by Steven Bohls
“Lyle was trying to shoot us down. Not you,” Ryan said.
“You best not tell my dread that,” Bog said. “I’ve built my whole crusade on the assumption that their dread king was a filthy traitor who shoots down his own dreadnoughts.”
“So, now you’re the new king of the dread?” Ryan asked.
“That’s right. Captain Swillface Clunkrucket at your service.” He tipped an imaginary hat. “At least as long as I’m hunting Lyle.”
“Then we need your help,” Ryan said. “I believe Lyle is still looking for Jed. We need to find him before Lyle does.”
Bog’s brow furrowed. “What’s Lyle want him for?”
“Because he built him, silly,” Shay said as if it was obvious.
Bog’s mouth opened slowly. “Excuse me? Did you just say, ‘built him’? And by ‘him,’ you mean Jed?”
“We have a few things to explain,” Ryan said.
Jed
Lyle’s kitchen smelled like fresh basil and hand-kneaded bread. Jed stirred a small pot of tomato sauce as Lyle stretched a disk of dough.
“Do you know why I brought you here?” Lyle asked.
Jed began grating a block of mozzarella cheese into a bowl. “To make pizza?”
Lyle smiled. “Not to my kitchen. To the Endeavor.”
“Something about training me to save the world?”
Lyle tossed his disk of dough into the air. It spun, stretching wider. He expertly caught the dough and then spun it in the air again. He paused for a moment and gave Jed a serious look. “I made a mistake with the dread.”
Jed laughed. “You think so? What gave you that idea?”
Lyle glared at Jed. “I don’t need a reminder. When I made them originally, I thought I could use them for good.”
Jed almost laughed again. How could anyone think those things could ever be used for something good?
Lyle continued. “But they’re out of control now, and they must be stopped. So many of them have turned against me that I can’t do it on my own. I need your help, or innocent people are going to die.”
“Innocent people are probably already dying.”
“Even more of a reason to help me, then.”
“What am I supposed to do about that? If you remember, they don’t exactly listen to me. They pretty much just want to eat me alive.”
“Limitless power is locked inside of you, Jed. All you need is the right key to unlock it.” He set down the dough and walked over to Jed. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a black key.
“What’s that?”
He pointed to Jed’s chest. “The first step to unlocking your powers.”
“What powers?”
“The kind of powers Alice saw you use in the forest. But those were only the beginning.” Key raised, he stepped toward Jed. Instinctively, Jed stumbled backward. Lyle cocked his head. He motioned to the key. “It’s just a piece of metal. It’s not going to hurt you. Like I said…this will unlock your true potential. It’s the only way.”
Lyle stepped forward again, but something inside Jed’s chest made him want to vomit. It felt like black sludge dripping down his throat into his stomach. The key felt like a serpent—its eyes on Jed’s, ready and waiting to strike. He shook his head. “No.”
“No?”
“Something’s wrong with that key. I—I don’t know what it is. Maybe a memory? It just feels…wrong. It’s…it’s all wrong.”
“But you don’t have any memories.”
“You don’t know that,” Jed snapped. “I can remember some things. I just don’t know what. They’re more like feelings. And they’re telling me that key is going to hurt me.”
Lyle shook his head. “It’s not going to hurt you. I promise.”
“No,” Jed said firmly. Another feeling surfaced inside him as he stared at the key. It was the same feeling he’d had during the dream. “That’s what you were doing before,” he said. “In the med box. You were trying to use that key on me. Weren’t you?”
Lyle shifted uncomfortably. “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry for that,” he said. “I should have waited for you to wake up. I just wanted to fix you. That’s what this key will do. Everything you forgot—all of your memories—will return in an instant if you use this key.”
“My memories?” Jed asked.
Lyle nodded. “Everything you’ve forgotten. Back”—he snapped his fingers—“like that.”
Jed reached out to touch the key, but the sick feeling returned. This time it hit him with a force that made him wretch. There was something deeply wrong with that key. He paused, hand still reaching for it.
