Tales of Crow- The Complete series Box Set

by Chris Ward

  He almost made it. The battle had churned up the snow that had been accumulating in the streets ever since the abandonment of the town, and Victor’s foot caught on something metallic hidden beneath its surface. He fell face down, then scrambled up to his knees and turned around, just as something detached itself from the nearest junk pile and lurched across the road towards him.

  It was a man, or had once been. Naked, so gaunt he was almost skeletal, his chest crisscrossed with wires, the only real sign of life was in the bloodshot eyes and bared teeth. Victor tried to stand as the man came rushing for him, but his foot was still trapped and he fell backwards in the snow. The man was on him in a moment, jaws snapping. Only the bag trapped between them kept the man’s teeth off his face, but with his foot still trapped there was only so long Victor could hold him off.

  One clawed hand got a grip on his jacket. Victor, with that arm trapped beneath his bag, tried to roll to the side, only for the man to follow him, and suddenly there was nothing between them. Victor closed his eyes, unable to avoid the inevitable, then a blast of sudden heat passed in front of his face and the weight that had been on top of him wasn’t there anymore.

  Victor opened his eyes to see the gaunt human lying dead in the snow beside him, a gaping wound in his chest that wasn’t bleeding at all. A short distance away stood his old surveillance robot, its caterpillar tracks now repaired. A light flashed on its body, seemingly in greeting.

  ‘I know that was you, Professor,’ Victor said to the machine. ‘I don’t know how you found me, but thanks.’

  If the machine’s light flashed an acknowledgement Victor didn’t see it. He was already up and running back toward the military base with his bag and its precious contents tucked under his arm.

  43

  A duel of kings

  No one could ever tell Kurou he didn’t dress appropriately for each occasion. Looking dapper in his suit and top hat, with the cane clacking on the corridor tiles, he strolled through the deserted corridors of the military base, impatiently awaiting the arrival of his expected visitor. The battle, he considered, had been both won and lost, with the armies on either side nearly decimated. The Grey Man’s conquest of Siberia had fallen on its own sword, and would likely wind down over the next few weeks as hackers cleared the mess that was the internet and saw things for how they really were, a ragtag group of damaged robots near the end of their strength. The Grey Man’s remaining forces would be routed, and a form of peace would once again reign over the land.

  All that remained was the final act, the duel between champions, to see who went home with the spoils, and who bled out on the ground.

  Five years he had hidden from this confrontation, but now he felt confident he would win the day. He appeared to be immune to that which he most feared, that the Grey Man could enter his thoughts, and without that advantage, a man was just a man.

  His cane clacked on the tiles, tapping out the melody of a centuries old classical piece. He had just begun to hum, when slow footsteps from the far end of the corridor began to disrupt his musical accompaniment.

  A long shadow fell across the tiles, and then a tall, broad-shouldered man in a long trench coat stepped into view, his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘Well met, Cousin,’ Kurou whispered, the sound of his voice echoing along the corridor. ‘We meet at last.’

  The Grey Man stopped. Like a statue he stood, blocking the far end of the corridor, his hands falling to his sides like a gunslinger ready to draw.

  ‘Your application for a place at my side has been noted,’ he said, his voice a deep, chocolatey hum, almost seductive. ‘Yet, alas, I must decline.’

  His hands swung up, and Kurou found himself tumbling back along the corridor as if caught by a sudden vicious wind. He scrabbled at the floor to try to slow himself, managing with one hand to hold on to his top hat and cane.

  ‘I guess you don’t like to get too close,’ Kurou said, climbing back to his feet, refusing to dwell on what kind of power the Grey Man was able to wield. ‘Well, neither do I.’

  He lifted the cane and pressed a button on the top, activating a clever little modification he had made the night before. A line of nails flashed through the air, their points razor sharp, but mere metres from their target they dipped and slammed into the ground at the Grey Man’s feet.

  Kurou stared. The Grey Man smiled, lifting another hand.

