The Immorality Engine nahi-3

by George Mann

  Charles had told him that the Queen was worried that Newbury would be too easily drawn towards the darkness. She feared the allure of it would become too strong, that he would give in and choose the same path as his predecessor, Aubrey Knox, losing himself to the occult. Newbury knew that was poppycock. But he presumed that was the motivation behind Veronica’s betrayal.

  So, unsure what else to do, he had retreated from her, hiding himself away in Johnny Chang’s and other, less salubrious establishments. He had toured the seedier side of London society and lost himself to its vices. He had ignored the summons from the palace, the note cards brought by courier and then later footmen from the palace rapping loudly on the door. He had turned them all away. Even Mrs. Bradshaw had gone. But Veronica had stayed. Throughout it all, she had stayed, a constant in his life.

  Newbury only wished he did not doubt her reasons.

  ***

  Veronica stood in the shade of a large oak tree, close to the old manor house. She had the trunk of the gnarly old tree between herself and the building, and she was confident she had not been seen as she’d skirted the building, sticking to the flowerbeds along the perimeter wall, ducking behind evergreen bushes and trees.

  From where she was hiding, she could see the extensive gardens at the rear of the property, with their impressive topiary sculptures and water features. It seemed very serene, quite unlike the previous establishments in which Veronica’s parents had interred Amelia. In fact, she felt faintly ridiculous attempting to break in like this, and the thought had crossed her mind more than once that if she’d just decided to walk up to the front door and ask to see her sister, she could hardly be refused.

  Newbury was right, though. She’d been warned to stay away-in the nicest possible way-and if she did turn up at the door, surely she would simply be reminded of this fact and asked to leave. And if she were actually lucky enough to talk her way into the institute, there was no way she would be granted any time alone with Amelia to talk candidly. She would be chaperoned by Dr. Fabian throughout her visit, with no liberty to talk frankly.

  So… she had settled upon this. Breaking and entering. She supposed it wasn’t as if she hadn’t done it before, on more than one occasion. In fact, she was fairly experienced when it came to forcing an entry. Not that anyone other than the Queen was aware of it. Even Newbury only knew of a handful of occasions when she’d had to demonstrate such skills.

  The thought gave her a pang of sudden anxiety. She’d been thinking for some time about telling him the truth. Ever since their recent battle with Aubrey Knox, when she’d blurted out her understanding of the case and accidentally hinted at a deeper knowledge of the situation, and therefore also at her affiliation to the Queen. But she needed to remain focused. Now was not the time for thoughts such as those.

  Veronica studied the rear of the Institute. There were a number of-six, she counted-French doors, at intervals along the back of the house. She presumed that Newbury was right and each set of doors must open out from one of the patients’ rooms onto the gardens. All she would have to do was find the room that contained Amelia, and then hopefully her sister would be able to let her in from the other side.

  It sounded simple. But if anyone else happened to be in any of the other rooms looking out, then her cover would be blown and she’d be out in the open when the alarm was raised. It was far too much of a risk.

  Instead, Veronica had settled on obtaining entry via a window. She had spotted her target almost as soon as she emerged from the foliage to take her place behind the ancient oak: a large sash that had been propped open and left, presumably, to allow the room on the other side to air. It wouldn’t be the most elegant of entrances, and from what she had been able to gather about the layout of the house, she was likely to end up in the scullery or kitchen, but it would do as well as any other. Provided, of course, there was no one waiting for her on the other side.

  She was confident that, once inside, she’d be able to head in the other direction and find Amelia’s room. Admittedly, she was likely to have to try a few doors, and she still ran the risk of opening one on someone who was going to bring the house down screaming, but she favoured her chances this way more than the other.

  Now it was a matter of timing. She’d been observing the window for a few minutes and had seen no one pass by inside. She knew, in the end, that she was just going to have to risk it. Rather than stand around thinking about it any longer and risk missing her chance, she simply leapt out from behind the cover of the tree and bolted toward the window. Her feet slipped on the damp grass as she hurtled across the lawn, and for a moment she thought she was going to go over, but then she was at the window with her leg up over the windowsill, and then she was standing, a bit disheveled, in the kitchens.

  She glanced around quickly, trying to establish whether she needed to run, hide, or tackle someone with a rolling pin in order to ensure their silence. But the path was clear. The place was deserted. She allowed herself a short sigh of relief.

  The kitchen smelled of beef broth and onions. Large vats of food were simmering on the range, the lids rattling on the pans as they built up a head of steam. Veronica realised she didn’t have long. Someone would be back shortly to check on the pots. That might also mean she’d have to find an alternative way out of the institute later.

  There was only one other way in or out of the room, a door in the opposite wall. Veronica walked carefully around a large wooden table that was littered with kitchen implements and dusty with spilt flour, past the bubbling pans, and then hesitated on the threshold of the doorway. Someone’s footsteps were coming in her direction from the corridor outside. She listened carefully to try to ascertain how much time she had. Were they actually footsteps? They sounded more like a persistent rhythm of metal striking stone, accompanied by the wheeze and sigh of firing pistons. Was it some sort of security automaton, perhaps? No matter-they were definitely getting louder, which meant they were getting closer.

