Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

Each daemon was like a vast, complex chord, with primary and secondary notes. If he could match those notes, he had the anchors he could use to drag it into phase with his world.

The room felt darker and colder suddenly. His skin prickled.

That was it. He'd found its range, its highest and lowest frequencies. He opened his eyes and looked at the control console.

It was enormous.

"You've found something?' Plome called from the other side of the sanctum.

Crake stared at the dials for a moment. Could you do this? Could you bring it through? With Plome here as witness? Spit and blood, how they'd talk about that one in the secret journals.

He caught himself. Hadn't he learned anything? Didn't he know where unrestrained ambition would get him?

'It's nothing,' he said, and reset the dials. He wouldn't make the same mistake this time.

He began again. Daemons fluctuated, shifting pitch and bandwidth all the time, and they were frustratingly tricky to pin down. It was another half hour before he found one that stayed still long enough for him to catch it. This one was smaller, occupying the higher end. He penned it in with interference frequencies, preventing it from escaping into the subsonics, and then set about identifying its primary resonances. It began to struggle, but Crake was persistant, and each time he nailed one of the notes in the chord it had a little less wriggle room.

Acrid sweat trickled from beneath his hairline as he worked. Lost in his work, he forgot himself and where he was, his mind focused entirely on the task. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

'You're not getting away,' he murmured. 'Not from Grayther Crake.'

An atmosphere of unreality had descended on the sanctum. An indefinable feeling of strangeness. The mind knew something was wrong but couldn't quite work out what. The presence of a being from the aether disturbed the senses on a subconscious level.

Something pounded on the inside of the echo chamber, making Crake jump.

'By the Allsoul,' Plome gasped. 'Something's here.'

Crake held his hand out to Plome to shut him up. He checked his dials again, zeroing in on the last of the frequencies he'd identified. He couldn't risk it slipping away or getting free.

Another ringing metal impact. Crake wiped sweat from his eyes and turned a dial by a fraction of a centimetre.

Got you.

There was a flurry of pounding on the inside of the metal sphere. Crake reached for a lever and threw it, blasting the interior of the echo chamber with a muddle of conflicting frequencies boosted to incredible volume. The daemon wailed in agony and confusion, a high, thin shriek that made Plome clap his hands over his ears.

Crake returned the lever to its original position, and the tumult ended.

'I know you can hear me,' he said sternly, addressing the daemon in the chamber. 'Behave.'

There was no sound from the daemon.

He flipped a switch to turn on the resonator. It filled the echo chamber with the frequencies he'd recorded when he was studying the metal sphere. 'I'm searching for this,' he said. 'You will tell me where I can find it.'

Crake waited. The echo chamber sat there, humming. The control panel was on the side of the chamber, and he couldn't see the porthole from where he stood. He felt a powerful urge to go round and peer inside, but he also remembered what had happened last time he did that. Glimpsing a daemon could send a man out of his mind.

Careful, he thought. Get the job done. You can indulge your curiosity afterwards.

A sudden, loud impact on the inside of the chamber, hard enough to dent it. A feral, blood-chilling roar. Crake threw the lever, and the roar turned to a squeal. He kept up the torture for longer this time.

'You will damn well do as you're told!' he snarled through gritted teeth.

He pulled the lever back, and the squeal faded. For a time, there was only the hum of the echo chamber and the mass of semi-audible frequencies thrown out by Plome's perimeter defence. Crake could feel his heart skipping, and hear the breath in his ears.

Then there was another sound. A moist clicking, coming from within the chamber. Half-drawn breaths, quick, desperate gasps.

Crake went cold. He'd heard that sound before.

Throw the lever. Throw the lever and blast that thing back to the aether.

But he didn't. He needed to see. A terrible curiosity drew him. It couldn't be what he thought it was. It was just a trick. It had to be. But he needed to prove that to himself.

He stepped away from the controls and moved around to the front of the echo chamber. Plome was watching him breathlessly from the edge of the room, where he crouched by his own array of control panels.

That sound. That wet, rattling clutch for breath. It couldn't be.

He looked through the porthole.

There was a little girl in the chamber. She was lying on her back, head tilted, staring out at him with an expression of terrified incomprehension. There was blood in her hair, blood on her lips; her white dress was sodden. It welled from slashes down her arms, across her collarbone and scalp. She drew a short, clicking gasp, dragging air into punctured lungs.

His niece.

An involuntary cry of anguish tore from his throat. A flood of sudden weakness threatened to make him faint. He stumbled back from the chamber, vision blurring with tears, then staggered sideways and tripped against one of the thick cables plugged into the echo chamber. There was an fizz and a bright shower of sparks as the cable plug was tugged halfway out of its socket. The sight alarmed him enough to shake him out of his horrified state. He lunged towards it, seized the cable with both hands, and plunged it back into the socket.

There was a snap of wild electricity, and the lights in the sanctum went out.

'Crake!' Plome cried. 'Crake! What's going on?'

It was pitch black, and the temperature had plunged to below freezing. Crake listened to his own frightened breathing, to reassure himself he was still there. He fumbled in the pocket of his coat for matches. He always had matches somewhere on him, for those rare times when he felt the need to smoke.

'Crake!'

'Stay there!' he called. 'Don't leave the controls! That's what it wants!'

Suddenly he remembered the oil lanterns he'd seen in the corner of the room. He lit a match. It illuminated little more than his hands, the steam of his breath, and the curve of the echo chamber. The darkness was thick and unnatural.

'Crake! Crake, speak to me, damn it!'

'I said man the controls!' he shouted.

'Crake!' Plome's voice was distant now, fading. 'Crake, say something!'

'Stay where you are!' Crake yelled. But he heard nothing more.

He walked carefully around the echo chamber and headed across the sanctum in what he hoped was the right direction. He lit a new match from his old one, afraid to let the dark close in for even a moment. The flame seemed unnaturally feeble. He listened, but heard only the sounds of his own terror.

His foot bumped against something, and he leaned down. A tarnished lantern. He grabbed it, and put his match to the wick. The flame caught and swelled, and drove the darkness back. Crake let out a shuddering breath, then stood up and came face to face with Bess.

His hand flew to his chest at the sight of the great metal golem. This can't be right! She can't be here! But when several moments passed and she still hadn't moved, he realised something was different about her. He peered inside her face-grille and saw no light within. She wasn't there. It was only the armoured suit, vacant and immobile. Cables ran from it into the darkness. Back towards the echo chamber.

Just like the night I made that suit come to life.