Power Under Pressure (The Society of Steam)

by Andrew P. Mayer

  “I’m sorry, my boy,” Eschaton said, “but you’re not powerful enough to kill me yet. And when you are, you may no longer want . . .” The gray man’s look of smug assurance literally melted away as the hand around his neck turned hot.

  Eschaton pulled away, clearly shocked. In the instant before he put his hand up to his throat, Nathaniel saw that he had left a black smudge on the villain’s neck. It was a minor victory, but after what seemed to be an eternity of being at everyone else’s mercy, it was good to know that he could still be a threat.

  “Shell,” Eschaton barked at the remains of Hughes. “Take him into the chamber.”

  The mechanical monstrosity grabbed Nathaniel around his neck, holding him down hard against the back of the chair.

  There would have been a point in the recent past when Nathaniel would have thought it impossible for such a damaged creature, no matter what it was constructed of, to overpower him, but the Shell had far more strength than first appeared. He attempted to use the heat of his arms to burn the creature, but the silver threads had dissipated back into his body.

  Unable to escape, he was rolled into the chamber and manhandled onto the metal table inside. Despite his every effort to escape, he shortly found himself chained down and once again unable to move.

  After that the door had been sealed, trapping him in darkness, and more of the same acrid smoke from the park had been pumped into the chamber.

  When he had first breathed it in, it felt like he was drowning and burning simultaneously. Nathaniel tried to yell out, but was unable to make a sound while his lungs were full of the thick black gas. But he wasn’t dying—not yet.

  He remained in that dark room for what he believed had been a day or more. And although he was exhausted, both physically and mentally, he had been unable to sleep. Instead he hallucinated, his vision appearing in the pitch black, playing out over and over again all the terrible things that had happened to him since the day that Darby had died on the bridge.

  After spending endless hours burning in the smoke-filled hell of the chamber, Nathaniel had almost forgotten how to hope for the torture to end. There had been no sound other than the hiss and endless rumbling of the fan as fresh helpings of black smoke churned into the room.

  And then, finally, something changed. There was a rattle as the fan slowed, and silence descended onto him.

  It was broken by a heavy clanking of chain, then the obvious sound of metal against brick as something inside the chamber opened, letting a tiny shaft of light pierce the hazy darkness. He felt a cool breeze against his skin, the smallest bit of relief from the pure black smoke—and yet one that he seemed to have spent a lifetime praying for.

  The rumble of the fan started up again, but this time it was drawing the black gas up and out of the room, and his lungs labored to try and draw in more of the pure air that he had craved. It had been so long since he had last tasted it that it seemed as though he had almost forgotten how to breathe anything but the dark poison. Now that his lungs were exposed to even a tiny bit of pure, clean air, they rebelled.

  Nathaniel gasped and coughed, expelling more of the smoke. He could see it coming out of him now in a gray cloud.

  His hands and feet were still chained to the metal table, and he didn’t have the strength to move them. Instead he listened quietly and waited for someone to open the door, waiting to see which one of the villains would come for him.

  When seconds turned to minutes he couldn’t wait any longer. “Help me!” he shouted. “Help me, damn you!” There was a moment of terror as he realized that the sound of his own voice was so altered that he could barely recognize it. There was no use denying that whatever it was that Eschaton had done to him, it had transformed him profoundly.

  How rapidly the world had fallen apart now that the old man was no longer. Nathaniel was beginning to realize just how important Darby had been, not only to the Paragons, but to all the people he had left behind. He had not just been the inventor of dreams, he had been the protector of them from men like Lord Eschaton.

  And now, Nathaniel had been brought down into this hell and forced to endure a nightmare that had been crafted out of an old man’s dreams.

  With Sarah and Alexander Stanton both gone, he was completely at the madman’s mercy: there was no one to save him, and worse . . . there was no one left to care.

  His short reprieve was interrupted by the return of the dreaded hissing sound. Nathaniel felt himself tremble. But this time the gas that poured out was white, and the smell that reached his nose wasn’t the acrid stink of the smoke, but instead the clean, familiar tang of Darby’s fortified steam.

  His skin still stung where the gas touched him, but the mild pain he felt was a far cry from the endless burning that had come from contact with the smoke. Then his muscles began to twitch and contract uncontrollably as the moisture settled into his skin. His body slammed him hard against the metal table over and over again. It had exhausted him in an instant, but he kept on twitching. It seemed that whatever effect the steam was having on him, it had no care for his own desires.

  Eventually the jumping slowed, and all his muscles simply seized into a constant state of tension, leaving him frozen like a statue on the tabletop.

  Nathaniel had fully expected for this second bath to last as long as the first, and he was wondering if he would be able to survive the experience without the onset of madness. Or, perhaps he was mad already, and another day pinned to the table would send him into new depths of insanity.

  Just as he began to ponder the ramifications of the question, the hissing stopped and the rattling of the fan began again.

  This time, once the gas had cleared, the iron door to the chamber opened with a scrape and a clang. Lord Eschaton stepped into the room, ducking under the low mantel of the door. “Did you survive, Nathaniel?”

