Steven Harper - The Havoc Machine

“When enough arrive,” Havoc said, “rats reach…critical mass. Boom. You will die with my work…little thief.”

Havoc slumped back and went still, but the button on his hand continued its red pulse. The half-mechanical rats flooding the room ignored Thad and Dante and the boy to swarm over Havoc’s body in a metal cairn, their scarlet eyes beating a dreadful rhythm that grew louder and pounded against Thad’s bones. A palpable heat suffused the very air and the pulse sped up.

Thad shot a glance at the ten-legged spider on its junk pile all the way across the laboratory, then down at the boy on the table near him. The boy’s weight would slow Thad down and eat time. So would dashing across the room to grab the spider. Could he do both? Probably not. The pulse was blending now into a near-continuous sound of its own. He had to make a choice.

Thad shook his head. There was no choice. Besides, he knew damned well he hadn’t really intended to save the invention anyway. Thad swept the ragged boy into his arms and sprinted for the doorway Havoc had used. A steady stream of rats rushed past him in the opposite direction, and his boots crunched some of them. They twitched, still trying to crawl toward Havoc’s laboratory. Thad ran up a ramp and found himself at door. Once again he was in Poland, but this time David was still alive. He smashed into the door with his shoulder, but it wasn’t locked, or even latched. It burst open and he stumbled into the chilly air of the courtyard, the boy still in his arms.

“Sharpe is sharp,” Dante said. He had prudently moved to the back of Thad’s neck.

The pulse had become a shriek. Thad ran. This time he would win. This time the boy would live. His arms ached and his lungs burned, but he ran. He vaulted over the pit and plunged through the curtain of vines. The boy huddled in his arms didn’t make a sound the entire time. Outside, the hill’s downward slope made it easier, though his legs were getting heavy and stitch cramped his side.

The explosion shoved him forward with a rude hand. Heat washed over him and singed the hair from his neck. Thad curled around the boy and took the rolling bumps and bruises as his due penance. When they stopped rolling, Thad cautiously pulled himself away from the boy. His body ached in a way that told him his muscles would scream at him in the morning, but he didn’t seem to have any broken bones.

“Bless my soul!” Dante squawked from the ground several paces away.

“Are you all right?” Thad asked the boy in Lithuanian. “Can you walk?”

The boy, still wrapped in his rags and scarf, nodded and got to his feet even as Thad, groaning, did the same. The castle, a ruin before, was now a total wreck. Multicolored flames danced against the night sky. So much for Havoc’s invention. Thad wondered if the villagers would come to investigate or if they’d stay huddled in their homes.

“Let me see if you are injured.” Thad tried to pull the boy’s scarf away, but the boy yelped and snatched himself back.

“Na, na,” he said. No.

Thad put up his hands. What dreadful things had Havoc done that made the boy fear being touched? “All right. I’ll take your word. We should leave now.”

At that moment, Sofiya came galloping up on her clockwork horse with Blackie on a lead rein behind her. “What happened?” she demanded in English. “Did you get the invention? Where is it?”

“Havoc set off a doomsday device to destroy the castle,” Thad said shortly. He set Dante back on his shoulder. “I had time to save the device or the boy. Not both.”

Sofiya went pale. “Our employer will be…upset.”

“That I saved a human being instead of a machine?” Thad snarled. “Your employer can have the damn money back.”

She looked away and her voice dropped. “You do not understand how important this was to him.”

“He’ll have to do without.” Thad jerked a thumb at the burning castle. “It seems safe to say Havoc’s machine is gone.”

“Hm.” Sofiya stared at the leaping flames, her mouth a hard, white line. The horse stamped a foot and snorted. “There will be trouble, Mr. Sharpe. A great deal of trouble.”

“Applesauce,” said Dante.

“Thank you,” the boy said in a clear, piping voice.

Thad turned to him in surprise. “You speak English?”

“Thank you,” the boy repeated softly. “For taking me out of there.”

It was like hearing David again. Thad’s throat thickened, and he coughed. “It’s all…I mean, I’m glad to do it, son.”

Son. He should have chosen a different word. Well, the boy wouldn’t know. He knelt in front of the boy while Sofiya shifted impatiently atop her brass horse.

“What’s your name?” Thad asked.

The boy shrugged.

“You don’t know?” Thad said, puzzled. “Or you don’t remember?”

“I don’t have one,” the boy said. “Mr. Havoc called me boy .”

“What about before that?” Thad said. “What did your parents call you?”

“I don’t know.”

Thad thought of the brains in Havoc’s laboratory and outrage bloomed like red fireworks. “He took your memories?”

“I don’t know,” the boy repeated. His voice was sad. “I’m frightened.”

Incensed and angry and horrified all at once, Thad barely restrained himself from scooping the boy up and embracing him to give him comfort.

This is not David, he told himself firmly. This is not your son.

Carefully, ready to pull back if the boy flinched, Thad put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. It was hard and bony. “Don’t worry. We’ll help you. We’ll find your parents and see what we can do to bring back your memory.”

“We?” Sofiya said.

Thad rose and looked at her. “Was I being presumptuous, Miss Ekk?”

“I suppose not,” she sighed. “Come along, then. We should probably check in the village first. Before we face our employer.”

“Good idea. We can start with any families that speak English.”

“In this place?” Sofiya scoffed. “Quite unlikely. But as you say, we must start somewhere. And I suppose we should tell the nice lady that her sister has been avenged.”

Thad mounted Blackie and pulled the boy up behind him. The boy clung to Thad’s waist with fearful strength, and Thad wanted nothing more than to continue protecting this child. He hoped to find the parents soon-and that they were nice people.

The ride to the village was quick and quiet. The sun was rising, putting hesitant fingers of light into an azure sky and setting Sofiya’s clockwork horse ablaze. She looked magnificent, Thad had to admit, in her scarlet cloak and waterfall of golden hair, though she was nothing like his Ekaterina. The wealth represented by her horse and her clothing stood in stark contrast to the rough houses and loose homespun of the peasants in the village. As Thad and Sofiya rode into town, the people crept out of their houses, and Thad caught metallic flashes-knives and pitchforks and other farming implements. A tension rode the air, like lightning ready to strike. He glanced at Sofiya, who also looked uncertain. What was going on?

Thad pulled Blackie up. “The demon,” he announced in Lithuanian, “is dead!”

The people burst into cheers. The tension evaporated, and Vilma, the woman who had given Thad the vodka, ran forward, reaching up to press her face into his hand, wetting it with her tears. Thad shrank into his coat. Usually after a kill, he left without looking back. To deflect the awkwardness, he asked if anyone was missing a child. But no one was.

Vilma stepped forward again. “The demon, he only took adults. Or dogs. Sometimes young people who were sixteen or seventeen, but never children.”