my eyelids and a flash of white. I can hear the sound of gears grinding in the back of my head, metal gears in my bones, like clockwork. The only things holding me together. But, like a clock that’s been thrown onto the ground, the gears are making troubled noises.
Get up, says the whine.
Just give me a goddamn second! I’ve got one foot underneath me and my knee on the ground—that’s my bad knee, the leg that’s all but stopped working. This is the cost of using our powers. This is what they turned us into by making us their weapons in the war.
I don’t have much left in me.
I look up and see Cecelia there through the haze. She showed me kindness and I shot her father in the face right in front of her.
A glass bottle flies in my direction and I bring up my fist to shield my face. The air quivers, a static shock rushing through my body. The glass explodes mid-air, spraying me with tiny shards. The lamps are swaying, electricity flickering. Shadows slither across the walls in demented patterns. Using my mind, I grab half of a table and fling it at Cecelia. It smashes into her, destroying her shield of debris and sending her somersaulting across the pub.
I rip off a table leg with my mind and then stand, shadows spraying across me, using it as a walking stick. Cecelia climbs up from the ground and stares at me hotly. Her blue eyes swirl. Her blonde hair flies about her head as though underwater. Before she gets the chance to move, I grab another table and toss it at her. It connects, pinning her to the rear wall.
Sweat drips down my face. You can hear the sound of metal gears clanking and whirring inside my body. I am Human, but I am also built of metal because, without it, I would have died a long time ago, out there on the battlefield.
Cecelia struggles against the rear wall, held there by pieces of wood. Cold air enshrouds her like a cloak. Step, creak, thunk is the sound I make as I walk towards her. That, and the rasping that comes with each breath I take. The hot thrum of gears.
“Get away from me, you bastard!” Cecelia shrieks.
She is no longer the person she was. Her lips scowl at me, spluttering spittle with every word she shouts. She struggles against my telekinetic hold on her, but it will come to nothing; Cecelia may be one of our kind now but she’s weak.
I pull a pistol from my holster and aim it at her.
“Everything they say about you is true!” she yells at me. “You’re a madman! You’ve gone insane! You’ve no empathy for anybody but yourself!”
My hold on her weakens. The table begins to split. She drops an inch. One of the overhead lamps explodes, raining glass over the pub. You can hear raindrops outside, and the distant rumble of thunder. The storm has finally hit London and it’s a big one.
“Your father would’ve killed all of us,” I tell her.
“He would’ve done whatever you told him!” Cecelia says.
“Arthur,” Thomas says, placing his hand over my gun and lowering it. I glance at him. He’s shaking his head. “We don’t need to kill her.”
I lower the gun only slightly.
Suddenly, my hold on Cecelia breaks and she falls to the floor in a pathetic heap, the table clattering away. My pistol aim follows her, though I feel Thomas beside me, and I know I should spare her—but my finger touches the warm trigger and rests there.
“Don’t get up,” I say to her.
She stares up at me and doesn’t move. “You’re a monster.”
Damn right. I cock the pistol and it thrums in my hand like the engine of some great machine. I am the monster she says I am, and I always will be. I was born like this. I was a weapon in their war. I am a monster and this monster will tear down London.
Or you can not be.
The whine is there in the back of my mind and it’s been there ever since I told Mildred Piper to attack Fortescue, ever since she died and her unborn child with her, ever since the revolution fell apart and this fool was left to take care of it.
What do you mean, I say to it.
What if you didn’t have to be a monster.
The pistol is in my hand and it’s aimed at Cecelia’s forehead. One shot and she will die. We all die the same. Human. Unkindly. Mechanical. Arthur. Charles Fortescue. A shot to the head, split open her face, blow up her brains. That’ll do the trick.
This is how I killed her father.
We’re back there now, on the second floor of the Gresham Club, and my gun is pointed at
Bernard Craxton’s face as Cecelia screams. I made her watch it.
I’m a monster, but the revolution needs one.
I’m looking into her eyes and I feel Thomas beside me, his hand retreating from its position on the end of my pistol. He knows he can’t stop me. He trusts me. It’s only a very small percentage but it’s there, and he will let me kill her.
You’re starting to look like an idiot, says the whine.
Cecelia is staring at me with those cerulean eyes. I never knew she was one of the Unkindly. All I know is that I created her by killing her father.
