A Perfect Machine

by Brett Savory

  It dropped into a snowbank in the parking lot below, face up.

  “Henry!” Milo bellowed again. “Listen to me, Henry, listen to my voice!”

  Henry grunted, snorted, turned toward the sound of Milo’s voice.

  “You need to stop, Henry,” Milo said, hands out in a placating, calming gesture. “Faye needs our help. Faye needs your help.” He had no idea if whatever was left of Henry inside this new machine could understand him – could even recognize him – but he had to try. “Please, Henry. Stop. Just… stop.”

  Henry stared at Milo, eyes hot coals in his face.

  Inhaled. Exhaled.

  And again.

  Inside his chest, whatever now passed for his heart beat slower. Slower still. Steadied.

  Inside Henry’s mind, something resembling rational thought began to return. Outside in the hallway, sounds of panic reached his ears. People screamed. Someone yelled for someone else to call 911. Another wise soul pulled the fire alarm to get everyone out, in case the floor collapsed.

  Adelina had just been standing there, motionless for the past few minutes while chaos engulfed her surroundings. Milo didn’t know what, but something seemed to snap her out of it. She said, “This time I can feel it. I’m going back now.” Then she turned to Milo, spoke his name, said, “I will try to make them see you.” Then she vanished.

  The building groaned with its new load. Milo feared the entire floor would buckle, sending them crashing through.

  He turned back to Henry, said, “You need to pick Faye up, Henry. And then we need to go. Right now. Anywhere but here. We have to–”

  Then it happened again.

  But this time, instead of doubling Henry over, the pain curved his spine backward as it stretched to accommodate another growth spurt.

  Henry’s gigantic head and torso tore straight up through the ceiling into the living room above. He twisted in agony, arms flailing, knocking over the upstairs neighbor’s TV, smashing it to bits. Bashing a couch and chair against the wall under the balcony window. The middle-aged couple who lived there, who’d been woken up moments before by the commotion, were half-clothed, insane with panic, but nearly to the front door. They’d both screamed when Henry burst up through the floor, then one of Henry’s arms came back around the other way after knocking the furniture flying and cracked the woman hard in the chest. She fell to the floor, unconscious. The man fared worse: Henry’s hand – now bigger than a trashcan lid, but far heavier – glanced off the back of his head, tearing a sizable portion away, exposing skull and brain.

  He fell beside his wife, and bled out. Dead in a handful of seconds. Henry swept up the man’s body with the same hand that had killed him and flung it against the living room window, some part of his brain rationalizing that this was what was to be done with corpses he had created: they were to be put out of sight. The body slammed through the window, shattered glass sprinkling outward, hit the balcony railing, and tumbled end over end down to the parking lot, landing not far from Krebosche’s half-corpse.

  Henry now stood upright. He was more than fifteen feet tall and close to six feet wide.

  Milo – whose view was now just Henry’s legs and part of his torso – still had only one thought: escape. But he decided that Henry was too far gone now. He needed to get Faye out of here. He would tell Henry where he was going with her – assuming his ability to interact with the physical world still held – but beyond that, he could do no more.

  Sirens wailed in the distance, and he knew it was now or never. He skirted Henry’s lower half, made his way over to where Faye still lay unconscious. He bent over to pick her up, noticed that a big piece of the ceiling had fallen onto her left leg. He moved to her leg, reached out for the chunk of drywall, concrete, and steel – and watched in horror as his hand passed right through.

  “Come on, come on, come on – Jesus fucking Christ, come on,” he muttered, tried again, still nothing. He closed his eyes, concentrated on the feeling of grabbing the materials. Thought of the texture of the concrete, the weight of the steel, the chalky feel of the drywall on his fingers.

  Tried again: grabbed a tentative hold. Pushed on the chunk as hard as his strength would allow. It budged just enough that he was able to get her free. Her leg had a gruesome gash in it; blood pooled around the wound as the pressure of the piece of ceiling was removed.