  This time Kurou ducked sideways into a connecting corridor as a vibration in the air wafted past him, pulling his top hat from his head. The computer tablet fell from his pocket and spun away across the floor. He darted after it, gathering up his hat at the same time with a hooking motion of his foot, feeling the little robot inside bouncing around. Then he was on his feet, scrambling away down the corridor as behind him came the sound of heavy footfalls giving chase.

  A set of metal stairs at the end led down to a lower floor, turning back on itself at a middle landing.

  Kurou leapt down the first flight, using the wall of the landing to stop his momentum. Something in his right forearm cracked, but there would be time to worry about his injuries later. Behind him, the Grey Man’s presence filled the corridor.

  Squatting down as he spun around, Kurou pulled the computer tablet from his pocket as the wall above him exploded, showering him in small pieces of masonry. He pressed a button on the touchpad, and a line of timed explosives activated along the corridor ceiling. As smoke wrapped up around a cacophony of sound, somewhere back in the chaos the Grey Man cried out in pain.

  ‘Strike one,’ Kurou muttered, pushing himself up out of the rubble and hurrying down the second half of the stairs to the floor below. A short way along the corridor he ducked through a side door into an empty storage room and slid down against the wall behind it, pulling out his computer tablet. In a few seconds he had a visual from the cameras in the corridors outside as the Grey Man appeared out of the smoke at the bottom of the stairs.

  The looming figure took a few steps forward then stopped, peering up at the camera. Kurou raised a misshapen eyebrow, surprised. The camera was hidden in the ventilation shaft above the corridor ceiling, invisible unless you knew it was there. The Grey Man stared up at it, giving Kurou a good look at his adversary. The man looked even bigger than in the grainy images Kurou had found buried on the internet, his shoulders broader, more imposing. His eyes were a deeper crimson, but his skin was more white than grey, as if time itself was bleaching him. Through the lens of the camera Kurou felt they were sharing a moment that bordered on respect.

  Then the Grey Man smiled. The image shimmered and then exploded.

  ‘Not playing games, are you, sire?’ Kurou whispered, so quietly even a hawk would be unable to hear. Somewhere outside the door came the sound of heavy footfalls moving away, and Kurou let out a long slow breath.

  The tunnel into the base inclined upwards at an angle that quickly stole the remaining strength from Victor’s legs. He had left most of his tools behind in the snow, with the exception of a heavy wrench he carried for protection and those he would need when he got the machine component back to Isabella. In truth, he didn’t know for sure if his plan would work, but when everyone around him seemed to be dying, it felt appropriate to try to give life rather than take it away.

  He soon slowed to a walk up the gently inclining concrete road, his feet leaving prints in the old dust between the lines of tyre tracks. The base was nearly empty now, everything of use sent to help defend the town.

  Up ahead, the entrance to the base came into view at the end of the tunnel, a wide set of steel doors some five metres high that had opened the first time on operation after Patricia had kidnapped Kurou and then got stuck, remaining open ever since. They led into the hangar on the third floor, the one containing most of the War Horses as well as several old tanks and transport vehicles, although most were gone now.

  Feeling a little nervous about so much open space, Victor kept close to the wall as he headed for the stairs that led up to the me
dical bay on Level Two. Empty, the hangar was uncomfortably large, some two hundred metres across, a great circular cave carved out of solid rock. Only as he got to know the complex better had Victor realised that the hangars were built at staggered intervals to limit the threat of collapse. The complex was quite literally a giant staircase heading down into the bowels of the earth.

  Victor was nearly at the foot of the stairs that would lead him to Isabella when a tall, pale man stepped out of an entrance a quarter of the way around the side of the hangar from where he stood.

  Victor instinctively threw himself back into an alcove as the man strode a few metres out into the centre of the huge cave and looked around. A sudden cold wind seemed to rustle in the air. Too terrified even to think, Victor stared at a crack in the dusty rock floor and dared not move.

  Where are you?

