by George Mann
Newbury glanced from side to side, searching for signs of Ashford. The rogue agent had reached the other end of the alley now, his back to Newbury. He was clearly in no hurry to get away. Newbury grinned. Ashford hadn't heard him on the stairwell, and had incorrectly assumed that Newbury would be unable to continue his pursuit, following his leap from the top of the factory. It was an advantage that Newbury desperately needed. If the man could drop four storeys onto cobbles and survive to get up and walk away, then Newbury needed all the help he could get. In a fight, he didn't fancy his chances against such a monster.
Newbury set off after the hulking form of the former agent, keeping pace. He needed to ensure that he didn't inadvertently give Ashford a chance to lose himself in the warren of backstreets that criss-crossed this district of Regent's Park. The light was almost gone now, and without his topcoat, Newbury could feel the damp air penetrating his clothes, filling his lungs like a cold compress. Nevertheless, he crept along the alley, clinging to the shadows, keeping Ashford locked in his sights.
They came to the mouth of the alleyway. Here, the street opened up in both directions, and directly ahead, across the main thoroughfare, the alley appeared to continue in a straight line for miles, disappearing into the dense fog. The street lamps had been diminished to nothing but diffuse, radial orbs that hung in the sky like a bizarre constellation, giving the air around them a tactile, almost physical quality. Newbury shivered. The cold air was damp and his face felt slick with moisture. The thoroughfare was busy; Newbury could hear the brisk chatter of people, the clatter of horses' hooves, and the rude firing of numerous steam engines to his left. To his right, a street vendor was expounding the virtues of the latest edition of The Evening Standard.
Newbury lurked for a moment by the corner of a butcher's shop, watching Ashford as he stumbled along in the darkness. Perhaps the fall had caused more damage to Ashford's rebuilt frame than Newbury had at first imagined. If he could surprise the man from behind, he might have a chance of taking him down. He needed to act.
Newbury broke cover, dashing forward to make a leap for the other man. Too late, he realised there was a broken wooden pallet in the road, abandoned by a market trader and hidden by the low-lying vapour, and he lurched to one side to avoid colliding with it. His foot scuffed noisily on the paving slabs as he righted himself.
Ashford came to life. He spun round to catch sight of the Crown investigator charging him from the rear. Newbury could see no measure of emotion in Ashford's cold, red eyes; indeed, he had yet to properly catch sight of the man's face, concealed as it was beneath the dark cowl of his cloak. But he knew there was steel and darkness behind them. He considered the fact that he was potentially rushing headlong towards his own death.
He was surprised, therefore, when Ashford turned on his heel and fled, somehow managing to spring at least two foot into the air with each stride, his legs pumping furiously as he bounded along the thoroughfare at an incredible speed. He clearly wasn't spoiling for a fight.
For the slightest of moments, Newbury stood, rooted to the spot, mouth agape in amazement. Whatever Dr. Fabian had done to Ashford, he was clearly now more machine than man. No human being could ever propel themselves along at such a pace.
Newbury, realising that he'd soon lose Ashford in the fog if he failed to act, took after the man, careening along the street behind him, dodging out of the way of other, confused pedestrians as he ran. He left a young man sprawling in his wake, but had no time to stop to help him to his feet. Newbury's lungs burned, and his muscles ached. And, with mounting frustration, he watched as Ashford gained more and more distance with every stride.
Realistically, Newbury knew that he could not keep up. He considered his options. If he continued to run, he would surely lose sight of Ashford. The man seemed tireless, and Newbury was already feeling the strain of the exertion. Ahead of him, a hansom cab clattered along the road, and for a moment Newbury almost decided to leap aboard. But he knew the horse and driver would still be no match for the reconstructed man. He glanced over his left shoulder.
