Driftmetal IV

by J. C. Staudt

  As I passed the pinnacle of my jump, I drove my legs out in front of me. I fell until my feet plunged through a window several stories down, scraping my back along the windowsill and landing on my tailbone with glass raining down around me. The backpack struck the window ledge and bunched up around my neck.

  It hurt. I flopped over and rolled around for several seconds, clutching my lower back. Or my upper butt, if you want to get specific.

  By the time the pain had subsided enough that I could stand, I noticed there were glass shards sticking out of me in several places. The backpack was jingling again with freshly broken jars. But I was in. I was inside the circle, and I’d left the robots that had been chasing me behind. I tried the waterlogged comm once more, desperate to contact Chaz and make sure everyone was still okay. No luck; the device still wouldn’t power on.

  I turned back to watch in amusement as the two remaining robots backed up and jumped from their building to mine. The first only made it two-thirds of the way before plummeting to the ground. The second hit the side of the building a few stories below mine and bounced off like a stunned bird, joining the first in its fate.

  My amusement was short-lived, though. A few seconds later, the next trio crashed out onto the rooftop and ran toward my building with no sign of stopping. These were newer models; Mark-Sixes, I thought. There must have been some difference in their programming or physical capabilities, because when they hit the edge, their powerful legs launched them clear across the gap and over my head. I remembered the training exercises we’d performed in the depths of Maclin, of Kelvin’s safety limitations and Angus’s claim that the robots could actually jump much higher and further than they were programmed to under normal circumstances. He hadn’t been exaggerating.

  The robots landed hard on the roof, so hard I could hear the thud even from several floors down. When I scanned the darkened room for a way out, I found myself in an office of some kind, its magisterial mahogany desk bordered by high built-in bookshelves and a massive swivel chair upholstered in puckered leather. It’s one of the outermost government buildings in the city center, I realized. Some law-lover in waistcoats and a cravat probably sits here day in and day out, marking up papers with his inkpen while he checks his pocketwatch for quitting time. Do-goodin’ boot-licker.

  I lifted a tall stack of paperwork off the desk and dropped it out the window, then pulled out the drawers and broke each one off its slides. That vandalism done, I went to the door and listened for a few seconds. Satisfied that no immediate danger lay before me, I cracked it open.

  The room beyond was long and windowless and lined with the most boring-looking desks I had ever seen. It doesn’t take much for a desk to look boring, but these took the cake. Some held writing machines, small electric things for typing and copying. Stacks and haphazard piles of paper were everywhere. I moved quickly through the room, knowing my time was short but taking the opportunity to knock over the highest stacks of paper anyway.

  The double doors at the far end led out into a huge lightwell, an indoor courtyard encircled by a grand balcony and sheltered by a framework of glass panels. Through said glass came the sudden and violent explosion of the three robots who had been waiting on the roof for me to make an appearance. When they crashed down onto the balcony, I heard the wood beams crack like a fistful of uncooked spaghetti.

  The building’s hanging staircases were carpeted in regal blue, a bright polished wood that shone even in the dim light of gray skies. I made a break for the closest one with the floor still shaking beneath my feet. I managed a quick look over the banister and was saddened at how far it was to the bottom. It would’ve been a blast to swing over the side and rappel to the floor on my grapplewire. For the time being, I would have to resort to normal foot travel.

  I jumped down every flight of steps and spun around the railings like a runaway pendulum, the contents of my backpack jingling. For a moment, I actually thought I was gaining on them. Suspecting I might be able to lose them altogether, I darted back into the open atrium and began to circle around the balcony toward the opposite side of the building. But the robots were unimpeded by my quick change in direction. They hit the bottom of the staircase and came after me.

  I was probably on the fifth or sixth floor by now. Each office was joined to the atrium by a set of double doors identical to the ones I’d come through. I chose one and ploughed through it, racing through the multi-worker room and into the headman’s office. The distance to the street was less daunting now, but the distance across to the next building was still too far to jump unassisted. I heard the pounding of heavy footsteps coming through the adjacent room of desks and knew my time was up. I had to do something. Now.

