Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6)

by Lee Bond

  “All right, all right, I can see you’re in no mood for chitchat today, so we’ll get right into it, then.” Eli gestured to Chassie, who took up the conversation.

  “Heard anything about Stack 17 on your way in?” Chassie positively beamed when every single one of the wardogs nodded in mute unison. Always abreast of everything worth learning about, weren’t they? “Well, it’s rather a bit worse than all that, I assure you. Things have gone to complete and utter shit inside. You’ve been brought here to deal with the …”

  “Done over here.”

  Both Eli and Chassie caught the bone-deep flinch from each one of their ‘dogs as Pointer’s voice rolled softly through the room like the quietest thunder in the skies, then they noticed that each of them were casually reaching for weapons they weren’t supposed to have. The husband and wife team exchanged worried glances.

  Pointer was playing a dangerous game. He’d claimed to be very understanding of just what he was risking and that he had nothing to be afraid of, but … neither of them had ever seen old ‘dogs this agitated before.

  It was almost as if they were afraid of him. Instinctually, right down deep.

  Right from where the patois came from, and the nightmares they pretended they didn’t have. Their eldest ‘dogs.

  Afraid … no! Terrified of an old man in a clockwork coat.

  Chassie ignored the pensive looks from her ‘dogs. “Ah, well. Then. Allow me to introduce to you our newest friend, Chevril Pointillier.”

  All eyes were on the old man in the funny coat as he started coming towards them, carrying something in his hands.

  It was Linders who made out what it were first, and her howling cry of terror pierced everyone’s hearts. “Down, down, down! ‘e’s got a fuckin’ splashgun! Get down quick, you stinkin’ slimy bastards! Fuckin’ Gearman’s got us in his dead sights, down now!”

  Elijah and Chastity watched on in utter and profound confusion as six of the toughest men and women in the entirety of Trinityspace hit the ground, laced their hands at the backs of their necks and buried their faces into the floors, eyeballs screwed shut.

  They looked wordlessly at Pointer, at the quickly assembled gun in his hands, and at the pleased expression on his face.

  ***

  Chevril’s expression ran a gamut of emotions, ranging from excited to embarrassment before finally settling on a kind of morbid pleasure at what his cunning little ploy had unveiled.

  He’d been hoping for something a little less … subservient … though, for the ones he’d been told calling themselves Linders, Windim and Sveta were having themselves quite a rough time of things, with their partners Thierry, Norcross and Turner not being that far behind.

  Eli came over to where Chevy stood, stepping gingerly around six of the most hardened battlefront soldiers he’d ever seen in his life, unable to tear his eyes away from the supine, submissive positions they’d taken up, or the absolute promises of good behavior issuing forth from all of them in that wonky-weird accent that displayed itself when they were stressed. They were all pleading for their lives, promising they'd be good little boys and girls for the rest of their lives.

  “I did not expect you to turn them into a bunch of crying children.” Eli whispered furiously. Chassie’s body language suggested she was about to rush to their aid, but even more furious waving of hands and a quite stern shaking of the head managed to keep her where she was.

  For now.

  Chevy shifted the fake splashgun about in his hands for a few seconds before putting it delicately onto a nearby table. Then he addressed Eli’s accusation. “Old memory, innit? Locked down nice and tight deep down in the basic bits. They might’ve forgotten who and what they were, but there’s bits inside as remember everything, even the stuff that’s sometimes supposed to’ve been pulled out. D’you mind if I address ‘em?”

  Eli’s eyes were back on Thierry with his brightly beaded long hair. Some of his employers called him a vicious butcher with a genuine passion for genocide and promised they’d never use their security offers ever again, but they always came back when they wanted fast, bloody results. Proclamations like that were good for business, because you didn’t ask for wardogs when you wanted babysitters. If you couldn’t get Special Services to where you wanted them, you called for the ‘dogs.

  Thierry had his hands over his head and looked like he was trying to push his forehead through the floor.

  Eli quirked an eyebrow and gestured to the weeping sextet. “By all means, Master Pointer, though for your sake I do hope you can return them to some semblance of what they once were. These are my top earners. Chassie, love, for my sake and the sake of Gerry, please come stand over here.”

