Tim Akers - Heart of Veridon

I clambered forward, keeping low, keeping the declination of the hill in my favor. He was yelling towards the Torch again, strolling casually back to it. Now. Now or not at all. I stood and ran. The rain beat a tattoo across my face, and the storm roared around me. Not a noise from the Torch. Wilson saw me, nodded, then bowed his head.

I raised my pistol and ran.

I ran at him, my feet hammering the ground, the storm driving me forward. I was as quiet as I could be at a full sprint. Easy to get lost in this storm. Someone saw me. A cry went up, then shots. A bullet whizzed past me, ripping through the air; another snapped at my jacket. Sloane turned and yelled, then lurched towards the Torch. I raised my pistol and fired. Five shots, five bullets. They all missed.

I barreled into the man. I fell, and my revolver skittered away. The firing had stopped, everyone too afraid of hitting the boss. I rolled over him and put my fist into his throat. Sudden pain, and I realized he had a knife in my shoulder. I slapped it aside and punched him again.

A guard grabbed me around the shoulders. I threw him off, but Sloane slithered out from under me. I grabbed his leg, then the steel butt of a shortrifle cracked against my head. Next thing I knew I was face first against the rain-slick stone. Sloane stood up and faced me.

“You have no patience, Jacob,” he said. “That is your failing. No patience and-”

I leapt at him. One of the guards yelled and tried to intercept me. Together we bowled into Sloane. The three of us started sliding down the hill, arms and legs banging against the stone, fingers bloody as we sought some purchase on the old rock. I ended up with my arms around the guard, my fingers around Sloane’s throat. The Badgeman was trying to beat me around the head, but the leverage was bad. I squeezed closer to him, to keep him off balance. Sloane was kicking pathetically at me. We came to a stop among some coiled wires. Sloane’s struggles were slowing down.

More Badgemen came to help. A crowd of arms descending on me, punching and grabbing, wrestling me off the dying Sloane. I dragged at his clothes, felt something tear away in my hand. They had me upright in a moment, and two of them were taking turns slamming their fists into my midsection. Sloane was on one knee, watching, a hand to his throat and the other steadying himself on the ground. I was yelling, but I don’t know what I was getting at. Just a lot of yelling. Sloane stepped forward, weaved on his feet, then slapped me across the face. One of the Badgemen behind me dropped. Another yelped and spun away. Sloane looked startled.

Wilson stepped forward, the blade of his knife smeared in blood. The ropes that hung loosely around his chest were frayed, gnawed through. I picked up one of the shortrifles. Sloane was running.

“Good of you to show up,” I gasped.

“Same,” Wilson said. “I take it they weren’t downstairs.”

“No.”

“Figured. You see anyone, down there?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think I did. Sloane have the Cog?”

“Yeah. In a pouch around his neck.”

I squinted at him, then picked up the fabric I’d torn off Sloane a minute earlier. The Cog slid out into my hand.

“Huh,” Wilson said. “Good for us. Maybe we should try to run?”

“No. They’ve still got Emily.” I gripped the Cog, watching the tiny wheels spin free against my palm. “Maybe we can make a trade. Or pretend to, at least.”

“That sounds like it could get us killed,” he said. We looked around. The guards had fled, though a cluster of them was organizing their courage down near the entrance to the Chapel of the Air, near the foot of the Torch. Sloane had disappeared into the hangars. “Let’s clean up.”

“What is that thing up there? The thing holding Emily?”

“Some kind of… machine. A brutal surgeon, Jacob. It’s preparing her.”

“Preparing her?” I clenched my teeth. “Preparing her for what?”

Wilson looked up at the sky. The Angel.

I started up the hill. Wilson put a hand on my shoulder. “Hold, son. Sloane’s got the key. You’re going to want to hunt him down, first.”

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“You’re going to want to hunt him down,” he said, quietly.

I gave the Torchlight a look, squinted at the slowly lumbering darkness there, then turned my attention to the hangars. They shivered in the wind, their charges banging against the walls and straining at their moorings.

“Where’d he go?”

“Down there, somewhere.” Wilson was on one knee, reloading a stolen shortrifle. I checked the chamber on the one I was carrying. It hadn’t been discharged, not even once. Wilson stood up. We crept down the stone hill, into the lee of the nearest hangar.

Inside was one of the city’s warships, FCL Thunderous Dawn. It filled the hangar, its battle sponsons grinding against the wooden walls of the long building. As we snuck along the perimeter of the hangar, I loosened each of the moorings that we came to.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Thinking ahead,” I said. “Just keep an eye out for Sloane.”

We made it three quarters of the way around the building when the guards who had been cowering among the derricks put in an appearance. They kicked in the door and began rushing around the tight confines of the hangar. As soon as they saw the free moorings, they rushed the main carriage of the ship. The Dawn was larger than the Glory had been; there were dozens of ways into and out of the ship. The guards disappeared into the warship’s armored interior, spun up the running lights and started yelling at each other as they searched. Wilson and I snuck out.

“How do you know Sloane didn’t do that? Hide in the airship? He could be in there right now, talking to the guards.”

“Could be. I think he went straight through that hangar, quick as he could.” I crawled over to some barrels laid out between the hangars. “He’s not really interested in running from us, Wilson. He doesn’t get paid that way.”

“So where is he?”

“Don’t know. Waiting for us somewhere. We find a good place to hold up, he’ll come find us. He can’t afford to lose us.”

“If that Angel shows up, do you have a plan?”

“I don’t know. Kill it again?”

“You really think this shit out, don’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah.” I popped my head over the barrels, tried to get a good sight of the Torch. Too much bad weather, not enough light. There wasn’t much cover between here and there, nothing but the night and the rain. “I’m not waiting around. Let’s go get our girl.”

We went up the hill slowly, squatting and peering into the night storm. There was light flickering around the Torch; not much, just enough to show forms and silhouettes in the darkness. We followed a trail of barrels and supplies that were strewn across the hill, cutting closer and closer to the Torch. When we got as near as we could, I gave Wilson a nod then we both jumped out and rushed the Torch.

Sloane stood next to a massive iron and brass machine, not usually native to the Torchlight. I imagined that it had been brought up from those basements. Probably why they cleared out the cadets. You didn’t want something like this in the public eye.

Installing cogwork takes time. You inscribe the mnemonic engram in the patient’s mind, usually through pattern memorization or hypnosis. Then you inject the foetal metal into the body. The metal latches on to the pattern in the engram, which directs how the cogwork forms in the body. Over time the foetus replaces the natural tissue of the patient with the prescribed cogwork enhancement. For me, it replaced my heart, parts of both of my lungs, enhanced and restructured my bones to serve as conduits and rebuilt my eyes. Even my blood is still flooded with foetal metal, anxious to rebuild any part of my body in accordance with the master pattern. It’s how I heal so fast. Of course, my implants are different, something to do with hidden Camilla and whatever bit of her dissected form ended up in my chest. But that’s how it generally works.