  Faye stirred at the fresh pain, looked around. “Who… who are you?” she said groggily. “What’s–”

  “You can fucking see me?”

  I will try to make them see you. Adelina had said.

  Fuck me, Milo thought. Whatever Adelina did, it worked.

  “I’m Milo. Pleased to meet you and all that shit. Look, no time,” he said, rapidfire. “We need to get you out of here. Henry’s… unable to help. Cops and fire trucks will be here very soon, and we need to not be here when they arrive. I’m going to try to lift you, take you out of here. I know somewhere we can go. Not far from here.”

  “Henry…”

  “I’ll tell him where we’re going, but I don’t know if he can understand me anymore. He’s entirely lost his marbles and is approaching the size of a school bus. He’s…”

  Faye was losing consciousness again, her eyelids drooping as Milo spoke. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Screw it, let’s go.”

  He moved his arms under her, concentrating as hard as he could on the feel of her body – aware at the same time that it was an incredibly bad idea to move an injured person, but what choice did he have? If he left her here, she would die. When his arms touched flesh and bone, he breathed a huge sigh of relief, said, “Thank fuck,” and hoisted her up.

  The sirens were louder now, and the fire alarm was still going, but the sounds of panic in the hallway had receded.

  No shit, Milo thought as he made his way toward the hallway, feeling the strange sensation of gravity again for the first time in a long while. Apparently, a massive rampaging metal monster will clear a building pretty goddamn quick.

  Before leaving the apartment, he turned and yelled up to Henry, who was – for the moment – no longer roaring and twisting about in fury, destroying everything in his path. “Henry! I’m taking Faye to the tunnels! She’s hurt badly, needs help! I don’t know if you’ll understand this, but you know the tunnels I mean! Underground! The old subway line!”

  He coughed from the dust in the air, and from shouting everything as loudly as possible in hopes that up in the next apartment, his friend would hear him, and understand.

  Hey, I’m coughing from shouting and from dust in the air. I am a real boy, after all.

  He picked his way through the rubble, careful to watch his step, trying desperately to remember how legs that touched the ground worked.

  * * *

  On the top floor of Faye’s apartment building, Henry Kyllo’s mind tried to reboot itself. It remembered the last ten minutes as a flashing haze of violence – only portions of the events remained in his head. Some of it had been purged, and only later would he learn exactly what he’d done.

  For now, all his brain could latch onto was the sound of sirens, a fire alarm, what those things meant, and what he had to do about it.

  He stood in an apartment he had no previous memory of being in, surrounded by rubble, blood, scraps of brain, bone, skin, and – directly behind him, near the front door – a half-dressed, unconscious, middle-aged woman. Something had happened to the living room window. It was smashed. Cold wind blew inside, stirring up the rest of the damage.

  Damaged, he thought. Like my mind. What have I done? Where is Milo? Where is Faye?

  He knew the names of these people, but couldn’t put faces to those names in his head. He couldn’t picture either of them.

  And weren’t there other people, too? Where had they gone?

  He gazed down at himself, then, for the first time aware that his legs were somehow in the apartment below. He didn’t know how to process that, so his brain ignored it for the moment. But he recogniz
ed that something substantial in his head had changed with his last insane growth spurt. Where before he felt he was losing control of his body, was having trouble operating it, he now felt like he’d “grown into it,” for lack of a better term. It felt more comfortable. More… him.

  Sirens again, now very close. Perhaps stopping somewhere nearby.

  Probably come here to stop me. Clearly, I’ve done something awful. That feels like a distinct possibility. Just look around.

  He thought again of his friend, Milo. Dead, but not dead. Invisible. And Faye. Wasn’t there something about them both? Something–

  Then the words replayed in his head in snippets, dredged up from whatever murky depths now constituted his memory:

  Faye.

  Injured.

  Tunnels.

  Subway.

