Absolute Heart

by Michael Vance Gurley

  “What do you mean?” Landa asked.

  “We knew there would be some false panel on the wall, but we will probably never find it by looking in obvious places. Secret doorways are built to elude chance discovery. It is kind of the whole point,” Lucas said, almost as if talking to himself out loud. “It’s like a puzzle. There must be a hidden….”

  He sat down behind Jacobson’s desk in the oversized, posh leather chair. Even though it looked incredibly comfortable to sit in, Lucas kept squirming about, looking under the desk. He reached under the lip and found nothing, so he opened drawers and explored around them all.

  “We don’t have time to relax,” Wish warned.

  “No, wait for it,” Gavin said with a smile that had crept over him. “Lucas solves analytical puzzles in class all the time, even when no one else can.”

  Lucas focused on the desk, observing each segment for how they fit. After a few ticks, he bent near the floor and found something. There was a faint scuff mark on the left corner of the footing where someone had dragged their shoe enough times to have caused almost imperceptible indentations. He put his toe in the groove on the floor and pushed against the desk. Nothing happened at first, but after he held his foot there for a few ticks, the panel gave way and slid in. His boot drug across the floor when the piece moved, thus the markings in the wood.

  Click.

  Across the room, the wall popped open where before it had been a solid panel. Lucas spread his arms wide in triumph. “How do you like my magick?” he asked Orion. He tipped his head forward in a mock bow.

  “That was amazing,” Wish exclaimed before settling back down. “Sort of,” he added.

  “Not ‘sort of,’” Gavin said as he gently squeezed Lucas’s shoulder and leaned into his side. Orion scrunched up his face.

  The moment didn’t last long. Heavy steps emanated from the hall outside the door. Someone pounded on the other side of the door and it began to vibrate. They had been discovered.

  “Who is in there? I demand you open this door right now!” Jacobson yelled from the other side. The door pushed up against the lock and stopped. Gavin let out a low whistle of thanks.

  “Who?” Orion whispered.

  “It’s my father,” Gavin said quietly, the resignation heavy in his voice. Shouts began to ring out somewhere in the house, Jacobson’s guards having been alerted. The lock would not stop them from busting down the door to arrest them all.

  “What now?” Wish scoffed.

  Gavin ignored him, crossed the room, and pulled open the secret door. It wasn’t a room or a safe at all. He looked down at a set of cantilevered stone stairs.

  “Let’s go.”

  They bounded down the steps to escape the study as much as to answer the burning question of where the artifact was kept. Their feet echoed down what must have been a deep staircase. Once all in, Wish smashed the door mechanism.

  “How do you like my magick?” Wish gloated.

  They were thrust into total darkness. Orion provided a faint glow from his hand for them to see while Landa fiddled with something in her bag. Before long she pulled out a handheld electric light attached by tubing to her steam cannon pack. With the sound of a spring coiling, the light glowed into action. They all looked at her in amazement.

  “What?” she questioned.

  Gavin hugged her.

  They walked down a few steps, their footfalls echoing around the stones. Landa illuminated the way, as they descended the seemingly endless stairwell.

  Orion suddenly stumbled against the cold limestone of the walls and nearly fell onto Lucas, who pushed him back upright.

  “Get off,” Lucas exclaimed.

  “What is it?” Gavin said, his focus on Orion, who looked weak and sweaty.

  “I’ve… it’s nothing.” It didn’t seem like nothing.

  “What’s wrong?” The worry in Gavin’s face took Orion aback.

  “I’ve used a lot of magick without much sleep.”

  “What does that mean?” Landa asked.

  “I,” Orion began, looked from Gavin to Landa and back again to decide how much to share, and then decided he would continue. “When magick is used, there is a price.”

  “We’ve noticed you passing out,” Wish said.

  “I will be fine shortly.” Pounding began on the secret entryway door far behind them. Orion gestured for them to go down the steps. It seemed Jacobson and his men had entered the room and were intent on getting to them.