There, by the side of the road, a young man was attending to one of the new steam-powered automobiles that had so taken London by storm during the prior months. It was a bizarre contraption. Balanced on three wheels, with a pear-shaped body and a fat rear end that housed a small furnace and water tank, the vehicle was in practice a miniaturised version of the steam-powered hansoms of which Newbury made frequent use. Inside the pear-shaped body was a deep pit, into which the driver would lower himself, and which also contained a series of panels and pulleys by which they would operate the steering mechanism. Early on, Newbury had considered obtaining one of the strange vehicles, but The Times had reported on a growing number of fatalities involving the contraptions, and over time, far from feeling a mounting temptation to adopt the new form of transportation, Newbury had grown to see them as a menace. Nevertheless, he needed a means by which to keep pace with Ashford, and as far as he could see, there were no better options available to him at that juncture.
The furnace of this particular vehicle was well stoked, for it was belching black smoke from its twin exhaust pipes. The man, who Newbury presumed to be the owner, was dressed in a smart black suit with matching leather gloves, and had a pair of flying goggles affixed to his brow, pushed up onto his forehead whilst he regarded his machine. Newbury skidded to a halt beside him. The man looked up, startled at the appearance of the detective.
"In the name of the Crown, hand over that vehicle!"
"What? I... er..." The man looked flabbergasted. "Certainly not!" He looked Newbury up and down, unsure how to react to this dishevelled man in front of him, who, thick with the detritus of his rooftop chase, was claiming to represent Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Newbury stepped forward and gently pushed the man to one side. He swung his legs up and over, into the control pit of the vehicle, and began fiddling with the controls, searching around for the lever that would propel it forward. He could see Ashford gaining ground in the distance, and he wasn't about to let him get away. He was sweating profusely from his run. Wiping his brow on his sleeve, he fiddled with a pair of matching brass handles and felt the front wheel turning from side to side beneath him. The steering mechanism, then. Next, cranking a lever with a sharp jolt, he set the vehicle into motion. It lurched forward, nearly knocking its owner to the ground. The man was shaking his fist and bellowing for the police, but Newbury chose to ignore the outburst. He didn't have time to engage in an argument with the man, nor to attempt to prove his credentials. The man would be suitably reimbursed for his trouble. Probably.
The engine roared and smoke billowed like a black stain from its rear end. The vehicle stuttered forward again, and then hopped fifty yards along the road in short, jolting bursts. Frustrated, Newbury glared after Ashford. He knew that time was running out.
By this time the owner had gathered a fair crowd of onlookers, and a brief glance over his shoulder warned Newbury that a uniformed bobby had joined the fray. More distractions he could do without. He concentrated on deciphering the controls. Tentatively, Newbury eased back on the accelerator lever — which he assumed opened some sort of pressurised steam valve — and the vehicle kicked into a forward roll. The wheels clattered bumpily against the cobbled road, and he was jarred awkwardly as he continued to slowly adjust the lever to introduce more speed. At the last minute, he grasped for the brass steering knobs and swung the contraption out of the path of a middle-aged woman who was crossing the road before him, apparently oblivious to the rush of the oncoming vehicle. He slewed wildly to the right, and then, jamming the controls sharply to the left, he was able to bring the contraption back under some semblance of control. Other pedestrians dived out of his way as he called out to them, hurtling headlong after the rogue agent.
It was difficult to see anything in the soupy fog, but, even with his remarkable mechanical enhancements, Ashford was no match for the speed of the steam-powered tricycle. He'd managed to gain considerable
ground, but if he were intent on losing Newbury's tail, he showed no signs of it. He remained in plain sight, hurtling along the main thoroughfare. At any point he could have ducked down one of the other alleyways or side passages and lost himself in the confusing patchwork of back streets that Newbury had seen from the rooftops above. But he seemed to be heading somewhere with intent, and Newbury wondered whether his pursuit had even registered as anything above an annoyance. Regardless, he swung the vehicle in behind the man, undeterred. All of these questions could be answered later, once Ashford was safely contained in a cell.