  As Eli and Chassie were stepping out of the way, Chevy was moving forward to address the downed gearheads, picking through the very limited range of ways he could bring this around without anyone throwing a punch or worse.

  In the end he just decided to wing it because what else could he really do? He were a displaced Gearman, mostly clad in the cloak of office and they was decommissioned gearheads playing at being regular people. It were like a deposed warlord tryin' to talk down a bunch of surly missiles, weren't it just?

  He cleared his throat and went for it. “All right, boys and girls, on yer feet, hey? Hain’t no one goin’ to be firin’ any splashguns at you today or any other day, all right?” They didn’t move and as Chevy was looking rather sheepishly at his now displeased benefactors, he realized something important. “Blimey, woulda missed that had I not even just now thought if me ownself. Oi, lads and lassies as have got their ‘eads down on the ground and makin’ me all sorts of promises I hain’t interested in accepting, you is on the Outside, right?”

  A few stammered yeses reached Chevy’s ears.

  “And I reckon you is aware, yeah, that The Dome did fall down like the drunken old bitch she were, hey? Summink like that catches the Universe’s attention, I is bet money you lot knew it were happening well in advance, right? A little tickle in the backs of your brains, a little whisper, a strange summat as had you looking on your whatever they’s called, monitors, waitin’ to see it ‘appen ‘ere long, hey?” Chevy was warming up to this little experiment, were beginning to really believe in the spark of an idea that’d led him here in the first place.

  He might manage to pull this off, hey, and what a story that’d be!

  This time, all he got for his efforts was mulish silence and some stubborn shifting. No matter, no matter, things were well in hand.

  “So all this is ‘appen, right, and you lot ‘as been out from ‘neath The Dome for more than a hundred years apiece as I’m told it, and I know for a very definite fact that you is all suffer from strange humors and odd thoughts from time to time and while I is also told by kind Master Elijah and Mistress Chassie that there are blokes out here in the Outside as do need to be splashed because they can’t quite let the Inside go, there’s one thing I know as you hain’t.” Chevy waited for some shifting that could be interpreted into a gesture closely approximating unspoken interest. There! Linders, the first to recognize the splashgun for what it was. “Your patrons cannot claim to have been responsible for the rehabilitation for all the ‘dogs as come from the Inside, but they can quite easily claim to keep tabs on every single one of you as walks fresh and clean under a million different suns, don’t they just? Best things, really. And they is tell me that any lad or lass as might need splashing somehow managed to do the splashing all on their lonesome, the moment The Dome did fall. Around three hundred thousand, Universe-wide. Blimey, it do get used to saying aloud, hey? U-n-i-verse. So that leaves one simple fing to point out, right? They’s all dead and gone, turned into goop and soup days and days ago and you lot are down there on the floor trying to burrow through into the downstairs room wi’ some sort o’ mind power.”

  Sveta muttered something into her bosom.

  “Wot’s that, Sveta, lass?” Chevy put two fingers up to his ear. “Can’t quite ‘ear you l
ove, I is an old man who might be a bit ‘ard o’ ‘earin’.”

  Sveta moved a bit so her voice could be heard easier. “We ain’t splashed. We is still here, talkin’ and such. We ain’t got nowt to fear from your splashgun.”

  Chevy clapped his hands delightedly. “Indeed you do not. Er, that is to say, if it were functional and all, you definitely would ‘ave nowt to fear. So come on then, lads and lassies, up, up. There’s summat important we is need to discuss.”

  Pointer watched the six wardogs rise smoothly and effortlessly to their feet with nothing less than genuine jealousy in his eyes. The older he got, the further away the ground seemed to be and he knew with certainty that ‘ere long, he’d be doing whatever he could to stay upright and mobile, up to and including inventing some sort of bed as could let an old man sleep standing up with all the benefits of laying abed for eight hours.

  Thierry looked at the ancient old man in the metal coat and damn him if he didn’t flinch along with the others, right at the same time, and for the exact same reason. All six of them finished up with a confused exchange of looks and nonsensical words.

  Windim jerked his chin roughly at the ticking and tocking jacket. “I is know that coat.”