  I fiddled with the window and figured out it was the kind that couldn’t be opened. I kicked through the glass and stuck my head out. If I got the right angle on it, I could swing down and crash back in through the window below me. If not, I was probably looking at a sixty-foot drop to the pavement.

  The robots came bursting through the door.

  I figured I might as well try.

  It didn’t work out like I’d thought it would. When I hopped out the window and grabbed the ledge with my good hand, I smacked the side of the building like a pancake on a platter. As it turned out, the next window down was further away than it looked. Too far away to reach without some rope, in fact. I could only hang there helplessly as the automaton’s shoulders crashed through the window frame above me, and its big hands reached down to haul me back inside. The alternative would’ve been to let go and fall to either my death or the severe impairment of my ability to walk. It was a good effort, I told myself, even though I knew it had been a pitiful effort at best.

  The robots dragged me through the building and carried me out onto the street, moving toward the city center through sheets of rain. At each street corner, the waiting automatons turned their sensors to look at me. Each time they registered my identity, there was a brief twitch, as if they were about to give chase until they determined I was already in custody. I would’ve tried barking out orders, if only I’d known the names of their units. Not that it would’ve worked. But at that point, I was willing to try anything.

  Since the protective circle had all but sealed off the area within, we didn’t encounter many pedestrians on our way to the palace. What few we did come across seemed to look at me with a sort of fearful pity, as if whatever I had done to deserve arrest was so unfortunate they couldn’t bear the thought of helping me out.

  Soon the palace loomed ahead. I immediately noticed something different about the Regent’s erstwhile abode. Things had changed in the less-than-a-day since I’d been here. What had been a beautiful, if foreboding, piece of classical gothic architecture had begun a metamorphosis into the kind of bland, indistinct box one might’ve found on Maclin itself. The synod’s worker bees were reinforcing it; changing it from a home into a stronghold—from a residence to a battle station. They work fast, I would’ve said, if anyone had been around to care.

  The orderly platoons of the second and third legions which had lined the palace yard the night before were gone, disbursed throughout the city to give troublemakers like me a hard time. The Highjinks, however, was still squatting right where I’d left it. Pieces of the Galeskimmer were still strewn across the lawn as well, most of them surrounded by patches of blackened earth. I saw chips I used to own gleaming wetly in the grass, along with the remains of a top-hat once owned by Dennel McMurtry and used by yours truly as part of a disguise. But the one thing amidst the wreckage that really caught my eye and held on was the scorched wooden statue of a little creature with thin drooping ears, a wide, flat nose, and teeth like mallet heads.

  The statue was badly burned, over half of it black and charred like used firewood. But in the short glimpse I got of it without the robots or some other obstacle being in the way, I could’ve sworn that once—just once—I saw a tiny shred of that blackened wood, right along the edge, drink the rain like a
thirsty tree and fade to a golden brown again.

  “Oh my gods,” I whispered, unable to help myself. My heart leapt in my chest, and the medallion surged in reply. I struggled against the grip of my captors, knowing it was futile. Knowing there was no chance of escape. When my common sense caught up with my excitement, I stopped struggling.

  The robots brought me inside, letting my shins bump each step as we ascended. Where the throne room had formerly contained a marble seat, a long carpet, a few wall hangings, and a bunch of empty space that echoed like the inside of a cave, it was now packed full of machinery. This was the same machinery which I realized, thinking back, had probably been hidden behind the veneer of the synod’s grandly constructed audience chamber back on Maclin. People were still building the machinery as the robots brought me in, scientists and laborers whose identities the synod was obviously no longer worried about revealing to the world. Everyone knew Maclin was in charge now, anyway. No sense hiding it anymore.

