Stormfront

by John Goode

For that moment it was right. Fighting it wasn’t my goal; finding Molly was. Escaping with Molly was.

  The spear vanished. “Fine, take me to her.”

  It opened the door and gestured. “After you.”

  Ignoring the fact I was putting my back to it, I walked out of the room, openly taking in as much detail of the surroundings as I could. This space was completely different from the buildings outside; where they were stone and glass, these spaces were all smooth metal. They reminded me of the rooms above us in the workshop. Deathly quiet surrounded us. I could hear no sounds of movement or machinery at all.

  “You’re taking it all in. That is very tactical of you,” the creature commented from behind me.

  “Where is Molly?” I asked, not turning around. Listening to the creature walk and breathe, counting the length of its stride and adding in the swiftness with which it moved: those were the things I was intent on “taking in.” Looking at the furniture and plotting exits provided only so much diversion. I’d taken those features in within five seconds.

  “Up ahead. It is with my brother.” Since I didn’t know the relationship between the creature and its brother, I didn’t know exactly how to read the slight hesitation and downward turn of the creature’s voice at the mention of the word brother.

  More than one creature; that was not good. If I couldn’t take one, two was twice the impossibility.

  It brought me to a circular chamber with a set of spiral stairs embedded in the walls. I memorized every step down to the floor, and exactly how far the flight was from the door. Something out of the corner of my eye alerted me, and I glanced up. Froze in place. Seated with her back to me was Molly. The back of her head was open, and what looked like a brass cylinder with arms was probing her insides.

  “Get away from her!” I yelled, leaping off the stairs and racing toward the offending machine. I grabbed the thing and lifted it off the ground. It screamed and shouted for help just as a human would do.

  Which was when the creature struck me from behind.

  It was meant as a stunning blow, because if it had used its full strength, I would be dead. Instead I dropped the contraption and stumbled forward into the wall. I tried to armor up, expecting a follow-up attack, but I was too dazed to focus.

  Yet no attack came.

  Turning around, I saw the creature pick up the machine and set it down gently. “Did she harm you? Are you intact?”

  “This is why I need weapons!” it screamed. “She could have killed me!”

  “I would have never let that happen.”

  “Didn’t this just prove to you there are times you aren’t here?”

  The thing looked actually chastised by the machine until it noticed me watching. “What are you looking at?” it roared at me.

  “Adam,” the machine snapped. “We need her alive.”

  “You shouldn’t tell prisoners that,” I reprimanded the machine. “It takes away most of the assumed threat.”

  The machine turned toward me on a set of wheels built into its base. “I said we needed you alive, not in possession of all your limbs nor with a tongue in your mouth. How’s that for assumed threat?”

  I had to admit, it was a strong one.

  “What have you done to Molly?” I asked on the heels of the threat, trying to take control of the situation.

  “This one is in love with it,” the creature explained, its lewd smile a garish exaggeration of a human expression.

  “I’m not surprised. Molly is very good at its job.” The cylinder turned back toward her. “It had a mission and failed to complete it. I’m curious as to why, so I am examining its thought processes.”

  I walked around to where it was probing the back of her head and a wave of revulsion passed through me. I had seen Molly’s interior before; when she performed maintenance on herself, she removed parts of her outer shell, exposing the mechanisms inside. We have nothing that even comes close to a complicated machine in the Articus, so I was fascinated by the kind of magic that allowed Molly to move and talk and, as long as her springs were wound, react.

  What was revealed in the back of her head was nothing mechanical.

  “What is that?” I asked, taking a few steps back.

  “Its brain, of course,” the machine explained.

  I had seen brains twice in my life, both after hand-to-hand combat. Let me be clear: I have no idea what a brain does. I do know that it died when its person died. I also figured out that leaving something that should be on the inside of a person open to the outside could not have been a good thing.

  That was not my first thought. My first thought was a question. Why did Molly have a brain in her? I had imagined a clockwork assembly like the rest of her, but this… this made her…. My mind warned me off too much thought about what having a brain might mean. I took another step back, trying to gather my thoughts.

  The brass cylinder—wait, that must be the creature’s brother—said, “I thought you were in love. Well, this is who she is. Don’t you love her?”

  Now that I stood closer to the talking cylinder, I could tell it was not an average clockwork. The cylinder had a glass dome on the top and inside was a brain suspended in liquid. It seemed today I was going to learn more about brains than I thought possible.

  “Come now,” the creature said from behind me. “Give her a little kiss.” It pushed my head forward to make sure I kissed Molly, who remained mute and still in front of the cylinder.

  Instead of responding to the creature, I dropped the temperature around me as low as it would go as quickly as I could. I heard the creature’s hand freeze solid. I spun around and pushed him away. As he stumbled back, I could see he was missing everything below his elbow. I reached behind myself and pulled his hand off my head.

  “Do you want to get beaten with your own hand?”

  He roared, and I knew he was about to go berserk.

  “Adam!” the cylinder shouted, rolling between us. “Adam! Listen to me!”

  Adam wasn’t listening to anything, but it did refrain from moving the commanding machine out of its way. Instead it just glared at me with dead eyes surrounded by an angry face.

