The Girl With the Iron Touch

  Slowly, she pushed herself to her bare feet, bracing her hand against the rough wall to keep from falling as her head threatened to explode. What the devil had they coshed her with? An iron bar?

  No. She’d been struck by an arm. A metal arm. Automatons had abducted her from King House. Why? Who had sent them? And why would they take her? Yes, she was the smallest and the weakest of their makeshift family, but it wasn’t as though she was anyone important.

  Unless, of course, the people behind her abduction knew about her “talent” with machines. That was impossible, of course. However, her knowledge of mechanics, logic engines and invention wasn’t something she ever sought to hide. She’d even had some of her papers on the topic of the future of automation and the possibility of “adaptable” machines published by the Royal Society.

  But machines didn’t need sophisticated logic engines to learn and adapt. She knew this because of the Queen Victoria automaton the Machinist had constructed.

  Queen Victoria. The memory flooded her mind, bringing a rush of dizziness that made her want to vomit. She had seen that awful creature before being knocked out.

  Once it had looked like a real person, moved and acted like a real person, but all of its organic compounds had been taken from the actual queen. A flesh-and-metal hybrid that could adapt and change because the organites in its living tissue made it sentient.

  She thought they had destroyed it. Obviously someone had put it back together and hadn’t done a very good job of it. If it was running about on its own, this was very bad, indeed. The Machinist had programmed it to take the place of the true queen. Was it still trying to obtain that goal? Or had it moved on to something else?

  The machine that had ripped Sam apart had acted against its programming because of organite infestation. Someday another automaton would do the same thing and then the organites wouldn’t be their secret—not anymore. And if it wasn’t machines, it would be someone looking into all the “special” humans that seemed to be cropping up. Eventually people were going to want the beasties for themselves, and then the world would be in a lot of trouble.

  But that was not what she needed to fret over at this time. She’d never been the sort to fly into histrionics and she wasn’t about to start now. She had survived worse things than being kidnapped, and she would make it through this, too. She would survive. She would escape, and she would put an end to the “Victoria” once and for all.

  First item of business was to clean up the blood and give herself a thorough inspection. Fortunately, there was also a looking glass in the room. It was ancient, its wooden frame warped and scarred. The mirror itself wasn’t in much better shape, but it didn’t matter that it made her appear as long and as wiggly as an apple peel, she just needed to see the damage.

  The wound on her head looked worse than it was, as those injuries often did. Once she cleaned up the blood she could see that it was more of a lump than a cut. A nasty bruise was beginning to form around the area, and she realized she was most likely concussed. Fortunately for her, she had enough organites in her system that she’d heal much quicker than she ought.

  After cleaning up and inspecting herself for bruising, wounds or perhaps injection sites, she began poking around her surroundings, learning every inch of the cell. As she examined the door for a possible weakness, the heavy iron slab swung open. She jumped back to keep from being struck. The lump on her head throbbed in punishment, and her stomach clenched as the room seemed to swim around her. Blasted concussion.

  Moving quickly was not good. She lurched back and stumbled as the back of her legs met the cot. She sat down hard. That hurt her head, too, but at least she wasn’t in danger of falling down—or was closer to the floor if she did.

  Long, multiple-jointed legs entered the room first. The creature that crossed the threshold resembled a large metal spider, with a baby doll head perched on top. Its logic engine whirled and clicked, but Emily had the feeling that was more for movement than behavior. She felt this because the head turned toward her, and even though the eyes watching her were glass, she could see a spark of something behind them.

  Awareness.

  Bloody hell, this was not good.

  “Why am I here?” Emily demanded of the…thing. She had no idea what to call it, but she knew not to underestimate it.

  It clicked and clacked toward her, surprisingly nimble. Fast. It was horrifying, but she wasn’t afraid. She was disturbed, perhaps even disgusted by it. It was no longer in its original design. Someone or something had modified it.

  “You are here because you are needed,” it replied. Its speech was slightly halting and a little rough, sounding as though it came from the bottom of a metal drum. “You are awake and dressed. You will come with me.”

  It was only when Emily opened her mouth to respond that she realized the machine had not spoken to her in English. It had spoken to her in a chittering, clicking manner, that somehow she understood.

  She didn’t attempt to respond in the same language, however. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Not until I know why I was taken from my home and am being treated like a prisoner.”

  The doll head cocked to one side—disconcerting. “You are a guest.”

  “Guests aren’t coshed over the head and locked up in a dirty cell.”

  “This is all there is. The door is locked to protect you, protect us. You will come with me now, please?”

  So it had some manners. That didn’t make her feel any better than realizing she understood it had. “No.”

  One of the long legs reached out, the pincers at the end grabbing at her arm. Emily wrapped her fingers around it, reached deep down inside herself and called up her talent.

  “What…what are you doing?” the spider demanded, its many limbs pumping and twitching as she forced her will upon it.

  It was like she melded with the metal. Its energy flowed from metal to her skin, along her nerves to her brain, where something was able to process it all into information she could understand. Her skin tingled and her blood rushed through her veins, roaring in her ears. It was like being on the back of Sam’s velocycle when he used to take her for drives and go as fast as the machine would move. She could almost feel the wind in her hair. It was exhilarating.