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, where they must have been far below the house proper, they entered a new room. When Landa and her light followed, they stopped in their tracks. Gavin had half carried Orion down the last of the staircase. He stood Orion up against the wall, where he steadied himself.

  “Oh. My. God,” Wish exclaimed.

  They all felt the same way when they looked into the cavernous room. The secret space was lined with wooden bookshelves, which were filled with artifacts. The glow from Landa’s light reflected off gold statues, which brightened the room enough that they could get a sense of what it held. There were rows and rows of shelves, all filled with items, some small and covered with dust. There were stacks of ornate scrolls rolled on shelves.

  Landa inspected the scrolls. “You don’t think that your father stole these from the Library of Alexandria discoveries, do you?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Gavin said. “Keep looking.”

  “Find the Dragon Stone. Quickly,” Orion commanded. As much as Wish and Lucas were loath to do anything Orion told them to do, they followed suit in the search with Landa and Gavin. They spread out around the room and patted through things in their desperate hunt.

  “What does it look like?” Lucas asked. They all paused to look at Gavin.

  “Like a little rock?” He shrugged and wondered if they thought it would be something different. “It’s probably in a display case, up high. Or maybe in a locked safe since it is so important. Hurry.”

  Lucas found an ornate dagger, its hilt encrusted with rubies and emeralds. He stared at it a long time, entranced by it, until he grabbed it and shoved it in his inner coat pocket before looking around to see if anyone had witnessed his theft. He worried about being discovered. He had never stolen anything before. His worry only lasted briefly until he remembered all of the items were stolen. So what did it matter? He had to have it.

  Landa pulled a book from a shelf. “It can’t be,” she whispered to herself. Gavin turned his head toward her and waited. “Do you have any idea what this is? It looks like an original technical manual. I’ve never seen anything—”

  “Just take it, Landa, and keep looking,” Gavin admonished. She placed it in her bag with a determined shove. He turned to the others to watch each of them put things in their pockets. “Listen, we need to find the stone. Now. We don’t have time for shopping.”

  Gavin pushed objects around the shelves, searching, growing impatient. He could hear the steady banging from above. His father would be there soon. He started to panic, seeing the immense rows in tunnel vision, unable to focus. He shut his eyes a tick. That’s when he felt it.

  His eyes fluttered open and he saw it for the first time. Directly in front of him, laid out on a red velvet pouch, was a reddish rock spiraled with veins of color, about the size of the palm of his hand. It spoke to him in a quiet, rumbling voice that sounded ancient and powerful. He couldn’t quite make out what it said to him. He reached for it, but paused, an image from the vision the Monk had shown them flashing in his mind. He remembered the fear on the priest’s face as the Templar Knight, Gregor, grabbed the stone. An inch away, he tried to stop his hand from grasping it. He shook from the effort.

  He felt an immense pressure. From a distant island, high atop a rocky outcropping, the sounds of beating wings filled him with heat and desire. Every fiber of his being screamed as if flames licked fingertips and wind rushed against unfurled sails in his mind. He needed to hold it. As he reached, his mind’s eye
focused on the burning flesh of young men in red uniforms, and Gavin smelled the terrible stench of death. He flipped the velvet around the rock without touching it and slid it into the bag. His sigh filled the cavern.

  Gavin held the bag up to his friends with relief. “I have it, let’s go.”

  Orion strode quickly across the room, having dropped what he was holding, letting it clank to the hard floor. He held out his hand for the stone. Orion’s eyes shifted from hazel to cloudy silver.

  “Orion?” Gavin grabbed his hand and squeezed. “I’ve got it. It’s safe.” Orion returned to normal, his face relaxed. Lucas looked on at their connected hands and scowled.

  Something large and heavy slammed into the wall somewhere above them. Dust was sent wafting down from the ceiling. They looked up. Jacobson and his men had gotten desperate and were trying to batter the door with something heavy. They were on borrowed time.

  “We’d better figure out how to get out of here,” Wish interrupted.