  The words came so loud and clear in Victor’s mind it was as if they had been spoken right into his ear. The initial terror was so great that he just shut his thoughts down and listened, aware that in some manner that he couldn’t fathom they were coming from the man standing in the middle of the hangar, who only needed to turn a little to the right and look up to see Victor cowering against the wall.

  Come out and play, Kurou.

  Was this the Grey Man that Kurou had talked about? Victor could understand the description. While the man’s clothing was all black, his face and hair were a shade of off-white that made Victor feel like he was looking at a picture cut out of an old newspaper. The man glowed with power and strength, but in his newspaper cut-out face was a darkness that Victor could barely imagine. This was the man, he recalled, who had brought a wave of annihilation crashing across Siberia, and while he lived he was a threat to them all.

  Isabella.

  Victor couldn’t keep the thought out of his head any longer. He knew he had made a mistake as the Grey Man tensed and started to turn. Victor wasn’t even properly concealed, the slight bend in the rock barely deep enough for a man half his size to hide.

  With no choice other than to stand and die, Victor made a dash for the stairs, his bag bouncing against his waist as he ran. He didn’t look up, but something wrapped itself around his legs, pulling him sideways. He glanced down, saw nothing there, then crashed to the hard floor, rolling on to his back. The Grey Man was ahead of him, looming like a colossus, his hands raised above his head, face twisted with anger. Victor scrabbled for the bag, trying to get the wrench, then his hand jerked back, striking the floor hard enough to crack his knuckles. As he slid closer, he wondered if he would just split apart, circumnavigate the Grey Man in two wide semi-circles, then come crashing bloody and bruised back together again on the other side.

  Then a fat silver ball struck the Grey Man in the chest, opening out like a butterfly from a cocoon to spread silvery tendrils around his torso. Victor felt the force dragging him along the ground vanish as the Grey Man struggled against the wires that had engulfed him, roaring with both pain and anger as he tried to free himself from the net that was constricting tighter with each movement.

  ‘You may leave us now, young sire,’ came a familiar voice from behind him, and Victor turned to see Kurou standing back by the corridor entrance, in one hand a gun with an overlarge barrel like an old fashioned blunderbuss, his cane in the other. He still wore his top hat, although it had been partially crushed and now tilted to one side. ‘I have a little private business with our visitor.’

  Victor didn’t wait to be asked twice. He climbed up and staggered to the stairs. As he reached them he turned and looked back, lifting a hand to Kurou, wondering as he did so whether it was a wave of goodbye, or a wave of thanks. Kurou cocked his head for a moment, and his one eye appeared to wink. Then he turned away, walking slowly towards his enemy. Victor watched him for a second, then hurried up the stairs. By the time he reached the first landing the professor was out of sight.

  The Grey Man tried to roll to his feet, but the wires had wrapped themselves around his chest and arms, and any attempt to move caused them to bite into first his clothes and then his skin. Already he was sticky with blood across one shoulder and the underside of one arm. What kind of weapon was this? He was caught like a deer in a barbed wire net.

  Kurou stopped a short distance away, the weapon tucked under one arm and a cane under the other. ‘Impressed, sire? I discovered this antique down in a basement. A few modifications made it my own. Delightful, wouldn’t you say? It’s been so long since I’ve felt such a level of mastery over anything; it was a feeling I had almost forgotten.’

  The Grey Man waited. He had been hasty too many times in the past, and it had cost him dearly. Despite the hate smouldering inside him for this insolent fool, Kurou held the upper hand. He had to wait for an opening.

  Kurou took off his hat and reached inside, pulling out a tiny robot. He turned it over in misshapen hands disguised by white gloves.

  ‘That young man you just tried to harm gave this to me,’ he said. ‘It is an exact replica of the first robot I ever built, too many years ago to remember. It is … special to me.’

  He squatted down and set it on the floor in front of the Grey Man. ‘And now, I think my work here is done, sire. If my duties are no longer required, I think I will retire for the night.’

