The Ghost Rebellion

by Pip Ballantine, Tee Morris

  She could think of nothing to say in response. It was most likely true. Considering how Sophia had cost the House of Usher in her partnership with the Maestro, it would not be unexpected for them to strike against her.

  This tactic, however, was shocking. Even for Usher.

  As Sophia kicked her horse forward, Eliza called out to her, “Do you want us to come with you? They could still be there.”

  The horse stopped, then turned around. The look on Sophia del Morte’s face was one Eliza would never forget; it was naked pain, lit by fire and destruction. “No,” she spat. “This is my business. La Cosa Nostra. My family, my revenge.”

  Wellington trotted his horse forward. “Sophia, please, let us help you.”

  “Do not get in the way!” Her warning made Eliza pull back instinctively on her mount’s reins. “If I need you, I will find you. Rest assured.”

  And with that she urged her horse into a mad gallop towards the burning Monteriggioni.

  “Does she really intend to take on Usher alone?” Wellington asked.

  Eliza’s gaze travelled across the destruction. “She’ll do whatever she has to, Welly.” Reaching over she gave his hand a squeeze. “Let’s go home. We have a madman of our own to catch.”

  Coda

  In Which a Mad Doctor Sees the Light

  Paris, La Ville Lumière. One of the touchstones for the Age of Enlightenment. Just in the distance, rising from an ocean of gas lamps, stood the pride and joy of the city and, of course, the architect Gustave Eiffel. Now ten years old, the wrought iron lattice wonder straddling Champ de Mars stood as a testament to what was possible if man were given no boundaries or inhibitions. Though it was true, while the Tower was being constructed, its creator took more than his fair amount of grief and scorn from the Paris Elite. Architect Charles Garnier and artists such as Maupassant, Massenet, and Bouguereau mounted protests against its construction, attempting to halt what they believed would be an abomination, a bastard creation of science and art, of form and expression, of design and creativity.

  These prominent men had been wrong. So very, very wrong.

  The Eiffel Tower, even at this distance, stood as an inspiration to Henry Jekyll. Those who had opposed Gustave Eiffel’s legacy would have denied their fair city the distinction of having the tallest man-made structure in the world. The Tower was a breakthrough of art, architecture, and ingenuity, and Eiffel had proven to be right.

  Just as he would be. One day.

  Jekyll turned away from the inspiring view of the City of Lights and took his fresh cup of tea from the automaton. Head tilted, he examined the mechanical manservant, took his first sip, and then winced at the sharpness of the brew. Once again, it had steeped for too long. A human servant would only need one or two brewing attempts before comprehending what constituted a perfect cup of tea.

  This was the automaton’s fifth attempt.

  “I thought we had remedied this,” Jekyll muttered to himself as he limped around the metallic valet to the tea tray. He dropped in two more sugar cubes, stirred it into the leather-coloured liquid, and then took in a sip.

  Absolute swill. He dropped in another two cubes.

  Still terrible.

  Three more. That should do the trick.

  Better.

  Well, perhaps one more.

  The taste now replenished his soul. The perfect cup of tea. Finally.

  Jekyll took another long sip of the Darjeeling and then stared into the drink. Eight cubes. Dammit. He was going to need another regimen. This would make the third on a weekly basis. The only other choice was to skip the treatment and allow himself to run loose in the streets of Paris. If that was his choice tonight, he would have to secure his dwelling and find an overnight boarding house as a beginning and ending point for his exploits; his alpha and omega for a night of unleashed debauchery. Possibly spilling blood. Whether that blood would be innocent or not, was impossible to calculate.

  He set the cup and saucer on the end table, and taking up his cane, followed the servant’s passage down to the kitchen. The automatons stood here like skeletal soldiers, silent and dark in the shadows. To some, it might have been unnerving, these metallic creations just standing there, waiting for a command. To Jekyll, they were merely furniture, so he continued through to the butler’s quarters where the only light was present.

  Outside the door this automaton was active, its gears and cogs clicking while lights flared and dimmed in their simple sequence. The automaton’s eyes glowed green as its head slowly and smoothly turned to look at him. On recognizing that someone was standing in front of it, the eyes switched from green to yellow.

  “Henry Jekyll,” it stated.

