The Falling Machine

by Andrew P. Mayer

  “Well, it's true. And if you're going to Madison Square dressed like a tart, you'll end up getting unwanted attention from more than just the villains.”

  “Madison Square?”

  Jenny clucked her tongue. “Damn it.”

  “Such language! What do you know, Jenny Farrows?”

  “I overheard your father saying that the Paragons had received a note that they were to meet the Automaton.”

  “When and where?”

  “I shouldn't say.”

  Sarah spoke more slowly and directly. “You know you'll tell me, so save me the trouble.”

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “Madison Square Garden at seven p.m.”

  Sarah glanced at the clock on her dresser. “But it's nearly seven now!”

  “It seems that O'Rourke didn't take it seriously.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyone who's been in your father's employ for as long as he has should know that the more outlandish something is, the more likely it is to be true.”

  Jenny regarded Sarah for a moment, then pressed her hand to her face and tapped her index finger to the apple of her cheeks. “You're going to need a coat. Meanwhile take a look in the bottom drawer in your closet. There should be some old costume pieces along with some other bits of junk that might help you with your suicidal journey.

  “Now wait here, and I'll be right back.” Mrs. Farrows bustled backward out the door.

  When Sarah pulled open the drawer she felt her heart drop. Jenny had taken the gloves she'd stolen from her father's closet and placed them on top. Sarah could only wonder at how angry and disappointed Alexander Stanton would be if he knew that she had stolen them from his closet. Still, it felt like wearing something of her father's could bring her good luck, and the steel-reinforced fingers might come in handy. She threw them onto the bed.

  Rummaging a bit deeper she grabbed an old tricorn hat. It was battered and worn, an actual hand-me-down from her revolutionary grandfather that had managed to make it into her hands. She pulled it over her head and looked in the mirror. It certainly made her appear less feminine. “That could be useful.”

  She walked back to the bed, reached down into the pile, and lifted up the Sleuth's mask. While the front of it was clean and polished, the interior looked well used, and she wondered how many adventures it had been on with Mr. Wickham. She pressed it against her skin and looked into the mirror above her vanity. Her face was gone, replaced by a black veil, her green eyes masked by a thin scrap of black muslin tightly stretched across the eyeholes. Tom's words rang in her ears: “When a man puts on a mask, he discovers his greatest confidence and his darkest desire at the same moment.”

  The door snapped open and then shut again. Sarah turned to see Mrs. Farrows entering the room, a black leather coat hanging off her arm. She stepped behind Sarah and held up the jacket. “Now try it on.”

  Sarah slipped her arms into the sleeves. “No smart comments.”

  “I've already told you this is ridiculous, and you've already ignored me.” Jenny reached around Sarah's waist and began to tie the belt.

  The coat was oversized, but not too big. There was a layer of thick wool inside to keep her warm, and a row of heavy buttons down the front. With the right tailoring it could seem quite dashing. “Where did you get this?”

  “Jean-Tom, the cook. It's from when he lived in Paris. He asked me to take it out for him, but he's grown far more stomach than this coat will ever give.”

  Sarah scooped up the hat and gloves, and slipped them on. Then she stepped in front of the mirror and sighed. “I do look ridiculous.” Although there was something about it that was thrilling as well—she hadn't dared to imagine it, but she was a Paragon. “Or at least I'm pieces of Paragons…”

  “You're a fool is what you are, Sarah Stanton.” Jenny smothered her with a hug. “And if you're going to be a fool, then I think you'll need this.” She held out a battered book. The words “National City Bank of New York” were stamped in faded gold leaf on the cover.

  “My bank book?”

  A tear rolled down Mrs. Farrows's face. “In case you can't come back.”

  “Don't be silly, Jen. I'll be back.”

  “I've known your father as long as I've known you…” She slipped it into her coat pocket. “You may need it.”

  Sarah held the other woman's hand and looked into her eyes. What had seemed to have existed for years as a flight of fancy now felt dangerously real. She had fantasized about becoming a hero, but she had been told over and over again how truly dangerous it was.