  ‘I could make great use of your skills,’ The Grey Man said slowly. ‘I control most of Russia. Soon I will head west, to make my presence known in Europe. I have great power that you do not understand and many people stand in awe in my shadow. A man like you could create great things if given the freedom and the resources to do so. I can give you all of those things.’

  Kurou sighed. ‘I was given them before,’ he said wistfully. ‘I held the world in my hands, just as perhaps you think you do now. I lost everything; my wealth, my power, my looks … even the one I considered my daughter.’ He smiled. ‘That hurt more than most. Losing one I considered dear, watching her walk away.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, she tried to kill me first, but let’s not complicate things, shall we? Tell me, sire, have you ever lost anyone dear? Have you ever lost anyone close to you?’

  Was this fool mocking him? The Grey Man felt a renewed surge of anger. Holding himself as still as possible, he made hands with his mind, reaching out for whatever he could take hold of, finding only the wires encircling himself and the tiny robot sitting in front of him. Kurou’s mind was like an impenetrable wall.

  ‘A lady friend, perhaps?’ Kurou gave a hideous lopsided grin. ‘After I was done with her I told her I would say goodbye.’

  The Grey Man roared, trying to leap up, but it only served to pull the wires tighter, cutting into his flesh. He collapsed on the floor as agony surged through him, hearing behind him the slow beep beep beep of something counting down. He pushed out at the ground with his mind and managed to roll himself over, only to see the little robot standing in front of him, its eyes flashing in turn, one by one.

  The flashing lights were gradually repeating faster and faster.

  He barely noticed that Kurou was nowhere to be seen, seemingly having vanished into the air. With nothing else he could do, the Grey Man reached out with his power and smote the tiny machine back across the hangar towards the stairway and the distant exit, praying that he could get it through the door before the explosive went off.

  The more distant something became, though, the weaker his hold over it, and the tiny explosive came to a bouncing stop in the shadow of the stairwell. Too late, the Grey Man realised what he had inadvertently done.

  The little robot exploded, bringing the stairwell above it crashing down to cover the cave entrance, sealing the only way into or out of the hangar.

  He had sealed his own tomb.

  Kurou’s laughter seemed to come from everywhere, and a moment later he realised that it did, from speakers fitted high up in the walls. The Grey Man tried to sit up, looking around, searching for some other way out or something he could use to first free himself from the wires encircling him, then unblock the entrance so he
could escape before he ran out of oxygen.

  Then, almost as if the curtain was coming down on the final act of mankind’s greatest stage performance, the lights went out, plunging the cavern into total and complete darkness.

  44

  Hellos and Goodbyes

  Victor had just reached the medical bay corridor when he felt the explosion on the level below. A blast of warm air made him blink, then everything went quiet. Whatever had happened, only one thing was certain: he didn’t have much time left to save Isabella and get them both to safety.

  He took the wrench from his bag and crept along the corridor, staying close to the wall as he approached the turn before the door to Isabella’s room. He peered around it, his eyes going wide at a sight of disarray. The walls of the corridor were seared with burn marks and scarred from some kind of explosion. The door had buckled and in front of it lay the twisted remains of a chair.

  The guard’s body lay in a heap several metres further along the corridor, thrown there by the explosion, his clothes ripped and chard. Feeling nauseous, Victor looked down, and saw the imprints of a small pair of shoes leading through the dust of the explosion and up to the door.

  A sudden fear for Isabella overwhelmed everything, but even then he hesitated. What if she was already dead and her killer was waiting for him?

  He put a hand on the damaged door and eased it open a few inches. From inside came the beeping of Isabella’s life support, accompanied by the rustle of the ventilator. He breathed a sigh of relief and pushed the door a little wider.

  When it was halfway open it stopped, blocked by something on the floor behind it. Victor eased into the gap, looked down, and saw the end of one of Robert Mortin’s crutches pushed against the edge of the door. He tried to kick it out of the way, but it was held in place by the weight of Robert Mortin’s body on top of it.