“Is there a problem?” Lyle asked.
Jed’s hand dropped to his side. “There has to be another way to access my powers. Otherwise, how would I have done what I did in the iron forest?”
“Alice told me how dangerous that was for you. Your powers were unstable. Erratic. But this key will ensure that you can control them perfectly. Quick as a spark.”
A voice surfaced in Jed’s mind. A memory someone once told him. “Quick fixes don’t last,” Jed said out loud. “You want something to work right, it’s going to take the right kind of work.”
Lyle gave him an amused look. “Did you read that in a book of quotes?”
Jed met his eyes. He couldn’t remember who had told him that. Something inside him whispered that it was his father who’d said it, but that didn’t make sense, because Lyle was supposedly his father.
Lyle returned the key to his pocket. “Fine. You want me to teach you? I can teach you. But while you’re wasting time trying to learn something that you could have access to right at this moment, people are going to die. Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“Maybe I’ll learn faster than you think.”
“And maybe you won’t.”
“I guess we’ll see, then, won’t we?”
Lyle leaned closer. “It’s not going to be a stroll through the clouds. Unlocking what’s inside of you on your own is going to hurt.”
“I’m not afraid of pain.”
“Not yet. But before this is over, you’ll ask me for the key.”
Jed stood up straighter. “We’ll see.”
Lyle nodded several times too many. “Then I suppose we should get started. Follow me.” He stood and motioned Jed toward a heavily locked door in the kitchen. Lyle placed his palm in the very center of the door’s thick steel and waited.
Lock after lock began to unlatch until the door hissed and relaxed open. Amber light glowed from the open seal. Lyle entered, and Jed followed.
The cabin’s walls were lined with cabinets and drawers. In front of the cabinets on the west wall there were three waist-high pedestals. Each pedestal held a single, sparkling diamond—exactly like the diamonds he’d seen in his dream. Each shimmering jewel was smaller than a pea and each a different color.
The east wall had a small alcove in its center where a mechanical suit hung anchored in place. The suit had only one arm and a torso. It was an intricate skeletal cage made from the same golden metal inside of Jed.
The two walls looked like opposites: the tiny, simple diamonds across from the huge mechanical suit.
Lyle walked to a yellow diamond on one of the pedestals and picked it up. He held it for Jed to see. “This is called a life spark,” he said. “Every gold has one. It’s what gives us life.”
“Every gold? You mean, there’s more like me?”
“A whole city,” Lyle said.
“Where?”
“Another story for another day,” Lyle said. Jed wanted to press him for more details, but Lyle continued before he could say anything else. “Like I said before, each gold has a life spark. You and I are machines. But what separates us from a garbage disposal or a microwave is one of these.” He held up the life spark.
“So it’s like a brain?”
Lyle considered the idea. “You could think of it like that. A human without a brain is nothing more than skin,
bones, and blood. A gold without a spark is nothing more than gears, batteries, and gold. Never forget: We are no less alive than they are. Don’t ever let them convince you otherwise.”
“Where did you get these sparks?”
“I used to be a gold gearsmith. It was my job to research and modify life sparks. These were collected from golds who didn’t need them anymore.”
“You mean you took them from dead bodies?”
“I suppose you could say it like that.”
“So…you’re like a zombie?
“What?”
“You collected brains from dead golds. That kind of sounds like a zombie to me.”
Lyle sighed. “That’s not important. What is important, is that I discovered a way not only to reactivate dead sparks, but also to modify them.”
“What about your dragonflies? Do they have sparks? And what about the dread?”
“They have fragments of sparks.”
“Fragments? What do you mean?”
“Sparks aren’t easy to come by. I didn’t have an endless supply to work with. So…I carefully shattered some of the sparks into little pieces and used the fragments to bring the human bodies back to life.”
“Back to life?” Jed asked. “They all used to be dead humans?”