  Something rose up in her, a moment of desperate realization—this was the point of no return.

  “Are you okay, Sarah?” Mrs. Farrows asked her.

  She realized that the mask was hiding her face. “Thank you, Jen.”

  “Do what you have to do. Save your metal friend if you can. Just promise you won't get killed. I couldn't bear it.” Jenny ran to the door, opened it, and stepped into the hallway. “Now get going.”

  Sarah was almost out of the room when she turned back and grabbed the gun off of the bed. It slipped easily into the inside pocket of the coat.

  As she ran quietly down the circular staircase to the front door she heard Mrs. Farrows's voice behind her. “You've become exactly what you promised your father you wouldn't be.”

  “The Adventuress,” she said to herself, and smiled.

  It began to dawn on Sarah that many of the problems facing a costumed hero in a city the size of New York were logistical; how did you get from where you were to where you were so desperately needed, and do it in time to be of any real help?

  The Paragons had developed a series of fireworks and flares, along with plans to minimize the time between almost any two points on Manhattan.

  But Sarah was without those resources. Desperate for a solution, she reverted to something she had seen Nathaniel do as a child—a game that he had called “double dare.”

  Reaching the corner Sarah waited, and then grabbed hold of a passing delivery wagon. The undercarriage was almost four feet off the ground, and it took every bit of her strength to lift herself up using the chain that held the rear doors shut.

  With some maneuvering she managed to stand on the thin wooden lip sticking out from the back of the cart, her feet splayed out parallel to the edge. The cart lurched forward and she felt a jolt of pain shooting up through her arms and feet. The trick had worked, but Nathaniel had ridden the back of a cart for more than a city block.

  The streets were blissfully empty, and they seemed to be heading in the right direction, turning onto Broadway a few blocks north of Columbus Circle.

  As they rolled southward she expected someone to call her out to the driver, but the few people who did seem to notice her seemed content to point or wave. Certainly no one cared enough to interrupt her ride. She had never appreciated the average New Yorker's ability to ignore the unusual as much as she did right now.

  Thirty-five blocks later she arrived at the park exhausted and half frozen. The burning sensation in her arms from hanging onto the carriage was excruciating—magnified by the cold along with the constant vibration of wooden wheels against the cobblestones. It conspired to make her feet feel numb and her hands feel like claws made from wire and pain.

  And then a green flare exploded into the sky. She heard the carriage driver in front of her muttering to himself, “It's them Paragons again.” He snapped the reins and veered the carriage left at the next intersection. “I'll be damned if we're going near that kind of trouble,” he said to the horses.

  Sarah dropped off the back of the cart and took a few wobbling steps to slow herself down. Her feet were somehow both aching and half asleep simultaneously, but she forced herself to march forward. Her boots were already chafing, adding yet another layer of pain to her suffering feet. Sarah made a mental note that comfortable shoes were clearly a key part of being a successful costumed heroine.

  A metallic crack ripped through the air, and Sarah instantly turned to see where t
he sound had come from.

  A figure was sprawled against the Arm of Liberty, a tall man standing above him, hammering away with what appeared to be a very large club.

  For a moment she was too shocked to do anything but stare. She had never seen one man attack another with such violence before.

  When the sprawling figure's head flew through the air she almost screamed. And when the arms and legs of the fallen figure continued to thrash even after the decapitation it was obvious who the victim was.

  There was a pause, and the Automaton's body collapsed to the ground. Then the attack began again, with the giant man picking Tom up bodily by his chest and smashing him back down.

  Sarah slipped the gun out of her jacket pocket. Where the cold, heavy weapon had seemed dangerous in her room, it felt comforting to her now.