  The automaton held its stare with him as a pattern of bips and beeps softly ticked in its head. Jekyll was not familiar with Morse code or the ways of wireless communication, but its creator had told him this was the sentry’s particular routine, or was it sequence? He couldn’t recall the proper terminology, but it was still nothing less than ingenious how this machine communicated with its brethren on the other side of the door.

  Those yellow eyes, still trained on him, switched back to green as it stepped back.

  “Just incredible,” he whispered, taking out the ornate key from his pocket.

  Jekyll inserted the key and turned it twice to the left. Levers snapped inside the lock, then Jekyll grabbed the bow and pulled. The key’s stem split, gaining another half inch of length. Now he turned it counter clockwise.

  From the doorway came a sequence of low, deep strikes as the extra bolts disengaged. In his early experiments, he’d contained himself behind this door, back when he’d still fought against his breakthrough. That was before he knew the exquisite joy of being a god amongst mortals, before he knew the taste of the purely primal.

  The room served him well back then as a prison for himself, and presently it fulfilled this need once again for one of the world’s most ingenious and famous individuals.

  The door swung open, revealing its sole human occupant, with three metallic servants watching over him. Thomas Alva Edison sat on the bed, and his scowl deepened with every step Jekyll took into the room. Had he not possessed the amazing vision and intellect of tomorrow, Jekyll would have already dispatched him simply for his petulant demeanour. His resources were, perhaps, not as vast as the Maestro’s, but Edison’s comforts were being seen to—at least on a basic level.

  “How are we tonight, Thomas?” Jekyll asked with a cheery smile.

  Edison gave a slight snort, crossed his arms, and fixed his gaze on the footboard of his bed.

  “Dissatisfied, are we?” Jekyll’s smile faded. “What a surprise.”

  The inventor merely looked up at him, one eyebrow lifting at Jekyll’s sarcasm.

  “I know that this work environment is hardly conducive to your personal taste, but think of it this way,” he said, spreading his hands wide, “now you can truly empathise with your staff at Menlo Park.”

  Edison returned his eyes to the footboard. The man was highly unpleasant, which meant Jekyll rather enjoyed cracking his defences.

  “Your work with the electroporter has been outstanding,” Jekyll continued. “A true accomplishment, particularly in how you increased the power output and thereby increased the range. However, it must be quite humbling to know Tesla was right. Not only was he a better engineer, he was smarter as well.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Edison growled, finally turning towards Jekyll.

  His feet had not even slipped free of the bed before the automatons trained their eyes on him. The green lights that had shone were now deep red.

  “These Shockers of yours,” Jekyll said, chuckling as he looked one of them over, its eyes focused on Edison, “are just as amazing—however they still cannot make a proper cup of tea.”

  Edison’s shoulders drooped. “That’s why I have the pleasure of your company tonight? The tea sequence is still off?”

  “Yes. I think it is a matter of steep
ing. The brew is just too—”

  “I’ll tend to it,” he grumbled, waving his hand dismissively. “Tell me how long you want your damn tea to brew and I will—”

  “Let. Me. Finish.”

  Edison’s mouth closed, and on watching a pallid cover wash over the inventor, Jekyll experienced a slight rush of delight. “The brew is a bit too strong, and could be sweeter. My condition warrants a rather insatiable sweet tooth.”

  “Is that what you call it? Your condition?”

  Jekyll was finding his flippancy a tad irksome. “I do so appreciate your eye for detail and attention. I also appreciate our gentlemen’s agreement by not insulting my intelligence. I know you could quite easily take the opportunity to turn your Shockers against me.”

  “Believe me,” Edison said with an angry twitch of his lip and slipped back onto the bed, “if I were dealing with you and only you, I would have parted company in Madrid.”

  The Shocker’s eyes dimmed from red to yellow. Jekyll had not lied to Edison; he was impressed at the technological creativity these Shockers displayed, especially in the tiniest of details. “They are still in an alert mode.”

  “And they will stay that way until you leave and the cell is secure. Once their eyes return to green, I can move about without fear of a few hundred volts coursing through my body.”

  “Inspired,” Jekyll remarked.

  “Motivated, is more like it,” Edison said, adjusting his somewhat dirty collar. “Your associate is most persuasive.”