“Yes. I rebuilt their bodies with metal, then rebuilt their souls with shattered life sparks. My dragonflies are…shall we say…an upgraded model? They each have nearly a tenth of a spark instead of the thousandth that a dread has.”
A memory of a book he’d once read popped into Jed’s mind. “So, you’re not a zombie after all. You’re that doctor who built Frankenstein. Or was the doctor’s name Frankenstein? I can’t remember.”
“Anyway…” Lyle said, ignoring the comment, “sparks can interact with junk. I tapped into that power, creating modifications. I’ve managed to modulate some life sparks with special abilities.” He led Jed to the other two pedestals. “This one,” he said, picking up the red spark and twisting it in the light, “is called mutiny. And that one,” he said pointing to the blue spark still on its pedestal, “is called rally. All of the powers inside of you are based on a combination of mutiny and rally.”
“What do they do?” Jed asked.
Lyle opened a drawer in the wall that was full of junk: an old sneaker, an empty grocery bag, a small telescope, and a book. He pulled out the drawer and emptied the contents onto the floor. He then pinched the blue spark and walked to the mechanical suit on the wall. Carefully, he set the spark in the center of the suit’s right palm. A hum vibrated the cabin and the arm glowed a dull blue. Lyle turned his back to the suit and lifted his arm.
The suit began to move. It weaved itself around Lyle’s right arm and upper body wrapping him in a tight cocoon. His left arm was free, but his mechanically tethered right arm now held the spark and pulsed with blue light.
He lifted the glowing arm and aimed it at the pile of junk. He then flipped a switch on the suit with his free hand. The hum deepened, and the glow brightened. The junk began to wobble on the floor then leaped up and stuck onto the end of the suit’s arm.
Lyle flipped the switch off. The hum died, and the junk fell into a pile once again.
“That was the rally spark,” he said.
“So it’s like a magnet?” Jed asked. “But anything sticks to it?”
“With enough battery power, yes. This spark on its own isn’t strong enough to attract sizable items. That’s why it didn’t rip the train’s floor out from under us.”
Jed hadn’t considered that. “Oh.”
“But string multiple blue sparks together and give them enough battery power, and you could pull anything you want. Also, the effect happens both ways, meaning: Try to pull something bigger than you, and you’ll be the one who gets pulled.”
“What does the other spark do?”
Lyle used his untethered left arm to remove the blue diamond and replace it with the red one. Once again, the arm glowed—this time red. He aimed it at the pile of junk and flipped the switch. Crimson light glowed through the gaps in the suit and the pieces flew away from him as if a sudden gust of wind had just slammed into them.
“Like an upside-down magnet,” Jed said.
“Yes.”
Jed looked at his own hands. “Do I have those inside me?” He asked. “The mutiny and rally sparks?”
“I’d say you have a few inside of you; ninety-four thousand or so.”
Jed stared at Lyle, stunned. “Are you being serious?”
“Ninety-four thousand one hundred and twenty-eight. My engineers and I worked for years modifying each one of them until we ended up with roughly thirty-one thousand of each type.”
“I don’t understand,” Jed said. “Where did you get that many sparks?”
Lyle smiled. “You said it yourself. I’m Frankenstein. And you are my greatest creation.”
Jed
Alice rousted Jed from his bed early the next morning and ushered him down the length of the train, headed toward the rear car. Dragonflies squeezed past them, bustling to and fro with their arms full of scrap. Jed watched them go and wondered. Alice intercepted his curious look and answered it.
“The admiral had us convert his workshop into a training box for you,” she said.
“A training box?”
“Yes, and you’d better appreciate it,” she said. “We were up all night.”
“I’d ask more questions,” Jed said, “but you’d just tell me everything was classified.”
Alice smiled. “You might actually be a quick learner,” she said, echoing Jed’s own words. The affection in her voice made him walk a little taller.