  These words meant something to him. Tough to know for sure right now, though. Dribbles of information were all that seemed to be allowed through. Everything else just sort of remained… over there somewhere. Too far for him to see, to grasp.

  And now firemen were coming. He heard shouting nearby. Smelled smoke, wondered if a fire had started somewhere.

  As his chest rose and fell with an efficiency he had never felt before – air filtering in and out of his (metal?) lungs so crisp and clean, he imagined his head as a fat steel balloon, drifting far above the clouds.

  He closed his eyes, envisioned in great detail this trip above the earth, the scent of the breeze, the sun glinting off the metal of his arms, his legs…

  His thoughts drifted back to the woman lying nearby.

  Where shall we go, she and I? he thought. He knew his mind wasn’t functioning properly. More clearly, yes, but not properly. Everything seemed slower. Nothing seemed to make much sense.

  He imagined himself and the woman together this time, floating above the clouds. Maybe they were in a hot air balloon, he didn’t know. The method of flight was not important. What was important was –

  Tunnels. The word shot into his thoughts like a hard slap from a cold hand.

  – the fact that they were together, and that they loved each other. Even though they’d only known each other a short time, they both felt that they’d been in love for as long as they could remember. Like they had never not been in love.

  And today’s trip was –

  Subway.

  – was something they’d been planning for weeks. Maybe he’d surprised her with it at first, then let her help him plan it. Had he won it? Entered some contest? He didn’t feel like either of them had much money, so winning it seemed like a reasonable assumption.

  He looked across at her, saw what he now felt sure was the shape of a hot air balloon above them, although he discovered he could not lift his head to see for sure. But that was OK because her eyes were sparkling in the sunlight where it dipped now, shining through her hair, nearing the horizon, and she was so beautiful. Just so beautiful that he wished they could drift up here forever. Drift across this –

  Injured.

  . . .

  What?

  His brain tried once again to reboot itself. He felt a literal redistribution of memory take place in his head, like a fragmented drive defragging, reworking itself into a more coherent version of what it once was. What it used to be.

  Something clicked inside his skull.

  Two firemen poked their heads around the shattered remnants of Faye’s front door, axes in hand. Cursed. Yelled for cops. Yelled for anyone who would listen, then ran back down the hall.

  Henry turned himself around one hundred and eighty degrees, stared directly at the woman on the floor.

  Faye, he thought. The name came into his beleaguered mind like the snap of a crisply folded sheet.

  Faye is injured.

  Thinking of hot air balloons, sunlight filtering through soft hair, and the scent of the cleanest air he had ever smelled – all memories of a trip he’d never been on, nor would ever go on – he very gently moved his hand under the unconscious woman on the apartment floor, lifted her up. Wrapped his hand around her, tucked her close to his side, moved his other hand over and around her to protect her from any debris.

  Then Henry Kyllo squatted as low as he could, angled himself toward the back parking lot, flexed his pistonlike legs.

  And launched himself through the roof of the apartment building.

  When he broke through, at the top of his arc, he saw the moon hanging low in the sky, tried to capture every detail of its beauty before gravity brought him down.

  * * *

  The roof caved in and glass exploded outward in a shower from the windows of the car Henry landed on.

  He checked the condition of the woman tucked into his body: still unconscious, but otherwise unharmed. He stepped down from the car, the learning curve of dealing with the proportions of this new body exponentially curtailed from his last incarnation. He somehow felt he’d been born in this body.

  He looked around. A small crowd of people had come out of neighboring apartment buildings when the sirens had stopped nearby. Some had likely heard the original commotion.

  Firefighters and police had been scattered around, running back and forth from their vehicles to the building. When he’d landed, everyone stopped. Stared. Then panic ensued, and people ran in every direction – every direction that was away from Henry, of course.

  Subway. Tunnels.