Newbury shot along the road in pursuit, wavering wildly from side to side as he attempted to maintain control of the steering mechanism. It was an awkward, unwieldy device: the two brass knobs on the dashboard appeared to be rigged to a complex pulley system that changed the direction of the front wheel. The driver manipulated the knobs, twisting one to turn right and the other to turn left. If he let them go, the vehicle would right itself once more, travelling directly forward in whichever direction the contraption was pointed. It was hardly elegant, but it was relatively effective, and Newbury soon had a measure of how to keep the vehicle from turning over.
He continued to barrel along after Ashford, gaining on him with every passing moment. The back wheels of the tricycle were spinning at an incredible speed, bouncing on the uneven road and lifting the vehicle physically into the air, so that Newbury had to maintain a tight grip on the controls and jam his feet under the dashboard to prevent himself being thrown from the driver's pit with every movement.
Ashford had gathered a powerful momentum, and was now knocking people bodily out of the way as he charged through the crowds, trying his best to outpace Newbury's borrowed transportation. Newbury had to swerve to avoid hitting the innocent bystanders that Ashford sent sprawling to the ground, and it slowed him down, causing him to concentrate more on the road than his quarry. He supposed that was Ashford's intention.
He considered his next move. He could try to mow Ashford down, but after seeing the man leap from the roof of a four-storey building, only to climb to his feet and walk away unharmed, he had doubts that the tricycle would be strong enough to even knock Ashford from his feet, let alone incapacitate him whilst Newbury sent for help. Instead, as he drew closer, Newbury released both steering knobs on the vehicle, wedged the acceleration lever into its fully open position, and scrambled up into a standing position inside the driver's pit. Then, taking the steering knobs again, he fought to manoeuvre the vehicle alongside the sprinting Ashford.
Surprised, Ashford turned to glare at Newbury as he ran, and Newbury caught his first real glimpse of the man's face. It was an appalling sight. Ashford's flesh was grey and necrotic, peeling away around the dark pits of his eye sockets, into which two bizarre, mechanical devices had been inserted to replace his eyes. These were not makeshift instruments akin to that of Aldous Renwick's, but appeared to be smaller, more precision-made devices. They bore the hallmark of Dr. Fabian.
Ashford's jawbone was exposed at the base of his right cheek, where a hunk of skin had been ripped away, either during a ferocious encounter, or simply due to the fact that it had rotted and sloughed away. The rest of his skin was pitted and raw, and pink fluid seeped from open sores around his nose. Newbury was aghast. The sight of Ashford's face reminded him of the revenant creatures that still prowled the dark corners of the city: victims of an Indian plague that had terrorised the slums since before Christmas. Ashford's rotting, cadaverous face was the mirror image of these horrifying monsters — half alive, half dead — yet his steely grimace betrayed a sense of purpose that was lacking in the revenants. Inside there, behind those cold, glowing eyes, a cool intelligence still lurked, and the thought of it made Newbury shudder. Then there was the smell; even here, standing shakily in the driver's pit of a moving tricycle, the stench of the man was near unbearable.
Newbury was almost caught unawares when Ashford made a lunge for him, swinging out widely with a powerful right hook as he ran. Newbury attempted to duck the blow, causing the vehicle to swerve wildly. He fought to get it under control. Luckily, the other man's fist landed squarely on his shoulder, missing its intended target: his chin. The power behind the punch was phenomenal, intended to finish the matter, and Newbury wondered, as his shoulder alighted with pain, what devices buried within the once-human form of William Ashford had manufactured such a blow.
Releasing his grip on the steering knobs of the tricycle once again, Newbury brought his left arm up to protect his face and jabbed out with his right, raining a series of blows into the side of Ashford's head. Ashford barely seemed to notice. He was still running, still keeping pace with the unusual vehicle, and Newbury, bouncing along the uneven road, had to stoop to regain control of the steering mechanism before the tricycle swerved from its course and he lost control altogether. His options were running out. He could pounce on the running man, trying to bring him down, but the risks were far too great. If he missed, not only would he lose Ashford, probably for good, but he risked ending his own life. The speed at which he was now travelling was such that he would be dashed against the cobbles unless he pitched his move with the utmost precision. Given the circumstances, that seemed unlikely. Instead, he grabbed for the left-hand steering knob, twisting it sharply and causing the vehicle to slew dramatically to the left. He pitched forward as the tricycle slammed into Ashford's legs.