This is how Mildred Piper was made.
“What are you waiting for?” Cecelia hisses at me.
I lower the gun and slam it forcefully into my holster. Time unfreezes. The overhead lamp flickers back on. Someone lets out a sharp breath, which rings through the main floor of the Lamb & Flag pub. Thunder rumbles. Rain spits down on the roof.
“Go home,” I say to Cecelia.
She gives me one last look before finally climbing up off the floor and fleeing the pub. The door swings shut behind her and you can hear the soft splashes of mud underfoot, as slowly Cecelia Craxton recedes in the distance. I hope to never see her again. After tonight, I feel that I never will. My shoulders feel heavy and my body is sore. I limp with my walking stick to an overturned table and pick up a toppled seat, slumping down in it.
Thomas follows me. “I appreciate that.”
“I didn’t do it to please you,” I say.
“Oh I know that.” He takes a look around at the mess we made, but I lower my eyes and stare at my hands, scratched and bruised and bleeding. They’re shaking. I grip them together in an effort to stop them, but even now I see a tremble. You can feel the metal plates they put in me. There’s not much left of Arthur, not much left at all.
Unite Them
Rain falls hard over London and I watch it hiss against the window at the back of a bus coursing through the streets. This bus has no destination. It goes here and it goes there and the driver steps off and another one steps on. My breath occasionally fogs the glass and my eyes occasionally droop, but I know I’m not going to sleep.
Eventually I let off and throw my hands into my coat pockets, drawing from one a cigarette, which I light and stick in my mouth. The streets are black save for streetlamps, and deserted save for late-night revellers and drunkards, whistling and shouting.
My eyes find a skinny man on the corner of a wine distillery, leaning against the red bricks, a soaked paperback book in his hand, the cover folded over. He’s staring at me through round spectacles and I wander in his direction.
The man looks me over. “This ain’t the worst storm that’s been brewing in London, is it,” says the man without breaking eye contact.
“No,” I find myself saying. I glance at the book in his hand. It’s barely visible through the darkness. All I know is it’s black and the cover art features a hardboiled detective. Something mystery. Something noir. I pluck out my cigarette and raindrops glisten across it.
“We don’t want more war,” the man says. “We’ve had enough of it.”
“War’s necessary sometimes,” I tell him. The man studies me through the rainfall. In the place he stands, there’s only a trickle of water and a splash of light. He knows the monster who stands before him. He sees the walking stick and the rough skin scored with bruises and poorly-healed wounds. He knows men like me.
“Come closer,” the man says.
I follow this instruction, moving sluggishly through the mudbanks and puddles, a step in my leather boot, the end of my walking stick, a grunt and a grimace. He watches me every step of the way and eventually I enter the ambit of light. I prop the cigarette back in the corner of my mouth, tucked between my teeth and gums.
The man stares at me. He’s an older gentleman with crow’s feet extending from his eyes, the smell of ale in his breath. “London won’t survive another war.”
I hold his stare for a long time, and then glance down the length of the winery as streetlamps flicker and lightning bears down, striking the chimney of an industrial building. Bedrolls are scattered across the sidewalk, people sleeping in them, soaked by the rain. They huddle close to generate some warmth, but you can see them shivering.
I walk from the old man and examine the homeless. The more I walk, the more I see of them, spread out across London’s streets as prominently as the puddles. With my free hand, I massage my beard, longer than it’s ever been. One of the women sleeping looks up at me as I pass, and her eyes follow me through the darkness until I turn a corner and come across even more of them, scattered across the road where markets are usually set.
Light spills from a pub and a drunkard stumbles out, crashing to the sidewalk ungraciously. In a small crevice between two stores, there’s a woman and her daughter wrapped up in dirty blankets. I can hear whimpering coming from someplace else.
An automobile flies past, bathing me in its lights. I watch it until it has disappeared. Lightning crashes in the sky ahead, illuminating a twisted ivory tower.
This is where Charles Fortescue resides.
The lightning dissipates and suddenly it’s gone, and Fortescue Plaza has gone dark again, no communications in, no communications out. All of London revolves around that tower and the people inside it, people like Fortescue, the man I have to kill.
Thunder rumbles and I feel it in my hand.