  “Boys. This way,” Landa said. She directed them toward a door past a row of shelving. She unlatched a sliding metal bar that had blocked entry into the room from whatever lay on the other side. She needed help from Wish to swing the heavy iron-laced wooden door open. Beyond the room, they entered a long tunnel.

  “Where exactly does that go,” Lucas asked nervously.

  “At this point, that doesn’t matter much, does it?” Orion said with vitriol. Lucas’s scowl only intensified, but Orion matched it in return.

  Gavin looked for something to barricade the door with once they were on the other side, and found nothing, so he suggested they run. “It won’t take my father long to find us. I’m sure he already knows where this tunnel lets out and has dispatched men to await us there.”

  They ran in single file down the tunnel into the unknown. Stolen items slapped against each of their legs in their pockets with each step. At the end of the tunnel, they entered a well-lit, vast tube.

  “What secret hell is this?” Orion asked.

  They all looked up as they stopped in front of a large train. Its sleek metal sides made it look more like a bullet for a steam cannon, with few markings. It didn’t have a smokestack. It looked like nothing they had ever seen before.

  “Where exactly does the smoke go?” Landa asked.

  “Here, maybe,” Wish said as he tried to be helpful. He pointed to a set of curved piping that bent out and along the sides of the engine car. Gavin hopped onto the train to several sets of stares.

  “Well, then, everyone. Shall we depart?”

  “To where?” Landa asked. “And how?”

  “Do we have any other options?”

  “Nope, you’re right, we don’t,” Wish said, and beckoned them all to climb aboard.

  Gavin asked Landa to help get the monstrosity started, and she explored the main cabin to discover how exactly to do that. She found the standard levers and gauges for a steam train, but the analytical engine was dramatically smaller than it should have been to operate such a complex machine. She mumbled something about not understanding. She was clearly bugged by it. Gavin had never known her to be bested by a machine, even when he broke them really badly. She popped open a panel and removed a small punch card to inspect it.

  “We need to get going, Landa, not break the train. Come on now, I know you can get it started,” Gavin said.

  “This is impossible,” she returned, her mind enraptured at the markings of the holes punched into the little card.

  “Nothing is impossible,” Orion said.

  “Never mind the warlock and his poor grasp of reality. What is impossible?” Lucas asked.

  “This,” she clarified, holding up the tiny card with hundreds of tiny holes knocked into it. “This should be ten times this size to accommodate the amount of coding needed to operate a train. Assuming this is actually a moving train.”

  “I don’t understand,” Orion said.

  “Of course you don’t, witch boy,” Wish snarked.

  “I mean there should be more cards to run a train engine. Each cog and wheel compartment has different instructions, and then more for each gear of the train. The analytical engine to automate a train should be enormous. Bigger than even Wish’s head. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “Hey,” Wish said.

  “Because you haven’t seen this device doesn’t mean—” Lucas tried.

  “No. This design is something that has never been done, or probably never even thought of. My professors have talked about things on the edge of research. This… this is far beyond anything I’ve heard of.”

  “Is there any question now what the true power the stone holds, and the lengths greedy men will go to control it?” Orion declared.

  There was a raucous crash at the other end of the objects rooms. It seemed likely Jacobson and his men had had broken through the wall to the cavern.

  “Start it more, wonder less, girl,” Orion commanded while pointing upward toward the thundering of soldiers approaching. Landa sneered but quickly worked the levers, and the train jolted into motion.

  “Stop!” Jacobson shouted, his wavy brown hair tousled from the run down the stairs. Even in the middle of the night, his multibuttoned suit jacket looked impeccable, his ascot tight around his throat. Did he sleep in his clothes?

  Gavin leaned out the window and looked down at the sight of his father in the midst of several soldiers who hoisted rifles upward to take aim.

  “Gavin!”

  Gavin looked at his father with hopes he would see something there he had not in a long time. He wanted his father to ask him to stay. He wanted to believe this had all been a dream or a misunderstanding. He wanted his father to be his father.