Alice led him to the back of Lyle’s cabin, through the kitchen, and back into the spark cabin. Everywhere she flew, she struggled to navigate the space. Jed figured it must be exhausting for her to live on a train and not be able to walk.
At the south end of the spark cabin, there was a new door smelling of freshly cut cedar. Alice opened it and motioned for Jed to enter. The once–workshop cabin now showed outlines where built-in cabinets had been removed, and a newly laid wooden floor creaked as Jed stepped onto it.
At the far end of the cabin, a large window let in a stunning amount of light. This was the rear of the train. Jed touched the glass and stared, captivated, by the beauty of the junkyard. A memory came to him—a small town with a salvage yard. The rusted, dirty contents of the yard from his memory looked angry and menacing. But this place…this junkyard was nothing like that. The sun gleamed over the piles with a soft amber radiance that made everything look a little like gold.
“I see you found your way here,” Lyle said from behind him.
Jed turned around.
“A terrible sight, isn’t it?” Lyle continued, shaking his head at the junkyard. “How often I wish I could get away from it all to find a place without junk.”
“Alice said this was a training box?” Jed said.
“Of sorts. I wasn’t anticipating training you when a simple turn of the key could fix all of that….”
Jed gave him a flat look.
Lyle sighed. “Very well.” He reached into his pocket and held up a small marble. “This is your first task,” he said.
Jed gave the marble a skeptical look, and then several metal plates wired to the ceiling caught his attention. Each plate was no bigger than a sand dollar. He stared at them for a moment, wondering. Why did it seem like there were only questions and no answers?
“What am I supposed to do with a marble?” Jed asked, returning his attention to Lyle.
“If you want to save the world, you have to save yourself,” Lyle answered simply. He stepped out of the room, closed the door, and locked it behind him with an audible click. Almost immediately, the metal plates on the ceiling opened and marbles—streams of them—rained down on Jed.
“Hey!” Jed yelled, ducking and covering his head with his hands as a colorful rain of marbles bounced off him. “What is this?”
> “Find a way to stop it,” Lyle said through the door, his voice muffled. “Or I can stop it with my key. It’s your choice.”
Jed gritted his teeth, sliding clumsily over the rolling, shifting layer of marbles that was quickly covering the floor of the car until he was safely standing in a corner. He wished Lyle would just drop the subject of the key, but now, with falling marbles drowning out thought and conversation, he figured it wouldn’t be the best time to discuss the matter.
The noise didn’t stop him from yelling one final complaint, though. “I don’t think greatest creations should be buried in marbles!” Jed lost his balance, pitched forward, and caught himself against the wall. The marbles had piled up to his ankles. The recollection of ball pits—they were filled with colorful plastic balls and smelled like French fries—threatened to derail Jed’s focus.
“Now is not the time,” he said through gritted teeth. “Think.”
The marbles thundered down, inching up to his knees. The rally spark would call all the marbles in the car to him. Not good. His other option was mutiny—pushing the marbles back to where they came from. Smarter.
If only he knew how to do that.
Jed tried to recall his experience in the forest. He focused on a big blue marble in the growing sea of marbles and concentrated.
“Move,” he said. The marble did move…as another hundred marbles buried it deeper beneath them. The marbles went up to his waist now, the weight squishing down on his toes.
“Move!” he shouted at the now-vanished blue orb. More marbles buried it further.
Jed searched again for the warmth—the heat—he had once felt, but now he couldn’t find it. Maybe the thundering downpour of marbles had something to do with it.
I know what the mutiny spark feels like, he thought. It’s like…warm metal. And when it was turned on, I was connected to everything around me just for a second. But now it’s off. Am I just supposed to be able to flip a switch or something? What kind of training is this?
“Hey!” Jed shouted at the door. Lyle had vanished entirely. Jed was alone, and the marbles were piling up higher. They bounced off his shoulders and landed near where his elbows were rapidly disappearing. It was getting harder and harder to move his arms. He’d have to start treading marbles soon.