  Sarah had lived her entire life around fighting men. Her father had fought on the Southern battlefields, and after her mother died he had been liberal about allowing her to spend the occasional evening curled up in the corner of the sitting room, listening in as her father told the other Paragons stories of the battle of Gettysburg. He had, of course, toned down the violence and ribald humor that she had heard her mother complain about (and that she would have desperately liked to hear for herself). But she had learned a few lessons from these war stories, one of which was the importance of the element of surprise. It was, as her father always said when discussing it, “an advantage you only get to use once.” The other Paragons had always heartily agreed.

  Remaining hidden while Tom was literally being torn to pieces was no easy task, not only because there was so little for her to hide behind in the lamp-lit park but because her anger was threatening to get the best of her.

  She had seen the Automaton repair himself before, but she didn't recognize the object that the gray man had ripped out as his clockwork heart until she saw the glow of the Alpha Element as he slid it free.

  Creeping up closer to the man, she could see that there was something deeply wrong with his skin. His body was a dark gray, speckled with spots of black, almost as if he had been covered in soot.

  He handed the heart over to another figure. When she realized it was the Bomb Lance her eyes narrowed and her resolve grew.

  The gray man held the silvery cylinder up in front of him. “Finally, I have everything I need.” He slipped it into a metal case and put it into his pocket. “Now we can—”

  Sarah pulled the trigger, and the gun let out a loud burp, then a hiss. The effect was immediate: it flung the tall man into the air, and he landed with a crash onto a strip of sidewalk fifteen feet away.

  The Bomb Lance vanished as well, and Tom's heart crashed to the ground almost exactly where he had stood.

  Sarah was thrown in the opposite direction, managing to stop herself by grabbing onto the side of Liberty's arm. She would need to find a way to brace herself more solidly the next time she fired.

  Tom's body lay nearby—a headless mess of scattered cogs and broken metal, almost unrecognizable as the elegant living machine he had been only a few minutes before. After all of this—the loss, the suffering, the grief—she had not been in time to save him.

  She let out a scream of helplessness, frustration, and anger and then turned to look, as he attempted to rise, at the man she had just shot. “You killed him!” she snarled. The words came out from deep within her throat, and the low tones made it sound like the voice of a stranger. “I'll tear you apart!”

  Lord Eschaton was dazed, trying hard to come to his senses as Sarah walked toward him. He shook his head and then ran a hand over his face. His mask had been torn away. “Who are you?” he muttered. He pulled away his hand to reveal glowing white blood smeared across it.

  Sarah lifted up the pneumatic gun and pointed it directly at him. A small voice told her that this was not the way—not the way the Paragons would do things, and certainly not the way a lady should conduct herself. She laughed under her mask at the thought of it. “A lady,” she said out loud. The words came out sounding cruel and uncaring. The gun was pure power in her hands.

  As she began to press down on the trigger, she heard a familiar sound coming from her left—the mechanical thunk of a harpoon being readied to fire. She spun around and pointed the gun at the source of the noise. She and the Bomb Lance fired simultaneously.

  The harpoon went wide, missing her entirely and tangling itself in an iron gate a few feet beyond. Sarah's weapon relied far less on accuracy, and it knocked the Bomb Lance flat on his back, the momentum and wind sending him skidding across the cement until he reached the edge of a patch of snow-covered grass. His frame caught in the mud, and he jerked to a halt.

  Her element of surprise was utterly gone now, if she had ever had it It had been the Irishman who had almost impaled her.

  “Dear God,” she said as waves of panic rolled over her. How close to death had she come? Then it dawned on her that the Irishman might not be her only hidden opponent. How many of them were there? What had she been thinking?

  She turned to see the tall man running toward her, his hand outstretched and glowing white. He lunged at her as she jumped out of the way.

  There was an explosion of energy as the gray man's hands made contact with the ground. The sparks reached out to Sarah, sending a tingle through her body that caused all her muscles to twitch, including quite a few she'd never felt before. She could only imagine what would have happened if he had been able to make contact.

  The air stank of burned metal. The odor was similar to toasted bread, and it was oddly comforting, reminding her of the time she had spent in Professor Darby's lab. But her lingering moment of calm evaporated when Sarah realized that she had dropped the gun.