  “Stop them! Shoot! Kill them! Whatever it takes, get that stone back,” Jacobson shouted. Gavin’s father had looked him in the eye and ordered him dead. He couldn’t believe it. Everything he had been worrying about. Gavin felt his dreams of a normal life being dashed against the tunnel walls. Then he recalled the power, the rumbling voice of the stone. The pull of the stone had gripped his father too deeply.

  Roaring shots rang out and filled the train tube. Gavin stood still in shock amongst a hail of bullets. Wish yanked him backward. They fell together in a heap on the metal floor of the train.

  “What the bloody hell?” Wish exclaimed.

  Lucas desperately helped Gavin to his feet and checked him. He felt blindly across Gavin’s chest and arms, legs and butt to find bullet wounds. “Are you hit?”

  “I’m… I’m…. No,” was all Gavin could utter. He turned to Lucas, and their eyes met to share a brief moment of relief in each other.

  Landa found the appropriate levers and moved them until the train dramatically picked up unbelievable speed and rocketed through the tunnel.

  Gavin watched Jacobson shouting orders at his men as the train sped away. He had lost his mother. Now his father was gone too.

  His Inner Light

  “LANDA, YOU might want to slow this monstrosity down,” Orion warned.

  “Why?” she asked, her head buried in the engines.

  When Orion didn’t answer, Gavin looked up to see why. Orion extended his arm out to point far down the track toward what blocked their path. The sleek bullet-shaped steam train barreled headlong toward a squadron of soldiers.

  “No!” Gavin shouted. “My father must have contacted his Grenadier Guards on a photophone to tell them to capture us. We can’t stop anywhere near them. We’ve got to get away.”

  The Grenadiers, eight in number, were all decked in the typical red coats except for one. A tall man in the British blues of a lance sergeant motioned left and right as his men snapped to positions around the tunnel the train would have to pass, and each brandished a steam rifle. They were well organized and looked to be equally armed.

  “Photophone?” Orion asked. Gavin pointed ahead of them to one of the soldiers who carried a brass box in his hand attached with tubing to a pack on his back. Orion shook his
head.

  “Communications device. Sends moving pictures and your voice across long distances in an instant. That’s how they know to look for us.”

  “You can see other people in this box?” Orion asked. “Like a scrying bowl?”

  “Sort of?” Gavin guessed, not having a sound grasp of how a scrying bowl worked.

  “God, it’s like you live in the stone ages,” Wish said. “Don’t your people know anything?”

  Lucas gave a shaky laugh, betraying his nervousness.

  “It’s been around a long time,” Landa said. “I’m surprised your people don’t use them.”

  “Never,” Orion bristled. “Your filthy smoke-powered world is the bane of—”

  “All right, all right. We get it. Technology is ruining the world,” Wish scoffed. “We don’t have time for this. What are we going to do?”

  “This must be a secret Parliament station since that kind of wireless device is too expensive for every group of soldiers to carry,” Gavin said.

  “This is no ordinary squad. They’re Grenadier Guards,” Wish clarified.

  “What does that mean?” Orion asked.

  “It means we are properly shagged,” Lucas said. “They’re only the most highly trained elite guards to the Council. Better duck.”

  Most of the soldiers fired their steam-powered rifles at the train to stop it. Bullets tore through the outer hull and pinged off the braces. Some bullets grazed the boiler, which made sparks. Hissing steam sprayed across the cabin.

  “It’s only little bullets, right?”

  One of the Grenadiers pulled a long tube out of a case and dropped to one knee. Another soldier connected the tube to a hose and flipped a lever.

  “That looks really bad,” Lucas said, motioning.

  They saw the flash of light come from the device before the sound of the explosion filled the tunnel. They rocked on the tracks as a large hole ripped through the front of the train.

  “Holy shite!” Gavin said. “We can’t stand another one of those.”

  “We have got a major problem here!” Landa shouted, all the while she turned knobs to stop the pressure from overwhelming the copper piping as steam suddenly escaped through the holes.