  “Yes, damn your hide!” His voice was rough and gravelly now, like one of those old sailors who had spent years on the high seas surviving on nothing but tobacco and rum, but at least he could speak.

  “Well then, let’s have a look at you.” Eschaton loomed over him, examining his handiwork. “If I’m right, you’re going to end up being something quite marvelous, but I suppose, having just lived through it, you don’t care to hear more about it right now.”

  Nathaniel felt the anger roll through him. It was better than having to endure any more pain. “I’ve had a belly full of your pontificating, you sick monster.”

  Eschaton smiled, revealing his shining white teeth. “It’s good to see that your transformation seems to have left you with your passions intact.”

  “You murdered all those innocent people!” He thought of them, choking to death on the fumes, and realized he truly did feel compassion for them. The sickness and lethargy that had plagued him ever since his initial experience with the smoke seemed to have left him now. If anything he felt stronger than he had before, as if he could take on an army single-handedly. “Unchain me from this table and I’ll show you just how passionate I can be!”

  Eschaton nodded. “I will give you that chance, but if only you could see yourself . . .” The gray giant studied him for a moment. “Yes, yes,” he muttered to himself, and then smiled. “Shell, come in here.”

  The machine-man rolled into the room. “Put him onto the cart and bring him out into the light. I want to take a closer look at him, and I’m sure the boy is curious to see his new appearance.”

  Once again Nathaniel found himself being manhandled by the monstrosity that had once been Hughes. The creature pulled the tabletop off of whatever it had been standing on, and transferred it to the top of a two-wheeled cart.

  As he struggled, he could feel the metal flexing beneath him, and after a moment he managed to tear his right hand entirely free, ripping the chain out of the steel.

  The Shell attempted to grab the escaped limb, but Nathaniel slipped his arm out from the creature’s grasp. He was almost shocked to realize that he’d regained dominion over hi
s own arm, and lacking the time to formulate a better plan, he rammed his fist into the creature’s face, leaving behind a dent in the already-mangled steel.

  The Shell let out a pathetic howl, as if somehow the metal flesh could feel. Ignoring the cry, Nathaniel pulled back to strike again, and then paused with a shocking realization: when they had placed him into the chamber, his flesh had been alabaster white, with silver flashes running under his skin. But he had undergone yet another transformation: the milky color had vanished, and his skin had taken on a glassy translucence. He could see the outlines of his bones and muscles underneath, although they too were faded enough so that he could practically see right through them.

  Eschaton’s experiments had turned him into a man of glass! And it seemed that the resemblance to crystal was more than just an appearance: the impact of his fist into the metal monster’s face had caused a series of cracks to spider out across his hand.

  The creature pulled him off the tabletop and strapped him down to the top of a flat metal cart. But this time, as he struggled he could see that the machine was having more difficulty holding him down. Was his own strength greater, or had the abominable man-machine grown weaker?

  Nathaniel kept staring at his shattered flesh, distracted from his fight against the straps. He watched in fascinated horror as a tide of silver swam underneath his skin, settling into the spider-webbed cracks in his hand until it was covered in the silver. What was this? His blood? His essence? Perhaps Eschaton would know how to correctly describe it, but he refused to consider asking. He felt no pain, and if anything his hand seemed almost more flexible than it had before.

  As the silver continued to collect underneath his flesh, there was once again the strange scent. Once again he could feel the heat coming off of his skin.

  He watched his flesh slowly melt back together, cracks vanishing as the heat sealed up his skin. Could he simply will himself to burn hot enough to melt his way free? But before he could try, the silver drained away from his fingers and back into his body. He flexed his digits and realized that his shattered flesh was whole once more.

  “Out of the way, Shell,” Eschaton said. As the two of them switched places, the Shell bumped roughly into the cart, almost toppling him over.

  “Watch out, you awkward beast,” Eschaton snapped, and gave him a shove.

  The creature let out another whimper, backing out of the way clumsily on its wobbling wheels.

  Nathaniel felt another tinge of pity. How was it possible that this pathetic creature had ever been the Iron-Clad? Where Hughes had been a proud fighter, the Shell seemed more like the remains of a whipped dog than a man.

  And yet pain turned almost every man into a frightened beast. Had he been any different when the Bomb Lance’s spear had pierced his thigh on the top of the bridge? He had begged Sarah to help him while Darby lay dying only a few feet away. And at every turn since then, when the world had challenged him, he had turned to the bottle for comfort, preferring to dull his pain rather than face it head on.

  Eschaton rolled the cart forward. “Where are we going?” Nathaniel asked. “You won’t get me up those stairs.”

  “That’s not the only way out of this chamber.” He pushed the chair onto a platform and waited for the Shell to join them before throwing a handle that stuck straight up from the floor.

  Even through the cart he could feel the thrum underneath the earth as the subterranean machinery started up. Steam began to rise up from the cracks in the square metal plate under them. Finally there was a jerk as the platform began to rise, taking all of them toward the ceiling. “What are you planning to do with me?”

  Eschaton smiled. “There are a number of men who are considering my offer to let them become my Children. I want to show them what a successful transformation looks like, and that it is far better to become a purified human through controlled experimentation.”