There’s a statue at the end of the road with its head smashed on the ground, bits of debris sprinkled around it. I stand underneath it with one hand on the pommel of my walking stick, my other hand by my side, my fingers stiff with the cold rain. The plaque on the statue reads in grand black engraving: CHARLES FORTESCUE, SAVIOUR OF NEW LONDON.
I turn and sit down on the edge of it as the city slows.
You don’t have the power to unite, he had told me, his voice snivelly and wrong, one that I hear in my dreams, one that is slowly overtaking that whine in my head. You only have the power to destroy, and to divide. I’m sitting on the base of the statue that was erected in the name of the man who spoke those words, the man who lives in that ivory tower.
Charles Fortescue.
I should have shot him in that room.
Headlights bathe me and I squint up at the fast-approaching vehicle. The tires skid through puddles as it comes to a stop, mist streaming around it. I slide down from the statue and land unevenly, my bad leg buckling. My walking stick barely keeps me upright and it jolts me with such force I let out a sharp exhale, feeling out-of-breath.
The car door opens and Walter Milne appears, immediately drawing up his coat collar and dropping a bandana from his mouth to his neck, under his beard.
At first he notes the beheaded statue, then makes a cautious approach, boots squelching through mudbanks. “Arthur,” he says, white mist forming in front of his face. His voice does little to conceal that something is wrong. Another door of the car flies open and I glance at the next man who steps out. It’s one half of the Lennox brothers. It’s Redvers, a skinny man with curly hair and a red coat, a huge gun stuffed into a holster. He slams the door shut with such force the entire car shakes. I look between the two men, getting nervous.
“What,” is all I say, knowing something has happened.
“They got some of us,” Walter tells me in a low voice. Thunder rolls and there’s a crack of lightning, which bounces off the puddles, illuminating the street. “Including Percy.” The other Lennox brother. I glance at Redvers as he circles the car towards us, staring up at the spot where you can vaguely see Fortescue’s tower.
“The hell did they do?” I say.
“There was a fight. Innocents, Arthur. Captured as many as they could and publicly executed them all. Thought they’d make an example of us.” His voice hushes and he looks around. Redvers Lennox has arrived, his hand on his holstered gun. Walter moves close to me, his blue eyes reminding me of the Craxton girl. “We don’t have long, Arthur. We’re severely outnumbered and everybody k
nows that. We don’t mount an attack, they’ll keep killing us until there’s nothing left. We can’t keep fighting isolated.”
“What did Thomas say?” I ask.
“We haven’t gone to Thomas about this.”
Why am I hesitating? We have people who want to fight. They’re all hurting. Fortescue has taken so much from them, and here we are, at the end of all things, with our best shot yet. We have the Unkindly army. We may be outnumbered, but we still have morale.
So why am I hesitating?
You’ve been here before, says the voice inside my head, a whine which sounds almost like Fortescue himself, a voice as old as the last time this happened.
This is what I’ve always wanted.
But I’m hesitating to pull the trigger.
“Arthur, you still there?” says Walter Milne.
I snap back into the moment. The rain hissing down, smashing into puddles. The statue of Charles Fortescue with his missing head. Walter Milne in front of me and Redvers Lennox behind him. The tower of Fortescue in the distance, occasionally lit by the lightning.
You know what you need to do.
Doubt creeps in but it always does. And it’s deceptive. You know what you have to do but the moment your finger’s on the trigger, doubt creeps in.
Don’t listen to it.
You don’t have the power to unite.
Yes I do, you son of a bitch.
“Right,” I say, feeling the ground rumble with thunder, the impact of it rippling up my walking stick, stirring the gears in my hands. I am a monster, but I am also Arthur, the man who’s going to kill Fortescue and liberate us all.
This ain’t New London yet.
It’s the main floor of Havelock’s pub and I’m pacing with my walking stick, back and forth, back and forth. Flashes of lightning blast through the windows and the door rattles in its frame with every gust of wind. Havelock Hudson’s wiping down glasses behind the bar, not paying attention, but he’s listening and he’s always listening, that poor bastard. Redvers Lennox is by the door. Walter Milne is sitting at a table. Thomas Cobbe is beside Walter and he’s the only man who’s not moving; he’s as stiff as a metal post cemented in the ground.