  Sveta nodded. “We all know the coat, but there’s summat … missing. Wot is you? How is you do that with the fake splasher? You is make me feel off, old man, and that is summink I is not like at all. We is wardogs. Nowt in this Outside as makes uz off. Nowt.”

  Chevy tapped his head. “Missing the angry helmet. My captors didn’t think it would be wise for me to have it. Their thinking machine ‘ad no clue wot I were doing designing this old coat, hey, but it weren’t about to let me ‘ave the full set either way.” The Gearman caught sight of Turner and Linders, their lips moving furiously, almost as if they were running through all the words they knew. “And you know me … or … you believe you know me but can’t quite place where or why is because I come from the Inside. From Arcadia. I were there when The Dome fell. I recognize all of you, either from our dealings ‘neath King’s watchful eye, or from the stories my brothers and sisters told. I’m one of them itches in the back of your head now and I do guess it’s true what we all whispered to one another growing up. Arcadia sinks it’s teeth deep, don’t she just, and no matter where we go or what we do, she’s always going ter be there, gnawin' on an ear-bone, hey?”

  Linders jerked as if she’d been struck by lightning. “Fookin’ ‘ell. A live, in the fookin’ flesh Gearman. We is soup for cert.”

  The word, now spoken aloud, rippled and shivered like a living thing through the remaining wardogs, flashing bright and brilliant through their minds, unlocking storerooms and vaults full of memories that began pummeling at them from all sides. It was pain, it was suffering, but they stood there, refusing to display their agonies. This were for them and them alone.

  Chevy stepped forward, closer still, close enough to look into the eyes of Linders and the others as they rode the tsunami of who they’d been, his voice a whispering cadence full of promise. “Now, now I think, now you begin to remember who and what you were on The Inside, the things you got up to, the horrors you saw, the horrors you became. I is different than you. There weren’t no Dome left for me to walk through. I didn’t lose who I am as I came into the Outside. There weren’t none of the vicious Elixir in place of the good old red stuff, so there’s nowt for me to bear over what I did. But you lot. Aye, and aye again, and a third time for good measure, aye. You was gearheads on t’other side, my bonny boys and girls, and like all of you, you weren’t good.

  I won’t do you the disservice o’ speakin’ your old names aloud, or the crimes you committed that attracted the attention of the King or the Guild or god forbid, the clacking Nannies. Nowt but bad can come o’ that. Coming through The Dome as you did … it were a cleansing, hey? Not chosen by the Platinum King to bring secret ruin to the Outside, you were sent ‘ere because inside you were seen to possess summat worth preserving, hey? You is clean and pure in the proper sense of the words. No Dark Iron in you. No grueling hunger. No madness. No gears for brains or knives for fingers nor lights for eyes or stranger things than all that. You is man and woman now, and all that remains of your time ‘neath The Dome is what you learned, which is fighting and war. And what you is, which is rolling thunder.”

  Sweat, burning hot sweat poured down Norcross’ face and chest as he struggled against the aching tide of half-formed memories. Nothing but bright black teeth, eyes so sharp the air bled. That, and a blackened hunger like hornets drilling into his brain. “I remember those words. Gearhead. Vicious Elixir. Kingsblood. N-nanny. Oh gods, the things I is do…”

  “No!” Chevy’s voice cracked like a gunshot through the room. Everyone –including Elijah and Chastity- jerked like they’d been shot. “No. That were the old you, hey? You been reborn. How else to say …”

  Turner shut his eyes, hoping it’d force the visions away, learning instead that all those things would play out against the eyelids. “Gearheads we were in the other place, and in all truth, the only thing as is different out here is that we is do it for a paycheck, and wi’out implant. We is still violent. We is still rough. We even call ourselves by our lesser name, wardog. Why is you come, Master Gearman? To break us? To make us hate ourselves? We is not deserve this. You is most cruel.”

  Chevy could see the six were sinking, buried under –in Turner’s case, four hundred years of Dark Iron villainy- the literal weight of their excesses and wrestled with something he could say that’d bring them back around.

  Then he had it.

  The perfect story. The perfect thing. Proof that gearheads could be better than they thought they were, proof that somewhere inside of them, no matter how bad the hunger was, no matter how thirsty the Elixir became, Humanity reigned.