  “Welcome, Mr. Jakes,” droned a familiar electric voice amid the machinery. “You’re here early.”

  “I thought it took kind of a while, actually,” I said.

  “You’re not too late for the show,” said Jawhead, appearing from behind a tall vat of yellow liquid. He floated toward me and came to a stop beside the throne. “You’ve come in plenty of time to watch us destroy the Old Regency’s entire fleet.”

  “Is that what we’re calling it now? The Old Regency? Don’t you think that’s a little premature? And pretentious, too?”

  “We rule the world now, Mr. Jakes. One cannot possibly pretend greatness when one embodies it.”

  “Okay, now you’ve gone past pretense to outright arrogance. But let’s not forget to give credit where credit is due. I’m the one who got you here, after all.”

  “And you have proceeded to disobey our commands ever since.”

  “So why am I here instead of dead?”

  “Fortunately for you, the automatons are incapable of harming you.”

  “So I’m still programmed in as one of their masters.”

  “Angus’s death was an ill-timed blow, I must admit. He would’ve been able to do more than remove your ability to give orders. Rest assured, our technicians are working on a fix as we speak. Soon, you’ll be just another ordinary citizen like everyone else. An unruly one, at that.”

  “Lucky me. Now tell me why I’m really here. You have techsoul operatives who would kill me in a blink if you gave the order. There’s another reason I’m still alive.”

  “Very astute, Mr. Jakes. Your knack for self-evaluation is to be commended. As was your escape from this palace.”

  “Yeah, that was awesome,” I admitted.

  Jawhead’s plasticky face crinkled into something that resembled a smile. “Mr. Jakes… the New Regency does not wish to begin its reign with a policy of outright tyranny. That was what you hated so much about the Old, wasn’t it?”

  “I hated everything about ‘the Old’… the tyranny was just the piss-flavored icing on an otherwise rotten cake,” I said.

  “Colorful,” Jawhead remarked in a bored monotone. “In short, our foremost concern is not with the imminent attack, which will be repelled without issue. Rather, our concern is regarding the Regent and his family. That… is why you are here, Mr. Jakes. Why you are… still alive. Now, kindly enlighten me as to what you’ve done with them.”

  “But you—” I cut myself off, thinking back over the events of the past few days. My mind went to the Highjinks, the hovercruiser that was still sitting out on the palace lawn. I knew the Regent’s family was inside, but for some reason, Jawhead didn’t.

  Hovercruisers with pre-programmed flight paths don’t need crews in the same way streamboats do. And with the entire crew of the Highjinks trapped beneath the palace, the synod had had no reason to send anyone aboard. They’d had no reason to move it, and no need to use it in the city’s defense. It was a glorified personnel carrier; a personnel carrier that had already done its job by bringing me here. It sounded to me like Maclin had all but ignored the Highjinks since the day before.

  They’ve made a mistake, I realized. They’ve overlooked something. Blaylocke destroyed the crackler in my arm before I ordered the Regent’s family locked up. The synod doesn’t know where they are, and they’ve been right under their noses the whole time. Then I realized something else. That poor, brave woman and her four children have been sealed in the containment brig for almost twenty-four hours without food or water.

  “If you’re so confident in your military might,” I asked, “then why do you care what happens to the Regent and his family?”

  The circular hinges of his jaw spun and hissed. “It’s a matter of principle. A tying up of loose ends. An administrative task that needs seeing to. There must be no dispute over our sovereignty; thus, the Regent, his wife, and each of his living heirs must be destroyed. That is why you will reveal their location to us, or you will endure a future far worse than any death you can imagine.”

  I didn’t doubt Jawhead’s ability to bring about such a future. “You can threaten to torture me, kill me, whatever. But as long as I know where they are and you don’t, you’re better off doing what I say. So how about you tell these plated primates to let me go? I’m a little tired after getting dragged halfway across the city. My left arm feels like it’s about to fall off.”