  Henry began walking in the direction of the old subway tunnels. He assumed the police would soon be after him in force, but the ones who’d seen him – and who could properly process what they’d seen – had their hands full right now. Someone would call it in, though. And he wasn’t sure if the force that protected the Inferne Cutis from discovery would be strong enough to play this down, wipe it clean. It would likely be too much. Too many witnesses, too scarring an event. Too strange in every way imaginable.

  Probably.

  But only a small portion of his mind was occupied with this line of thought. Most of his attention settled on the woman he carried. He felt as though she was Faye. The nurse. His girlfriend? She must be, mustn’t she? Wasn’t she the only woman in his life? He failed to see how it could be anyone else. Although his memories of Faye – and a lot of other memories, to be honest – were sketchy, so…

  He was trudging through the dark streets, trying desperately to retrieve memories of Faye, when a strange sound caught his ear: hydraulics, or something close to hydraulics. He looked around, saw nothing, then looked down. At his own legs. The sound came from his legs, whenever he stepped. He hadn’t noticed it before due to the noise around him, but now, cloaked in relative darkness down these side streets, he heard it clearly.

  But not quite hydraulics. Something similar – organic tissue mixed with hydraulics? – but different enough to be noticeable. Henry stopped walking, looked down again. Air hissed from something mechanical, like a rig after hitting its brakes. But Henry had seen hydraulic systems before, and these weren’t quite the same. These were more powerful, more efficient. Using some other kind of technology he was unfamiliar with.

  The entrance to the old tunnels, he knew, was just another block away, and he still had not encountered anyone on the side streets and back alleys he’d chosen for his path. He started to think maybe he wouldn’t see anyone, would actually go unseen the entire way. He hoped so because he wasn’t sure what he’d do if someone saw him – more accurately, he was afraid of what he’d do if someone saw him. Disturbing flashes of what had happened at Faye’s apartment occasionally bolted through his head, but nothing that made any kind of sense for the person he thought himself to be. These images felt fake – like a film he’d watched, or as though someone had poked around in his head, created false memories for some reason. Some larger plan he was part of but knew nothing about.

  He hoped if someone saw him before he got underground, they would just forget. Maybe panic at first, run away, but then, by the time they reached anyone to tell about it, the memory would be trapped behind a
curtain of haze.

  But someone did see him.

  And Henry saw him.

  Palermo. Limping in his direction, his silhouette stretching out under a streetlamp.

  Palermo glanced up as Henry lurched into view. Palermo stopped in his tracks. He said nothing, just stared up at Henry. His creation, to a certain extent.

  Henry loomed over Palermo, stared down at him, breathing. One part of his mind recognized Palermo for who he was, the leader of the Runners. His people. Another part of his mind – the part that cared for Faye, for Milo, and the frustrated part that had no idea what he was becoming – wanted to end Palermo.

  “This,” Henry said. “All of this. It’s your fault.”

  Palermo held up his hands, said, “Look, I just need to get back to HQ, Henry. We can sort this out. I know what’s happening to you, and we can–”

  Henry felt a shudder rip through his body. He lashed out with his free hand, swatted Palermo. Palermo flew through the air, smacked against a tree, his back broken.

  Something in his mind – a new voice he was beginning to recognize as not of his making whatsoever – spoke up, said, He is no longer needed.

  Henry stomped over to Palermo’s twisted frame. This voice in his head now issued forth from his mouth, almost completely separate from his will: “You are no longer needed.”

  Henry brought a thick metal thumb down and ground Palermo’s head into the snowy earth beneath.

  Once Palermo was dead, the presence receded, backed down from Henry’s consciousness. It felt like a darkness that had been hiding in his mind all his life had been awakened, and could now slither into and out of his brain whenever it pleased.

  Henry continued walking toward the subway tunnels. One block, two.

  Then about a block away from the entrance to the old tunnels, four more people saw him. They stopped as Henry lumbered into view, maybe thirty feet away from where they stood.

  Marcton and Cleve pulled their weapons. Bill and Melvin followed suit. Marcton said, “Holy mother of fuck.”