  “We hain’t got the time for it, but neither can we skip it.” Chevy stood straight and tall and began. “Lads and lassies, I got a story to tell. One an ancient old Gearman who done seen it all and done e’en more of it thought he’d ever have the luxury … nay, the pleasure of telling aloud to another soul. After all of you lot left for here, there grew a place called Ickford, run by, of all folk, Agnethea the Vile her very own self. And in that place, I did meet the Dark Iron Bastards. Brothers and sisters to you lot, they were, some of ‘em so steeped in the ‘sblood that their skin had gone gray as the skies before a storm.” Chevy saw flashes of recognition in their eyes at some of what he’d said. He continued. “This were near the end of the World, boys and girls, wi’ the King gone mad in his roost and fit to destroy the whole of everything in desperation to end a single life, no matter ‘twould cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent men and women.

  We was lost, friends. I was lost. Nowt I could do to stop the King’s biggest Big’Uns until I stopped and took note of who else were fighting. On the side of the innocents. To protect house and homestead. To die the real and true permanent death by the hundreds. I called ‘em Dark Iron Bastards, and I meant it. They all of them refused to go down, refused to let that darkness burn in any direction save inside, and they fought like the bastards they were. 'ere that moment, I'd never felt no stirring in me old bosom as much as then. Proud, I were and proud I shall remain, until the moment o' my reasonably earned death. The things …”

  ***

  The six Arcadians looked at Gearman Chevril Pointillier with undisguised awe. Never in their lives had they heard of someone as wore the helmet and the coat fighting alongside gearheads, nor had they ever imagined that e'en if that were somehow the case, that said Gearman would shed tears of deepest and most heartfelt sorrow at their passing.

  It were a most humbling thing.

  When they were done assembling themselves -for who couldn't be affected by such a tale- Thierry fiddled with his beaded hair for a bit before bringing everything around to where he thought they needed to be. "Begging your pardon, Master Gearman, but that story were well great and all that and well, I do suspect we'll be al
l the more appreciative once coming to terms wi' who we were before The Dome spat us out has been set right, but … why are we here? We is not the sort of people who come 'round for cups of tea and story time, hey? You must have a deep need to bring the six of us back to Zanzibar."

  Now it was Chevy's turn to look a little embarrassed, which he deftly hid behind a cough; it weren't noticed all that much as the other Arcadians were still preoccupied with the veritable flood of memories burning through them. Gods, he wished he could've spared them the inner turmoil of being asked to deal with who they'd once been, but the world were a tough place, weren't it just?

  And sad to say, tough as they might've been as wardogs, well, he were going to need the viciousness of them mad old bastards, the gearheads in the raw, didn't he just?

  "As to that…" Chevy looked each one of the Arcadians in the eye and thought he might've caught sight of just a wee bit of that old Kingsblood-spawned madness, only tempered with all they'd been through since being free from Arcade City. "Well, you see, I hain't the only thing as come from Arcade City 'ere The Dome did fall, now am I? There were three others, hey, as I said. Me old mad best friend and two Obsidian Golems of unknown purpose."

  Norcross scoffed. "Now I know you is lost you mind, mate. Any friend of yours is bound to be a Gearman, and if you is sayin' 'e's gone mad, well then, that right there is a fucking thing I'd rather not dance with, hey? And as to Golems? Not in a lifetime. Not in several thousand."

  Very nearly all of them made sounds of agreement to what Norcross were saying, all except Thierry, who held up a hand to silence them all. Eyeing his old master and mistress to see where they stood in this thing Old Man Pointer were bringing up, he weren't surprised to see they were in all the way.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking, friends.” This time, none of his fellow Arcadians snorted or made any effort at undermining the sentiment. They might not be friends in the plainest sense of the term, but now they’d been gifted with all their old memories, it were easy enough to see that they’d all six of them spent time with one another in Arcade City. “Master Elijah and Mistress Chastity, they called us here from the far corners of Trinityspace at great expense to meet with Gearman Pointer, here, who I must confess to’ve running afoul of more than once on the Inside, and he makes mention of Stack 17 and his friends and enemies that run loose inside the fallen city. Promises were made, weren’t they?”