  She glanced around for it desperately. When she saw it glinting in the gaslight, Sarah dived for it.

  As she wrapped her hand around the barrel she felt something grabbing onto her ankle. The gray giant had grabbed onto her foot.

  He looked up at her and smiled. It was a wicked grin, made even more shocking by his shining white teeth. “I don't know who you are, girl, but I'm impressed with that weapon.” She felt herself being dragged toward him. “If you tell me where you got it, I won't kill you right away.”

  Sarah picked up the gun and placed the grip in her left hand as the gray man dragged her closer.

  The pneumatic blast threw him backward, but he managed to hold onto her long enough to send them both tumbling painfully across the ground. All she could think about as she spun head over heels was maintaining her grip on the weapon.

  The moment she came to a stop she tried to find her enemy. Lord Eschaton let out a moan, revealing to her that he had been smashed hard against one of the park's thick, black, wrought-iron fences.

  Sarah winced as she stood up. The skin of her calf where he had grabbed her felt raw underneath her riding breeches.

  She held up the gun and walked toward the gray man. She wondered how she could stop him. Even if she had a temporary advantage, there was no way she could subdue him without at least knocking him unconscious. And what then? She had no rope or handcuffs. It hadn't even occurred to her that she would need them. There would be no way to “win” this fight that didn't involve someone getting badly hurt.

  And she needed to find Tom's heart. If she could get back to the Hall of Paragons, perhaps she could use her copy of the Alpha Element to—

  There was a loud pop, a smack, and then a hiss, like a mechanical sigh. It repeated itself, the smack coming much closer this time. A small chunk of sidewalk flew into the air in the space between her and the gray man.

  “Turn around.” The voice was shockingly familiar. Any hopes she'd had of something positive coming out of this confrontation had now completely evaporated. “Tell me what's going on here.”

  She turned to face her father and tell him what had happened, but the other man spoke first. “She used that gun to destroy the Automaton, and then she almost killed me. Shoot her before she can shoot you.”
>
  The Industrialist—her father—was pointing his gun straight at her. “Drop the weapon. I don't want to shoot a lady, but I will if I must.”

  She had never seen him like this before. Certainly she had witnessed him dressed up as the Industrialist a number of times—his gun, the shield, that ridiculous steaming hat. But what she faced now was what his enemies saw: a smoking monster, full of anger and menace.

  He screamed at her. “I said drop it!”

  And for just an instant she actually considered trying to outshoot him. Some part of her wanted to know if her trigger finger was faster than his—to test herself against this supposed legend, a man she knew as an aging blowhard.

  The bravado was a trick of the adrenaline that was coursing through her. She knew that. Her mother had always said that what her father did was madness, and now she could feel the truth of it. She let the weapon drop from her fingers. “I'm sorry, Father.”

  Sarah closed her eyes and felt the sweat rolling down her face, or was it a tear? Underneath the leather mask even she couldn't tell.

  When she brought the glove up to her face, her father's eyes widened in recognition. “A cog? My gloves? Sarah? Is that you?”

  And then, like someone jerking out of bed only to discover that they are still trapped in the nightmare they thought they'd escaped, a harpoon slammed into her father's arm, just below the shoulder. It severed the connector for his gun, and red steam spewed out from the wound.

  “Thar she blows!” cackled Murphy as he raised his arm into the air and reloaded his frame.

  Sarah dropped to the ground, desperately grasping to get her weapon back into her hands, and when she stood up she heard a roar coming from up above. Looking up into the moonlit sky, she saw a small figure soaring above the rooftops, a trail of steam behind him. “Nathaniel,” she said softly.

  The gray man was already grabbing his coat and shirt from the ground. He looked at her and smiled, his teeth flashing. “So kind of you to join us for the evening, Lady Stanton. My name is Lord Eschaton.” He tipped his head as a greeting. “I only hope that every one of us got what we came for.”