  Jawhead paused. “Certainly,” he said. “I’ve been wondering what you might’ve brought in that backpack of yours. A weapon of unparalleled force, no doubt. Spectra Seven. Spectra Nine. Unhand Muller Jakes.”

  As soon as my feet hit the floor, I was off running. There was no reason to hang around and wait for more bad stuff to happen. Conversations with Jawhead were like hitting your head against the wall; it felt good to stop.

  I’d gotten a sizeable headstart by the time Jawhead had finished giving his robots the order to chase me. That headstart quickly diminished when I reached the back wall of the throne room and pulled the heavy tapestry away. I found myself staring at a battered ruin where the hidden door had once been.

  I froze, paralyzed with dread. I’m too late. The synod has already taken them. But that was only my fears getting the best of me again; there was no telling what had really happened here until I found out for myself. I clambered over the rubble, barely escaping the grasping hands of the two robots. My eyelight flicked on, thankfully, and I darted down the tunnel, following its every twist and turn toward an end I didn’t want to see.

  There were loose and crumbling stones all along the passage where the automatons had careened through it earlier. They stumbled over them now, unable to make turns as sharply as I could in such a confined space. By the time I reached the room with the escape tubes, I had several seconds alone to take in the wreckage.

  The pods had been torn out and snapped like pencils, shredded and strewn across the floor. I saw spatters of blood, both blue and red. There was no other trace of the nine people I’d come here to save. No other sign they’d ever existed; no hope that anything I could’ve done would’ve been enough to overcome Maclin and its synod.

  The small, lightweight comm in my pocket felt like a brick. I wondered how many times Chaz had tried calling me while I was swimming around in sewer sludge. How the passage had echoed with their screams, how they’d fought with no weapons and begged the robots for a mercy they would never receive. This was it; this was the end of my sanity. I could live for a thousand years and never get over what I had let them do to my friends. And so my revenge begins, I vowed.

  When the robots entered the chamber, I wasn’t there. They stood amid its remains and turned in circles for a while, scanning every corner and cavity until they were satisfied I was gone. Then they stood still, waiting. Listening. I could hear them in the dark, ticking and whirring like a pair of clocks gone haywire.

  My arms and legs began to shake. My left arm, especially, was having trouble. I knew I couldn’t keep myself propped up forever, but the robots weren�
�t moving. If they didn’t get going eventually, I was in for a long downward trip. I was just about to give up and crawl back down the cylindrical escape shaft when the robots turned and headed back the way they’d come.

  As soon as the coast was clear, I lowered myself into the room and examined the wreckage more closely. If my friends had been killed, I had to get to the Highjinks without the synod knowing. If they hadn’t—which, by the lack of bodies, seemed likely—where had the robots taken them? I had no map of the palace, and no way of knowing how to access its other hidden passages. If there were any.

  A short red ribbon hung from one of the twisted metal scraps that had been an escape pod’s chassis. It was Sable’s, the one she always kept tied at the end of her long blonde braid. I picked it up, held it to my lips; breathed in her scent. Don’t think I’m some kind of weirdo. In the hopeless abyss where I existed in those excruciating moments, it was that small trace of familiarity that brought me back to my senses.

  I snapped out of it, my fear and rage and dread suddenly overcome by a sense of simmering calm, like a kettle snatched from over a fire. There was only one way I could win this—by outsmarting the synod. Unfortunately, there were about a million ways I could lose.

  After finding nothing else inside the room itself, I searched the floors, walls, and ceiling. It wasn’t until I looked up that I remembered the vent Chaz had climbed through when he was inspecting the escape tubes. I managed to construct a wobbly pile of scrap to serve as my footstool, then reached up with one of the screwdrivers from the toolkit in my backpack and pried off the grill. Clinging to the edge, I pulled myself up—mostly with my better arm—into the cavity above.

  I had never imagined that a simple ventilation duct could be so large—or so full of people.

  “Holy hell, you scared the crap out of me,” I said.