  “Adam, go upstairs and make sure she arrived alone.”

  The creature acted as if it might ignore the order, but finally, slowly, it looked down to the machine and nodded. “I am going to need another arm.”

  “We’ll put one on. It’s all right.”

  “I want hers,” it added, staring back at me.

  “Fine, you can have her arm. Just go and check the street, then cool off for right now.”

  With great deliberateness it turned and trudged back up the stairs. I heard the creak of a door closing before the quieter sounds of a lock being thrown told me the creature was gone for at least a few minutes. In the silence that followed, the cylinder rolled rapidly across the room. “We must hurry. He will be back soon.”

  I had no idea what it was talking about, but it opened a small panel on the wall and revealed a set of controls. His metal arms extended, and he turned the first knob on the left. The set of stairs trembled for a moment and then retracted back into the wall, making the door into the room a nine foot drop to the floor.

  “He has a horrible temper. Trust me, you don’t want to be on the wrong side of it.”

  It moved back to Molly and closed the plate on the back of her head.

  “Wait, I thought that thing is your brother?” I asked uncertainly.

  It made a sound like it was scoffing as the seal on Molly’s head clicked. “My father made that thing centuries ago, and it thinks that makes us family somehow. It’s insane.”

  I realized I still held the creature’s arm by the fingers. I wanted to throw it across the chamber, but I understood that might not be a good plan. Instead, I dropped it to the floor. I changed the topic slightly. “So who are you?”

  “My name is Wolf, Wolf Frankenstein.”

  The way he paused made it seem like I should know the name.
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br />   When he saw no reaction on my face, he added, “The son of Victor Frankenstein?”

  “Well met, Wolf. I am Ferra. Can you fix Molly?”

  The cylinder could express no emotion, but it was evident from its voice that it was somewhat shocked by my ignorance. “You’ve never heard of my family?”

  “Should I? I am from the Articus. We hear very little from the rest of Arcadia.”

  It turned back to Molly, opening her chest this time and muttered, “Another lie that thing told me.”

  I felt great trepidation about his hands in Molly’s body and asked, “Do you know how to fix her?”

  “I should,” the cylinder grunted back. “I built her.”

  That is when it hit me.

  “Wait, you and that creature, you’re Tinker and Jones?”

  “One and the same,” it replied, still manipulating things inside Molly.

  “I expected something—” I stopped, realizing I didn’t know what I had expected. “—different.”

  “I bet. Once upon a time, I had a body and could actually walk around the workshop doing work. Now I’m a brain stuck in a can being held captive by that thing.”

  “But I thought Tinker and Jones weren’t from this world.”

  “We aren’t. We were exiled from the River, told never to return on penalty of death.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we tried to play God and succeeded.” It closed Molly’s chest and her eyes flickered open. “And that should do it.”

  There was a hum, but Molly did not move. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s normal. She is charging, and her logic strings are winding themselves again. It will take a few minutes.”

  “So then explain, what is that thing and why are you determined to get away from it?”

  Like Molly, the cylinder could not actually sigh since it had no lungs, but it still made the sound that expressed its emotion the same way. “My father wanted to learn how to make men immortal. He dug up bodies and stitched pieces of them together to make a new body. Then, using a brain, he brought the thing to life.”

  Without thought I said, “And it is a monster.”

  Wolf laughed. “You understand in five seconds what it took my father years to realize. Yes, it is a monster. It may walk and talk, but it has no soul, and when we fled our world, I had no choice but to bring it with me.”

  “Why? Why not leave it?”

  “That thing, horrifying as it is, has the secret of immortality in it. Look at me. I am hundreds of years old; my life has been extended tenfold past when I would have died. I couldn’t just let them burn him and take the secret with him.”

  Again my mouth moved faster than my thoughts. “You are long-lived, but you are a brass cylinder.” It looked at me, and I wished it had some kind of face so I could gauge its emotional temperature.

  “Do you think I want to be like this? This is a stepping stone. This is just a shell until I can figure out how to make it perfect. Think about it, a whole world of people in perfect metal bodies, living forever, never aging or going hungry. No more death.”

  It sounded hideous, but before my mouth betrayed me again, Molly spun around in a flash, knocking the cylinder back. “This unit has been compromised. Identify yourself or face being sanctioned.”

  I had never heard such vehemence in Molly’s voice before.

  The cylinder yelled, “There are three flowers in a vase. The third flower is yellow!”

  And just like that, Molly relaxed.

  “Ferra?” she asked, looking around in confusion. “Where are we?”

  Before I could answer, the cylinder announced, “We need to leave.”

  I expected Molly to ask what it was, but instead she turned toward it and said, “Yes, sir, finding an exit now.”

  “Not the stairs,” he ordered when she moved toward the hidden panel. “There is a door concealed over there.” It pointed one of its spindly metal arms to the wall to our right.

  Without pause she turned and headed to the other side of the room.

  “Why is she doing what you say?”

  “All of the clockwork beings will. Obedience to me is built into them.”

  Molly slid open another hidden panel and pulled the single switch inside. A door disappeared into a slit in the wall, and I could see a tunnel stretching away from us into the dark. As we neared the doorway, fireless torches came to life, illuminating the path. “Quickly, he’s coming back.”