  She glanced back at the kitchen. Was there anywhere she could hide? She supposed she could try to scramble into the dumbwaiter in the far corner, but other than that…

  She’d have to run. Out into the corridor, take a left, and put as much distance between herself and whatever it was that was coming from the other direction. She just had to hope they were still far enough away that they wouldn’t see her.

  Veronica closed her eyes, took a big gulp of air, and threw herself out into the passageway. She glanced quickly in both directions. To the right, the path was still clear. But the sound of the mechanical footsteps was growing ever closer, a steady, ominous clanking. To the left, the passage came almost immediately to a T. She ran over to it, hopeful that the coast would be clear. It was. But which direction to take? Where would Amelia’s room be located?

  Thud, thud, thud. The footsteps were rounding the bend behind her. She had to commit. Right, then. She guessed that would lead her deeper into the house.

  Veronica dashed along the passageway, her feet scuffing against the ancient flagstones. The walls and ceiling here were paneled in dark oak, giving everything an oppressive air. Roughly hewn wooden faces loomed down at her from above, their blank eyes judging her from their little nooks in the walls. She guessed they must have been there since the house had been built. She wondered what they must have witnessed in their time.

  Another T-junction. Veronica groaned in frustration. Whichever direction she took now, she was heading farther away from the gardens and the rooms where she expected Amelia to be. But she had little choice. She couldn’t very well double back, not with that thing, whatever it was, blundering around the corridors behind her. She took the passageway on the right again, listening carefully for any signs of movement or voices from up ahead.

  Everything seemed to be quiet. It was a far cry from the asylum at Wandsworth, where Amelia had previously been a patient. When she visited there Veronica would regularly hear the wailing of the other inmates, the cries of the insane, the harr
owing calls for help issued by people too sick to understand their own conditions. By contrast, the Grayling Institute appeared to retain the trappings of a fine country home, a manor house fit for nobility. It was an odd sort of place, and given Dr. Fabian’s reputation as a master engineer, the idea of him living and working there felt entirely incongruous to Veronica. She had expected more modern surroundings: laboratories, workshops, that sort of thing. Or perhaps something clean and clinical, like a hospital. But not this.

  Veronica pressed on. Soon she had lost track of the winding passageways and had given up on trying to remember how to backtrack. Instead she simply followed her instinct, delving deeper into the large house and trying any number of doors, all painted a glossy white and securely locked. It wasn’t long before she had shaken off the sound of the footsteps. The whole building seemed as if it were practically deserted. She hadn’t seen a living soul since her rather impressive entrance through the window: no patients, no nurses, no servants. She cursed herself, assuming that somewhere, in her haste, she had taken a wrong turn and had wandered into a disused part of the building.

  She was just about to turn back and start trying to retrace her steps when she heard a noise from up ahead and started. It had sounded like a muffled scream. She felt the hairs on the nape of her neck prickle as they stood on end. The noise had seemed chillingly familiar. Had it been Amelia? Surely not.

  Cautiously Veronica picked her way along the corridor. Up ahead, it turned abruptly to the right. Veronica followed it, unsure what she expected to find. Ever since arriving at the institute, she’d been filled with a growing sense of unease, and now, upon hearing that awful scream, she suspected that something was terribly amiss.

  The passageway terminated in a door. She crept up to it, straining to hear any sounds from the other side. Silence. She leaned closer, wondering what use anyone could have for a room this far removed from the main part of the building. The scream couldn’t have come from anywhere else. She pressed her ear against the cold wood.

  Inside, she heard the muffled sounds of an animal, a low, plaintive keening, as if the creature making the sound had been in pain for some time but had now given up all hope of attention or relief.

  Was Dr. Fabian involved in some sort of vivisection experiments? It wouldn’t surprise her if he tested his medical machines on apes or dogs or other mammals, and it would make sense to lock them away here where the patients couldn’t accidentally happen upon them. Nevertheless, Veronica couldn’t suppress the nagging doubt that Dr. Fabian was up to something more nefarious. She didn’t really know the man, and she had put her faith in him to heal her sister, but for some reason she had a horrible, hollow feeling in her gut, a sense of impending dread. Something about the Grayling Institute just didn’t feel right.

  Veronica tried to laugh at herself, to remind herself that her sister was the clairvoyant one, that she was probably just being paranoid. But what if Newbury were right? The dreadful thing he had predicted during his occult experiments-what could it be? Was it something to do with Amelia? She supposed there was only one way to find out.

  Veronica was just about to reach for the handle when something screeched loudly on the other side of the door. She jumped back in fright with a sharp intake of breath. She felt her heart race in her chest. The sound had set her teeth on edge. What on Earth was going on behind the door? She gave herself a moment to steady her nerves before pressing on.

  Tentatively, she grabbed for the brass knob and gave it a sharp twist. The door swung open. It was dark on the other side, so she couldn’t see much of the room beyond, but the smell was horrendous. The air was thick with the cloying scent of faeces and perspiration, and other things she couldn’t-or didn’t want to-identify.