  “You’re going to let me go,” Emily informed the metal monster. “You are going to lead me out of here and let me go home. Understood?”

  “Yes. No. That is not my mission.”

  “What is your mission?”

  “I will not tell you. You cannot make me!”

  The thing had her there. She was pushing her mind against it as hard as she could, but it was like trying to shove her brain out her nose. Even more worrisome was just how flimsy her hold on the ugly thing really was. If it was just a machine she could control it, but it was sentient and had free will.

  It fought back. The pounding in her head and nausea in her stomach intensified, but she pushed harder. So did the machine.

  A stab of pain exploded behind her eyes, white-hot and sharp, like being stabbed with a blade fresh from the forge.

  She released the metal appendage, dropping her attempt at control like a hot iron. Immediately, the pain in her head lessened.

  The doll head couldn’t change its painted smile, but there was wariness in the eyes. She knew the feeling. Griffin’s aunt Cordelia was a telepath. She’d dipped into Emily’s brain once and never did again. Emily’s reaction to the violation had been…indignant rage was probably the best description. She doubted Cordelia had felt the same sort of pain.

  “Come with me.”

  Said the spider to the fly, Emily thought, massaging her forehead with her fingers. She followed after the skittering creature without argument. There might be a chance to escape, and at the very least she’d be able to better study her surroundings and get an idea of where she was. Once she knew that, she could figure out the best way to escape—or to get word to Sam and the others.

  Sam. They hadn’t gotte
n to finish their conversation.

  That was what really pissed her off, to borrow a phrase from Finley. She should be back at King House listening to Sam tell her he loved her, too. At least, that was what she expected he might say—if he even realized that he loved her. And he had to love her, because seeing his face every day was what made her get out of bed some mornings, especially after a night of bad dreams.

  Regardless of whether or not he was aware of his feelings, she knew that Sam would come for her. And she knew that Finley would be with him, and so would Griffin even though he was sick. And Jasper, despite his own problems, would come as well, because that’s what friends did for one another. Her friends would soon be looking for her—if they weren’t already.

  She just had to stay alive long enough to be saved or save herself.

  As the automaton led her away from her room, down a hall to another, larger space, Emily realized where she was. Underground, the catacombs. She knew because she could smell the hot grease from the trains on the steam-dampened air, and there was a bit of a Roman wall sticking up from the dirt floor. This might have been a street or an alley several centuries earlier.

  Now it was home to a motley bunch that dropped her jaw as soon as she saw them.

  Automatons. At least a dozen of them in various shapes and sizes and made from different materials. Some looked new, others ancient, and some had been patched together with scrap like old soldiers mended as best they could be on the field of battle and then sent home.

  “How did you all come to be here?” she asked as, one by one, the machines stopped what they were doing and turned to her. Some were big and faceless things— nothing humanoid about them at all. Others were small and looked like dustbins or toys. A few were quite human, indeed.

  There was another girl there. A pretty girl who looked vaguely familiar to her. Had they met before? Emily opened her mouth to say something, anything to get the girl’s attention, and then quickly snapped it shut as the girl turned her head.

  This was not a girl—not a human one at any rate. Not yet. She was lovely with hair much similar in color to Emily’s own, but she was taller with more curves. Bits of her metal skeleton were still visible, though just barely through the pale flesh that covered her. She was being taken over by organic material, becoming a living thing.

  And when she was done no one would know she wasn’t human. This was the “package” Jack Dandy had been asked to deliver, she was sure of it. She was more organic now than when Jack had opened the crate, but it was her.

  It wasn’t coincidence that the machines had come for her, Emily realized, the notion taking hold with an icy certainty in the pit of her stomach. They had seen her with Finley earlier. Those feelings of having been watched were justified and not just paranoia. And certainly not rats. They had tracked her and brought her here, but why? Why her and not Finley?

  The automaton led her into yet another room. A few of the others followed. She could hear them chattering behind her—some in English, some in machine-speak. She understood some of it, but with all of them talking at once she could only pick out a few words like mother, savior and master. None of those were particularly comforting.

  “This is why you are here,” the metal told her, pointing one tarnished, arachnid-like limb at what appeared to be a large incubator. Emily turned her attention toward the glass tube setting in an iron base, tubes and wires running into and around it. A bellows kept the rhythm of relaxed human breathing.

  When she saw what was in the tub she gasped. Horror grabbed her by the throat and squeezed hard.

  “You will fix him, mother,” the spider told her. “Fix our Master so that he may lead us.”

  Like hell she would. Fear bled away to rage. And hate.

  It was Leonardo Garibaldi in that glass womb, the man responsible for the deaths of Griffin’s parents and Finley’s father. The man who would have killed them all if he could. The man whose experiments led to Sam’s injuries.

  “Like hell I’ll fix him,” she said. She’d die first.

  Then there was a pinch in her arm. She turned around to see the pretty automaton girl standing beside her, a syringe in her hand.