  As if to underscore the cylinder’s point, a loud pounding came from the door above us.

  “Move!”

  The cylinder wheeled itself into the tunnel, and I followed it as the creature’s fist burst through the door. “Molly, close the door behind you.”

  As soon as I crossed the threshold, Molly stepped into the tunnel and pulled another switch. A door slammed shut behind us as I followed the brass tube down the corridor.

  “Where does this lead?” I asked.

  “It will bring us up in the center of New London. From there we can get to an escape pod and get to the actual surface.”

  I looked back at Molly. “Are you all right?”

  She smiled and nodded. “As well as I can be. Did I miss much?”

  I literally did not know what to say to that.

  “We’re going to be fine,” she added in an almost singsong voice.

  “How can you say that?” I asked, shocked by her words.

  “Because we’re together. We can handle anything.”

  I found myself struck silent by her certainty.

  “Molly, another door,” Wolf called from ahead of us.

  She moved at his voice instantly, but she seemed in control of her actions unlike the other times when the lenses took control of her. As she opened the door, I asked the question that had been consuming my mind for months.

  “Why does she keep changing?” I asked him. “The lenses that slip down, what are they?”

  “Molly is not an average companion model. She was built for a specific purpose,” Wolf explained after considering me for a few seconds.

  “What purpose?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  The door crashed open, throwing Molly back into us as the creature burst into the tunnel. “Did you think I wouldn’t follow?” it snarled.

  Before anyone could answer, I formed a wall of ice around Molly and Wolf and positioned myself in front of it.

  “Are we really going to do this again?” it asked me, sighing dramatically.

  What it didn’t understand was that the game had changed. I formed my most formidable battle lance and hurled it before it had finished its sigh. The razor-sharp serrations struck the thing in the center of its chest, momentum carrying them deep under the skin. It wasn’t ready and tumbled backward into the room behind it. Turning to Molly, I said, “Lock this door. Do not open it for anyone but me.” I dropped the ice wall and used the power to push the creature out of the hall and off its feet.

  I heard the door slam shut behind me.

  With only one arm it was slow to stand again, so I was able to maintain my control against it. With the sharp edge pointed directly at the top of the creature’s head, I slammed my newly formed shield down. It staggered back but refused to drop. With a deafening roar, it grabbed the edge of my shield and crushed it with its remaining hand.

  “I will kill you!”

  Instead of answering I shot a ball of ice straight into the damned thing’s mouth. It did little damage. At first. Instead of letting him spit the snowball out or even swallow it, I, using the moisture in the air and in his mouth, increased the ball’s diameter until it filled its jaw with ice. Deprived of moisture, its tongue clung to the snowball. Within seconds, all of the creature’s attention focused on pain.

  “I have fought changelings, efreet, and even your own creations, and they have all threatened to end my life.” Its eyes widened as it felt its jaw snap from the mass of ice growing inside it. “I am still here.”

  With a final
burst of power, I shoved what was left of my strength into expanding that ice. The sound of flesh and bone ripping apart made my stomach turn. My vision blurred as I felt what little energy I had ebb, and the world tilted underneath me. Before I fell unconscious, I could see its head forced back until the top of its head touched its neck.

  If it got up from that, there was nothing else I could do.

  When I awoke I found myself tied up with metal bonds. They didn’t even budge when I tried to move my arms.

  “Oh, you’re awake,” Wolf said in a pleasant tone. “I was wondering if you had used too much energy and we’d lost you.”

  “What is this?” I asked, trying to feel if I had any power left. “Why am I bound?”

  “To prevent you from attacking me, of course.”

  I looked around and realized I was in a different room, and probably in a different location in the underground maze built by the two brothers. Instead of large quantities of metal like the previous ones, real wood and massive, cold stone surrounded us. The walls stretched upward until all I could make out was a tiny circle of light far above me.

  My gaze followed the beam of light captured and sent downward by that tiny hole so far away. And came to rest on the outline of a circle, an odd circle. It had been scribed half on the floor and half up the wall the floor abutted. The circle was marked into thirty-six sections, inside which sigils flickered. Standing just inside the circle was Molly; I didn’t need to see her eyes to know she’d been enchanted by some magicks controlled by Wolf.

  “What have you done to her?”

  “To her?” Wolf asked, wheeling around the ring, extending its metal arms to reach parts of it too far away for it to touch without entering the circle. “Nothing. This is who she is, what she was built for.”

  I struggled with my bonds again but to no avail.

  “You can try all you want, but you’ll find that alloy does not react to cold, so unless you possess superhuman strength, you are there until I let you go.”

  Icing up did nothing, and whatever this metal was, I did not have the means to quickly break myself free. It meant my options were limited, but I refused to give up. “What do you mean what she is built for?”

  Wolf paused and turned itself toward me. “Molly was constructed for one specific purpose in mind. On the surface she was built to resemble a normal companion unit. Wait, let me ask you. What does a collection of gemlings need with a robotic companion?” He returned to his task, hooking cables to sections on the wall, setting what looked like pieces of meat at each sigil on the floor.