  “And how many of those people in the park survived the attack?”

  Eschaton turned his eyes away. “Five.”

  “Of how many?”

  “Hundreds.” It actually seemed that the madman had a touch of regret in his voice. “More than I expected, although I doubt they’ll last more than a day.” Eschaton threw a second lever, and the ceiling above them began to open. “You may be my only survivor.”

  “And now you’re the murderer you’ve always dreamed of becoming. How does it feel? Are you still proud of what you’ve done?”

  “Humanity will continue to suffer with or without me. What I’m offering is a better tomorrow for our entire species.” He could feel Eschaton’s hands tightening on the grips of the chair as he turned his white-eyed gaze back toward Nathaniel.

  Daylight washed down on them from the opening roof up above. “And what about the ones who die?”

  “They are sacrificed for the greater good; spared from more of the endless pain that all humanity must endure. It is the living who continue to suffer.” He paused for a moment, and Nathaniel wondered if even Eschaton believed his words. “I’d think you, of anyone, would sympathize with ending their pain.”

  He shook his head. There was no point in arguing ethics with a madman, even less so with one who had been steeling himself for genocide for years. He was sure that Darby or even Sarah would continue the conversation, pitting their philosophy against Eschaton’s until one or the other of them ran out of breath to fight. But Nathaniel had never been one to waste his words on fools, and in his current condition he thought it better to avoid pricking the madman’s wrath any further.

  It seemed that, although he was now a circus freak, his survival meant that Eschaton valued him. His own life had already been irrevocably shattered, but perhaps, if the opportunity presented itself, he could do right by the spirits of the dead.

  The platform finished its journey, pushing them up through the opening and stopping with a harsh jerk once it was level with the ground. The Shell seemed about to lose his balance, and let out another pathetic noise as he tilted wildly back and forth.

  Eschaton let out a deep laugh at the creature’s expense. Nathaniel supposed that he had been wrong to try and appeal to the villain’s humanity, and yet there had been a moment that he could only interpret as genuine regret. . . . Not enough to stop his plan, but perhaps Nathaniel could create another opportunity.

  Nathaniel barely recognized the chamber; it had once been the main courtyard. The old benches and the dying bushes had all been stripped away. Nearby a large platform had been constructed, and a series of machines had been placed along the wall.

  He couldn’t begin to imagine their purpose, but it was easy enough to tell that whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good.

  The Shell led the way, opening the doors into the building, and Eschaton pushed him through. Nathaniel recognized where they were going, and as they headed inside he began to see more and more people in the halls. But these rough-looking men were not Paragons, nor were they fit to be part of the building’s staff. They were clearly gang members and other ruffians whom Eschaton was using to staff the Hall.

  “This is appalling,” Nathaniel said out loud. “You’ve filled the Hall with thugs.”

  “All men are created equal, or so the founding fathers believed,” Eschaton replied.

  “But they don’t stay that way,” Nathaniel quipped back. The phrase had been a favorite of his—one he had often quoted during drunken nights without a second thought. Even as he spoke the words, he wished that he could take them back.

  “No,” said Eschaton, “they don’t.” He smiled down at him, but didn’t slow down as he pushed the rumbling cart down the corridor. “You’re living proof of that. But as you pointed out, some of us are born to lead.”

  As he considered the villain’s words, he felt an emptiness gnawing inside of him. It was, unlike almost everything else he had felt today, a familiar sensation. “You said you’d get me a drink if I still wanted one after the treatment.”

  “Did I?” Eschaton snapped his fingers, s
ending out a bolt of electricity that gathered the attention of some of the men in the room. One of them ran toward him. He was a young man, but his face was an appalling mess of scars and broken teeth. “How can I help you, my lord?”

  “Donny . . . It’s good to see you up and around. How are you doing?”

  “My boneth ith healed, mothtly. I thtill have some acheth and painth my Lord, but onthe you purify me I’m thure I’ll . . .”

  Eschaton reached out and ran his hand though the boy’s hair. “Just a little bit more patience, Donny.” He glanced down in Nathaniel’s direction. “As you can see, I’m getting closer all the time.”

  Donny’s eyes widened as he took in Nathaniel’s visage. “Look at him! Who’th he, then?”

  “Why don’t you introduce yourself?”

  For an instant Nathaniel considered refusing, but was in no position to be petulant. “I’m Nathaniel Winthorp.”

  It seemed impossible, but Donny’s eyes grew even wider. “One of uth now, eh?” There was a tremor in his voice that said he was slightly unsure whether he wanted to be transformed into the creature he saw before him.

  “What do you have to say to the boy?”

  A biting reply jumped into Nathaniel’s head. The very idea that this broken boy would consider him a colleague was insulting, but he held his tongue. He had been utterly transformed by Eschaton’s purification process, and it would do him no good to offend the only people who understood his condition. For better or worse he had been purified, and he would have to figure out how he would make the best of it in short order.

  “Our Donny wants so much to become one of us,” the gray man said, “I can’t make him wait for much longer.”

  “Pleathe, thir . . .”

  “I do have some wonderful plans in mind for you. . . . Let’s see how things go today. Perhaps we can get started very soon!”