  Then Emily’s knees gave out and everything went black.

  Even Jasper joined the search for Emily. He took off faster than a human could ever imagine, running through the grounds and the entire neighborhood. Sam checked her laboratory—again—and tried to reach her on her portable telegraph.

  The machine was on Emily’s workbench in the greenhouse, where Finley found it while searching the building her friend had been taken from. Sam had already been through it, but he asked her to look, too.

  “I don’t trust my own judgment,” he told her, fists clenched. “I’m too angry and I’m too scared, and I don’t mind admitting it, not when it could make the difference between finding Em and not.”

  It was an oddly lengthy bit of conversation coming from him. And she felt for him—sympathized even.

  Whoever took Emily had hurt her. The blood on the floor and splattered on a nearby plant was proof of that. No wonder Sam didn’t trust himself to be thorough. The thought of someone doing violence against her friend woke up that part of her Finley thought long gone, or at least long assimilated. It was her, but not her, and it wanted blood of its own.

  She couldn’t give in. She wouldn’t. Out of all of them Emily was the most fragile. Finley knew it wasn’t fair, but how could she not think that way? Next to Sam, Finley was the strongest of them all physically; Jasper could shoot the wings off a fly before you could blink; and Griffin could topple buildings. Emily could control machines but had no idea the extent of that ability. Unless she had some of her inventions with her she would have nothing but her wits to fall back on.

  Emily was a bloody genius, but her brain couldn’t rip the face off someone trying to hurt her.

  Her automaton cat sat nearby. The cat should have protected Emily as it was programmed to do, but someone had yanked the power cell out of its chest panel. Poor thing. If it had been like Garibaldi’s machines it might have defended itself, but it could only do what it was told. That was probably a good thing given that it had metal fangs—why Emily would install those was beyond her—and weighed more than a full-grown man.

  Finley replaced the cell and the metal shield that went over it. In a few seconds the cat’s eyes lit up and its engine engaged. She peered into its glowing gaze. Emily had placed something she called “optical aperture sensory devices” in the cat’s head so that it could record what it saw. Maybe it had “seen” Emily’s attackers before they disabled it.

  She rose to her feet and studied the ground. There was no blood except for that one spot, which she assumed to be Emily’s. No broken glass, no sign of a struggle. There were, however, little pits in the floor, as though something heavy and pointed had dug into it. There was also a set of footprints. Whoever left them had a heavy, shuffling gait.

  “Find anything?” Sam stood at the threshold, as though he was afraid to enter the building, or was perhaps a vampire who had not been invited in, like in Mr. Stoker’s book. After the past six months Finley wouldn’t be surprised to find out such monsters truly existed.

  Finley rose to her feet. “Maybe. Some interesting prints.”

  “I noticed those. Any idea what might have made those indents?”

  “None. But I think the cat might have seen the kidnappers.”

  His dark eyes brightened. “Yeah? Let’s take a look.” He crossed the threshold and the distance between them in a few long strides, and scooped the metal feline up under his arm. She had to admit—but only to herself and never to him—that his strength was impressive.

  “Do you know how to operate it?” he asked as they walked back to the house.

  She shook her head. “Not really. I can flick the power switch. Griffin will know.” Was there anything Griffin couldn’t do as far as she was concerned?

  A dull flush crept up Sam’s cheeks. “About earlie
r…”

  Finley held up her hand. “Please don’t. I’d rather pretend it didn’t happen.” But it had. He had walked in at the worst possible moment and she didn’t know whether to kill him or thank him for it. She wanted to be with Griffin in…that way, but she wanted him to feel as though he could confide in her first.

  “You care about him—Griffin—don’t you?”

  The finer art of subtlety was obviously lost on him. A girl would have known she didn’t want to talk about her relationship with Griffin. “Sam—”

  “She told me she loves me.”

  Finley swallowed her words. If he’d dropped the cat on her foot she wouldn’t have been more surprised. “What?”

  His cheeks were crimson. “Em. Earlier today. She told me she loves me.”

  Emily O’Brien was the bravest person she’d ever known. Quite possibly fearless. She was Finley’s bloody hero. “What did you say?” It was none of her business, but she didn’t know what else to say, and he was the one who had brought it up.

  “Nothing.” His jaw clenched as his gaze fell from hers. “Jasper showed up and I had to leave.”

  “What would you have said if Jasper hadn’t come in when he did?”

  Sam looked up, just barely making eye contact once more. “That I was the luckiest git in the world.”

  Finley smiled. She didn’t often feel affection toward Sam, but this moment might change all that. “You are, indeed.”

  He frowned—it was a pained expression rather than his usual anger. The anguish in his eyes was almost too much, too personal, for Finley to bear. “What if…what if I never get to tell her?”

  How the devil did this insufferable arse manage to break her heart so bloody easily? Her throat actually tightened.

  “You’ll be able to tell her, Sam. I promise you that. Now let’s go find Griffin and see what our feline friend has to show us.”

  He nodded and fell into step beside her as they neared the house.

  “Finley?”

  Just over the threshold, she turned. “Yes?”