  Definitely animals, then, she thought, debating whether to bother searching for her handkerchief to cover her face. Absently, she remembered leaving it at the morgue.

  She stepped farther into the room, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. She could sense motion somewhere nearby. Something was turning in the darkness, something large that disturbed the air currents in the room, a machine of some sort. She could hear it whirring slowly in the darkness along with a low murmur of some sort. She walked forward and immediately got the sense that she was in a large open space, a hall or ballroom at the centre of the old manor house.

  Veronica felt the wall behind her and managed to put her hand on a wall-mounted gas lamp. She felt for the knob and turned it up, spilling some light into the otherwise gloomy room. Then, turning around to see what the room contained, she emitted a scream of a sort louder than she had ever issued before.

  All thoughts of secrecy or subterfuge went from her mind. She rushed forward, but then skidded to a halt, not knowing which way to look, which way to run. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She thought she was going to vomit. She realised she was whimpering with shock and anger and sheer, unadulterated fear.

  The room contained at least twenty Amelias.

  Everywhere she looked, there were more of them, each identical to her sister in every way: pale skinned, painfully thin, raven dark hair. They were barely dressed, covered only in thin cotton nightgowns. Each of them was lashed up to a different machine or torture device.

  Veronica stared at the contraption at the centre of the room. It was a large disc, a circular platform fixed upon a pedestal, and it was spinning, round and round and round. Upon the disc, her sister-one of the many-was strapped down, electrodes trailing from her temples. Strange occult symbols had been daubed onto the surface of the disc, and Veronica realised with horror that her sister’s duplicate had been arranged in the form of a pentagram, her arms, legs, and head forming the five points of the star. She was babbling, too, spouting prophecies and visions of the future. They all were. Veronica realised that the murmur she heard was an incessant litany of words and phrases, snatches of things seen out of time, predictions of the horrifying things to come.

  To Veronica’s left, another of the duplicates was strapped into a chair, her hair lank and dripping, hanging before her wretched face. This one turned and looked up at Veronica with eyes that were sunken and bruised, imploring her to do something. Others sat on the cold tiles of the floor, rocking back and forth, scratching things into the floor with their bare fingernails, etching out the scenes they were seeing in their minds. Yet another lay dead on a table in the corner, stark white and unmoving. One of them rushed at Veronica, its hands held out before it as if to throttle her. Veronica wailed in confusion and distress and the meek creature-a shadow of her sister-fled to the back of the room, to the shadowy recesses where Veronica could hear scores of them gathered, gibbering and whispering to one another.

  Weeping openly, Veronica moved towards the machine at the centre of the room. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She wanted to stop the spinning. But the Amelia on the disc glared up at her, snapping its teeth like a feral animal and growling. Its eyes were full of malice and confusion. This was not her sister. This was… something evil. Something inhuman. Something created.

  Whatever Dr. Fabian was doing here, she had to put an end to it. She had to save Amelia from this, get her away from this horrible place… if it wasn’t already too late. How had she allowed this to happen? What had she done? She was the one who had pushed Newbury to talk to the Queen, to have Amelia moved here. She was the one who had put her faith in the Queen and her physician.

  But there was no doubt in Veronica’s mind. Dr. Fabian was the one responsible, and she would ensure he paid dearly for his crimes.

  “Cracking walls and fire and pain… so much pain. Brass engines of destruction will tear down the world, and the man with the white face shall come out of the darkness.”

  Veronica looked down at the doppelganger strapped to the machine. It had Amelia’s voice, but it was raw and broken, and it was coming from inside a monster.

  “The one who sits in the chair. She is the key. She is the nightmare at the eye of the storm.”

/>   Veronica realised with dawning terror that the duplicates were speaking in unison. Each and every one, chanting the words of the prophecy. It was too much. She had to get out of there, had to find Newbury, to find Amelia. The real Amelia.

  Veronica turned to flee, but stumbled when she saw someone hovering in the doorway. The man with the white face!

  Her path was blocked. The thing that was watching her had to be another of Fabian’s sick creations. He was a man, of sorts, dressed in an evening jacket and white shirt, with white gloves and a featureless porcelain mask where his face should have been. From the waist down he was entirely a machine, legs driven by pistons in his mechanical thighs.

  Veronica realised that this must have been the thing that had followed her here through the passageways of the old house. The strange creature cocked its head silently to one side, as if considering what to do next. Then it came lumbering towards her, its blue eyes blank and staring.

  Veronica saw her opportunity. She could move faster than this strange man-machine. She backed away, drawing it farther into the room, biding her time. Then, just when it seemed as if she had nowhere else to go, she turned and bolted for the door.

  She felt the thing’s fingers brush her collar as she squeezed past it, but she was driven on by fear and her desire to get away, to find Amelia and get her to safety. She darted out into the passageway, flinging herself around the corner, and then on into the depths of the house. She was still weeping, tears streaming down her cheeks, blurring her vision. She didn’t know what to do. She had to find Newbury. But Newbury was with Fabian.