Tim Akers - Dead of Veridon

No way but the direct way. I rested my hand on the wrought iron handle of the door, breathing deeply. The iron was cold and my palms were sweating. Nothing to hear inside. Nothing to do but go at it. I pulled the door open and stepped inside.

The chamber was dark and cold. I had never been in here when the engines of the Algorithm weren't going. It made sense that the Engine would stop — the whole place ran on the angel's heart, and if Camilla had reclaimed that cog, then it should all shut down — but the lights should still be on. I walked forward carefully, keeping the pistol close to my hip, the other arm up to foil any attempts at disarming me. My boots were loud on the slate floor.

With just the light from the door, the gears and cogwork that crowded the chamber were reduced to spiny shadows. After a dozen steps I lost track of the clear path through the room. I bumped into a pillar bristling with machinery. The impact shifted some of the clockwork forward, setting off a series of clinking actions above me. I knelt down, in case someone with better vision heard me and looked this way. Not like I hadn't been silhouetted every step of the way. When I heard no other movement, I crept around the pillar, hand trailing along the ground.

They started by putting a boot down on that hand. I looked up at the crushing pain, just in time to see a boot swinging at the pistol in my other hand.

I was fast enough to deflect that, the boot just glancing off my forearm. I tried to stand, but my hand was trapped. Heavy, whoever it was. Another shadow stepped around the pillar and raised something long and heavy-looking over its head. I barreled into the body standing on my hand, crashing into a pair of legs and then something that felt like a pew. Behind me, the second shadow swung his weapon at the floor. A shower of sparks flowered in the darkness, and I could see that my assailants were robed, and large.

The guy I had bowled over grabbed me by the back of my neck and hugged me toward him, smothering my face against a chest that smelled like raw meat. Before I could bring the revolver around, he pinned that hand against the floor. I punched him twice with my injured left hand, right into the armpit. Probably hurt me more than him, but I was still riding whatever it was the Mother had done to me. Tried to stand, just in time to take a shot across my back from the second attacker. He over-reached his swing, but there was something sharp on the head of that club, like an ax or pick. Metal cut into my ribs as he pulled back to swing again. Enough screwing around.

I rolled toward my pinned gun hand, pulling the first attacker over me like a big, meaty blanket. The other guy had already swung; I heard the impact and the oaths when he realized he had his own guy. I squirmed until the revolver came free, then squeezed off two shots without worrying about where the barrel was pointed. The shots went wide, clanging loudly off the gearwork all around, but the muzzle flash did the job. With a smell of burned flesh, the guy on top of me jumped back. I lay an elbow against his neck and pushed him into his friend. They went down and I stood, emptying the cylinder into their dark shadows. The flash lit up the room like a lightning strike. Just two guys in robes, their eyes wide as the lead went home.

Still grinning. Really wishing I could do something about that. I felt hot all over, and there was a sheen of sweat across my brow, even though the room was cold. Freezing, even.

Lights started coming on in the hallways leading into the chamber. There was shouting, too, but that was coming from outside. Couldn't stay where I was, and I didn't want to go down either of the lit hallways. In the ambient light I was able to find a dark corridor. Good enough for me. Took the time to slot six more shots into the revolver, then jogged down the new corridor with one arm outstretched. Little chance I was going to surprise many more folks, not the way I was going.

This hall went up, which wasn't ideal. Getting caught was less ideal. I quickly found myself among the living quarters of the Wrights, all abandoned. Signs of struggle, blood on the walls, barricades that had been broken open. So his control of the Wrighthood was incomplete, or had been. Maybe Crane was stretching himself beyond his capacity. A lot of dead Fehn in the river for him to track, plus all the Wrights. Plus whatever he had going on with Camilla. She clearly thought she was the one in control, so maybe he was having to keep a low profile.

I came to a hallway lined with arched windows on both sides. It was a walkway between two parts of the building. The light was a relief, but it really wasn't much light. The skies outside were nearly night-dark, and rain was beating against the glass with heavy hands. Even in the miserable weather, a lazy spiral of crows orbited the Church. It seemed like more and more of the birds gathered with each passing minute. Was Crane using them as his eyes, or were these just soldiers, waiting for their orders? No telling. Not from in here, at least, and I had no desire to go out there and interrogate them. The whole lot of them seemed to be circling the lower terraces of the Church, the river-side of the building, where the Wrights kept their greenhouses. Almost like they were pointing to something, or waiting.

Or standing guard. I had seen him possess my father, but I hadn't seen the real Crane since he spotted us with his crows while Wilson and I were spying on him. If that had really been him. But he had to be somewhere, broadcasting his attention through these damn birds. For a while now, I had been assuming that he was holed up in some nondescript warehouse somewhere, locked into a crate or a vault or just hidden in plain sight. There was too much geography in Veridon to really do a thorough search, not with the kind of time we had. So I opted to head off his plans, rather than hunt down the man himself.

But what's to say that he wasn't in the Church somewhere? If he really meant to make a play for the angel, that would be a delicate operation. Maybe he needed to be on site? Camilla seemed pretty confident that they had captured Crane. And maybe they had, or at least he had allowed himself to be taken, so that he could be close when the next phase of his plan went down. Whatever that was.

I looked from the lazy cyclone of crows to the bulbous domes where I had left Wilson in Camilla's custody. Would he still be there? Different directions. I could get to both, but I had to pick which one to hit first. Save Wilson, kill Crane.

They seemed like the same thing, to my addled mind. That grin came back, stiff and tight. Shells clattered to the floor and I reloaded. Gotta be careful with my shots. Not many bright little shells left on my belt, and I had so many people to shoot. So many people to put down.

But first, Crane. Like I should have when we first met. Such trouble that would have saved.

Mottled gray light glimmered through the thick panes of the greenhouse, illuminating the room in a dull, pewter-like glow. There was no other light. Rows of wretched shrubbery huddled under the vaulted glass ceiling. It was cold in here, colder than the rest of the building. Like the glass panes were made of ice, sucking the warmth out of the damp, foggy air. Raised crosswalks ran between the plants, so that I was walking among their leaves. Below me was dirt and the creaking pipes of the irrigation system. Above me, beyond the greenhouse ceiling, the crows circled.

Crane was here, under guard. From the entrance to the greenhouse I could see four small fires at the center of the room, glimmering in their brass braziers. Crane stood in the middle of them, bound tightly in a tall cage, not much wider than his chest. His arms were bound to the bars, and his head was bolted into an iron box. Around him stood a dozen former Wrights, all of them showing signs of having changed into the cog-dead. These were presumably still under Camilla's control.