  “Thomas,” Jekyll began as he took a seat in the high backed reading chair. As he did so, he noted that the bookmark from Edison’s current read had not moved from its place. Just as the night before. And the one before that. “You and I are men of science, but as you are more of a businessman than I am, you are in total denial of that darker side of your personality. You must be loved by your clientele, admired by your workers, and revered—if not reviled—by your peers and competitors. I, on the other hand, have embraced my darkness.

  “True, I didn’t at first. I came up with a separate, and somewhat pretentious identity. Different dwellings. Different wardrobe. And of course, the name.” He laughed, recalling the utter ostentatiousness of it all. “The whole charade would have bankrupted me had Hyde not been so...uninhibited? Yes, uninhibited. He was everything I was not. Much like the dearly departed Duke of Sussex. I knew his madness all too well when I saw it.”

  “Knew?” Now it was Edison’s turn to laugh. “You’re speaking as if it were past tense.”

  “But it is, Thomas,” Jekyll insisted. “You see, I was working so hard to keep that darkness under control that it was pushing me closer and closer to the edge. The breakthrough was when I watched myself transform back. While I had seen myself turn, I had never been fortunate to watch myself turn back.” Edison’s brow furrowed. Perhaps asking the inventor to understand psychology was too much. “I made the connection. Full circle. I had not purged my darker yearnings, nor had I isolated these base emotions and personified them as another being. I had mastered these suppressed wants and desires. They were still a part of me, ergo I could control them instead of burying them. Once I understood these were not two separate personalities but merely a fractured one, I could repair it.”

  “Repair your personality?” Edison shook his head. “You really are a lunatic.”

  “No, I am whole. I accepted my darkness,” Jekyll said, spreading his arms out wide, “and now I am simply Jekyll. Your host,” he inclined his head slightly as he rose from the chair, “and your master. Which facet of Jekyll you do business with is up to you.”

  Edison shifted in his bed. His eyes were now going to the Shockers, looking at them no longer as his captors, but perhaps more as if they were his protectors.

  “I will send the valet down,” Jekyll said before turning back to the door. “Be ready to move. We cannot afford another encounter with the Ministry.”

  “Are you saying—?”

  “Nothing, Thomas,” Jekyll replied, spinning on his heel at the doorway to face him. The inventor’s flinch was most satisfying. “We may be in Paris for a few days. We may leave at first light tomorrow. Either way, you will tend to the tea algorithm and be ready to move on my word.”

  Edison’s jaw twitched, but he replied gently, “Yes, Doctor.”

  “And please, do not strain your intellect,” Jekyll said, pointing to the book by the reading chair. “You will not find a way out of here, even if you spend your hours looking for one. I made this room escape-proof long before you even cracked the riddle of the light bulb.”

  Edison could not have looked more surprised if Jekyll had hit him with the reading chair. Jekyll knew his apparent youth had caused many great minds consternation; it felt satisfying to know now Edison was among them.

  With a final look at his reluctant partner-in-crime, Jekyll limped back to the parlour. There, he instructed the valet, “Go to Edison. Repair Protocol Delta.”

  The automaton turned and proceeded at a steady pace down the servant’s passage.

  Now alone, Jekyll turned back to the singular wooden case and two large jars—each of them twenty-four ounces—which contained the sacred ingredients procured from India. It was a great deal less than he had hoped for. It would make at least a year’s worth of the regimen, if he could space out the doses in the right cycles. This would set him back, but perhaps when his supply began to dwindle, he could return to India and help himself. By then, the dust would have settled and the Ministry moved on.

  Now his tea was cold, but the sweetness reminded him of what was in store for tonight. Pulling opened his Gladstone bag, he took out the small leather pouch holding five syringes. Yes. Medication. Meditation. And then...

  Jekyll folded the pouch shut as he walked back to the view of Paris, and his heartbeat quickened. His head was swimming, so he gently placed the pouch on the small end table, next to the drained teacup. The sweet taste of the sugar still filled his mouth. However, it was another taste he now craved.

  No. No regimen for tonight. La Ville Lumière called to him. Tonight, he would let random chance decide who would live, and who would die. Who would embrace his darker nature, and who would see the sun rise once more.

  Tonight, he would live.