George Mann - The Immorality Engine

Fabian kicked and punched and tried to prise his servant off him, but the man with the porcelain face was relentless. Amelia was chilled by the calm, detached way Mr. Calverton cocked his head to one side as he slowly squeezed the life out of the man who had made him.

She wondered what was going on behind the mask. Perhaps the strange man-machine was seeking revenge, Amelia thought, trying not to look as Fabian’s face changed hue to a bright purple and his tongue lolled out of his mouth. Or perhaps he really had come to save her. Perhaps all those times he had stood watching her, he had known the truth about what Fabian was doing. Perhaps he truly was more man than machine, and it was compassion that had caused him to come to her aid.

Mr. Calverton held Fabian at arm’s length until the doctor’s body stopped twitching and slumped in his grip. The wire-rimmed spectacles slid off Fabian’s nose, tinkling as they struck the wall and smashed into a thousand shards. Then the man-machine dropped the corpse on the ground by Amelia’s feet, its head banging against the skirting board with a dull thud. A second later, and Fabian was still.

Mr. Calverton turned to her and took a step forward, the pistons in his thighs sighing noisily with the effort. He held out his hand, and she reached for it just as the wall beside them ruptured with an enormous crack and a steel fist the size of a man’s head came smashing through, colliding with Mr. Calverton and sending him sprawling across the floor. Amelia rolled to escape the falling debris. When she looked again, Mr. Calverton was trapped beneath a huge, jagged chunk of the wall, his mechanical legs twitching and sparking, blood pooling on the floor beneath his crushed torso.

Amelia peered through the fissure in the wall. A huge suit of shining armour was stomping away down the corridor. She heard another massive crunch as it struck out at another wall, causing a similar collapse, and then it was gone, disappearing through the flames. They’re trying to bring the whole house down, she realised, taking out supporting walls as they continued to rain incendiary devices down on the building from above.

Amelia gathered as much strength as she could and crawled over to where Mr. Calverton was trapped beneath the fallen wall, careful to avoid the gruesome-looking corpse of Dr. Fabian, which was slumped nearby on the floor. Mr. Calverton’s eyes were still open, staring up at the ceiling in startled surprise.

Mr. Calverton was in a bad way. Amelia couldn’t even tell if he was still alive. He didn’t appear to be breathing-but then, she wasn’t really sure if he still needed to breathe. She kneeled before him, testing the weight of the collapsed wall. It was no use; she’d never be able to lift it. Reluctantly, she crawled over to where his head was lying on the maroon carpet.

Mr. Calverton’s porcelain mask had fractured in the fall, and part of it had come away, exposing a small area of pink flesh around his mouth. She studied his eyes. Just when she was about to give up, she saw them flick around to look at her. He made a small, strange noise-the first she had ever heard him make-but its meaning was lost, muffled behind the mask and the sounds of bombing from outside.

Amelia could tell he was dying. The blood was still pooling beneath him, and she realised he must have fallen on something that had opened up his chest. She offered him a sad smile. Then, before she had time to talk herself out of it, she reached over and pulled away the broken mask fragments, revealing the true face of the man beneath.

She stifled a surprised gasp. The face was not at all what she had been expecting. Calverton had once been a handsome man, with full, pink lips and a small, slightly hooked nose. But the left half of his face was terribly scarred with a crisscross of long, puckered valleys. The flesh around the scars was drawn and pink, and they looked to her like ancient knife wounds, as if someone had tried very hard to flay his face from his skull. But what struck her most was his eyes: so sinister when seen behind the mask, but now frightened and human, and filled with sadness.

Amelia gently placed her palm against his scarred flesh. It was cool to the touch. Mr. Calverton opened his mouth and tried to speak again, but all that came out was a croak.

“It’s alright,” said Amelia softly. “I’m here.”

He frowned, his eyes looking suddenly frantic, and he tried again to say something to her. She leaned closer, putting her ear to his lips.

“Thank you,” he whispered, and then his body shook with its final breath, and he was dead.

Amelia, her heart rending, collapsed upon the body of the dead man-machine and wept.

The house was collapsing all around Veronica and Newbury.

Veronica skidded to a halt in the hallway, glancing up frantically at the ceiling, which was groaning and buckling under the strain of the constant bombardment and the weight of the collapsed floors above. All around her, flames licked hungrily at the woodwork, and the staircase at the end of the hall was a raging inferno, the heat of which forced her back, her hands to her face. To her left, a section of the outer wall had been smashed away by the fists of an armoured exoskeleton. Through the gaping wound in the brickwork she saw mounted men still blasting away at the building with their Gatling guns, chewing up the architecture with each spray of bullets.

Veronica heard the scream of more bombs being launched, and felt the house shake with the impact of each volley. Within ten minutes, she was sure the Grayling Institute would be reduced to nothing but a pile of rubble. She looked to Newbury. “Which way?” she called over the noise of the ringing explosions. She hoped he could remember the way to Amelia’s room in the midst of all the chaos.

“This way,” Newbury replied, indicating a corridor that branched off from the main hallway. It was almost entirely engulfed in flames. He glanced at her, and she saw the steel in his eyes. He pulled his jacket off his back and held it over his head. “Here, like this,” he said, and Veronica did the same, shrugging out of her small jacket and holding it over her head to protect her hands and face. “Are you ready?” he asked. She nodded. She was as ready as she’d ever be.

Together, they set off at a run, charging towards the flames.

The heat was incredible, and she was forced to dip her head, her eyes streaming. She charged on regardless, blinded by the smoke and the heat but running as fast as she could through the flaming tunnel, her clothes and hair beginning to singe and smoulder.

She felt someone throw their arms around her and she screamed, nearly bowling them over as she tried to get past. Her jacket fell, smoking, to the floor. She looked round, panicked, only to find herself in Newbury’s arms. His face was covered in streaks of soot and he’d abandoned his jacket. “In here,” he said urgently, and dragged her through an open doorway into a scene of utter devastation.

Veronica righted herself, leaning against the doorjamb as she took in the situation. The room-Amelia’s room-looked like a war zone. Wreckage was strewn about haphazardly: chunks of charred brick and stone, burning fragments of splintered wood. On Veronica’s left a diminutive man in a tweed jacket was crumpled on the floor, his face an obscene shade of purple, his tongue lolling rudely out of the corner of his mouth. This, she presumed, was Dr. Fabian. To her right, a large section of the wall had collapsed upon another man, crushing his legs. She realised with horror that it was the strange man-machine she’d seen in the room with the duplicates during her previous visit. Most disturbing of all was the sight of Amelia lying draped across his mangled body.