Remarkably, Ashford did not topple over as anticipated. The tricycle rebounded, tipping to one side and almost spilling Newbury out into the street. He clutched desperately for the steering knobs and tried to right the contraption as it skittered off to one side. He fought frantically with the mechanism, balancing the front wheel as best he could and causing a newspaper salesman to throw himself to the ground as his stand collapsed, the tricycle sending plumes of paper into the air as it glanced off the salesman's wooden table. It was all the opportunity that Ashford needed. He veered off sharply to the left, mounting the pavement and darting towards the entrance to Portland Road Underground Station. He hurtled down the steps towards the platforms below.
"Damn it!" Newbury gave a howl of frustration, swinging the tricycle round in pursuit. He jammed the acceleration lever down, opening the valve to its limit and building up a head of steam. The vehicle shot forward, bouncing crazily over the kerb and up onto the footpath. He made a beeline towards the entrance to the Underground station. He couldn't let Ashford get away. He'd come too far.
Newbury closed his eyes and pointed the tricycle at the top of the stairwell. He shot forward. The vehicle breezed over the top of the stairs, soaring into the air as its momentum carried it forward, in a long arc down towards the darkness of the station below. Newbury realised he was holding his breath, waiting for the impact that seemed to take forever to arrive. He was shaking, adrenaline coursing through his system.
The trajectory of the small vehicle was such that Newbury was never going to make it clear of the bottom steps. The undercarriage of the tricycle collided brutally with the stone steps, cracking open with an enormous jolt. For a moment, Newbury honestly believed he was going to die. He opened his eyes to see one of the back wheels spinning away, and realised with horror that the furnace had cracked open, spilling burning coals in a hot trail behind him, as the vehicle continued to skid down the stairs. Water, too, was gushing out of the tank, slopping across the steps and causing the hot coals to fizz noisily as they were doused. He clutched uselessly at the controls, finally realising that, if he were to survive, he had to get out of the skidding vehicle quickly. The wreckage reached the bottom of the stairs, but continued to slide forward across the tiled floor of the station, leaving devastation in its wake.
The frame of the tricycle was buckled, now, and Newbury was practically hanging out of one side, his shoulder only a couple of feet from the ground, as the remnants of the machine continued its long slide across the floor. People were screaming. Wriggling his legs free, Newbury allowed gravity to take its course. He fe
ll out of the ruined tricycle, his shoulder jarring painfully against the hard tiles. He slid to a stop, watching the wreckage of the machine slide away from him towards a nearby wall. His legs had come out of the machine twisted, but intact. He straightened himself out on the floor, surprised that he hadn't been seriously mangled in the crash. Around him, scattered coals still glowed with amber warmth.
A woman rushed forward to help him to his feet, murmuring platitudes. He accepted her arm, scrabbling to his feet and looking around for Ashford. She looked confused when he failed to acknowledge her words, but he had no choice: Ashford was getting away. The man moved fast, faster than Newbury could possibly conceive, but along one of the tunnels Newbury could see his black cloak fluttering as he barged his way through the crowd of passengers; hear also the clanging footsteps of his heavy boots, ringing out in the confined space.
Ignoring the burning pain in his shoulder, Newbury flexed his back, smiled at the young blonde woman who had helped him to his feet, and took off after Ashford. He hurtled along the white-tiled tunnel, pushing his way past rows of blank-faced civilians, who stared at him, dumbfounded, as he forced a path through their ranks, following the hulking giant in the black cloak. Once more, Newbury had his prey in his sights. There was nowhere left for Ashford to run. He would end it here.
