Steven Harper - The Doomsday Vault

“No,” Alice whispered.

“What?” Norbert growled.

Alice straightened, standing tall before the neighbors who came to stare. Gavin stood in the doorway. “I said no. I am Alice, Baroness Michaels. I am not going back with you, Norbert Williamson. I love Gavin and always have. Go back home to your factory and your money and your filthy machines. I hope they rip your cock off.”

Norbert flung himself at Alice. Gavin shouted a warning from the front steps, but Alice saw him coming. She stepped aside and gave him a shove that carried him straight into the wall of the house. He smashed into the bricks and staggered backward, dazed and with a bloody nose. Gavin hoisted him by belt and scruff and flung him into the carriage. Alice smacked the emergency switch for home, and the carriage rushed away.

Alice found herself in Gavin’s arms. He tipped her chin back and kissed her, right there on the street in front of the little crowd. His embrace was solid as an oak tree, and the kiss electric as a lightning bolt. She gave herself up to it, and to him.

“I do love you,” he whispered.

“And I love you,” she said.

A smattering of applause broke out, then grew louder. Alice broke away from Gavin. The crowd clapped and cheered. “Great job, love!” someone shouted. “You showed him!” “Wish I had your courage!”

Laughing, she dashed back into the house with Gavin close on her. With the door shut, he kissed her again and pressed his body against hers. She felt his urgent hardness, and her own body responded. “I’ve never wanted you more than I do now,” he whispered.

“We don’t have time,” she replied with regret. “It’s only a few hours until sunrise, and we have to break into the Doomsday Vault.”

Lieutenant Phipps marched past Gavin with the glowing Impossible Cube. As the most junior agent of the Third Ward, he was at the far end of the double line of agents lining the corridor, the end farthest from the Doomsday Vault. Another agent played a military drum. Every beat snapped to Phipps’s footsteps. Each agent, and there were nearly twenty, wore a dress uniform of black linen with red trim. Several sported body machinery similar to Phipps’s, and all of them, even Simon and Glenda, carried side arms. Alice, who was still in training and not yet technically an agent, was nowhere to be seen, but Gavin knew she was hiding halfway up the stone spiral staircase that led back up to the main floor.

Phipps reached the head of the double line, and the drum stopped. The four agents who guarded the round, two-story door to the Doomsday Vault saluted Phipps and turned to the Vault controls. Each guard knew only one sequence of instructions for opening the Vault, to ensure that no one person could open it alone. The first guard spun a large wheel that reminded Gavin of an airship helm, then spun it backward, then forward. The second guard spoke rapidly into a speaking tube. The third guard turned a series of dials set into the door. The fourth guard took a card from his pocket, punched a series of holes in it with an awl, and fed the card into a slot. A moment of silence followed. Gavin held his breath. With a dull booming sound, the great door swung outward.

Lights inside the Vault flickered to life, revealing a wide, long tunnel lined with shelves. Strange objects, some of them moving, occupied the spaces. Gavin couldn’t see into the Vault very well from his vantage point, but he didn’t need to. He pulled from his pocket a small object of his own: two glass bulbs connected by a third, like an hourglass with a slight bulge in the middle. The top bulb held water. The small middle bulb held a cube of sugar. The lower bulb held a clear green fluid. Gavin twisted a small brass lever on the side of the device, and the water in the top bulb rushed down over the sugar cube and into the absinthe in the lower bulb just as Phipps entered the Doomsday Vault. The absinthe in the lower bulb bubbled and changed to a milky green.

“What are you doing?” hissed Donaldson, the agent next to him. “Put that away!”

Gavin flipped the glass lid off the device and forced himself to drink, grimacing at the cloying taste of anise. By now, some of the others had noticed. They stared, uncertain what to do about this flagrant breach of protocol. Before they could make up their minds, a fluttering sound came from the stairwell, and a little automaton emerged into the hall, its propeller whirling madly. It held a red ball of the type Gavin had cautioned Alice not to drop in the weapons vault.

“Sorry, everyone!” Gavin shouted.

Phipps, still holding the Impossible Cube, spun in surprise just as the automaton dropped the ball on the stone floor. Pink pollen burst into the air and formed a sweet, choking cloud. The agents staggered as if drunk. Several dropped to the ground.

Gavin was already moving, the taste of absinthe still in his mouth. He sprinted toward the Doomsday Vault and caught Lieutenant Phipps as she slid to the floor. The Impossible Cube had already fallen at her feet. It glowed like a piece of broken sky.

“Wha-?” Phipps said.

“Sorry about this, Lieutenant,” he said again. “I really am.”

“Why?” Her eyelid flickered. “Why. . Gavin?”

Gavin hung his head in guilt. Phipps had turned a disgraced cabin boy into a full-fledged agent, and now he had betrayed her.

Alice rushed down the stairs, her lips smeared green. Click and Kemp followed behind her, and the little automaton fluttered down to land on her shoulder. “We have to hurry. You said the pollen wouldn’t last more than an hour.”

“Alice. . of course. .,” Phipps slurred. “You want. . the cure. . wreck. . world.”

“It needs to be wrecked,” Alice said, “so it can heal. Kemp, Click-you two wait out here. If Lieutenant Phipps wakes up, hit her on the head.”

“Yes, Madam.”

Gavin snatched up the Impossible Cube. Dr. Clef had charged it, and no one had wanted to drain the charge before the ceremony. It felt springy, as if made of pine boughs. Together he and Alice hurried into the open Doomsday Vault.

The long room inside was crowded with inventions, some on shelves and some on the floor. Some were easily recognizable as dangerous: a bomb the size of a sofa; a glass vial filled with black liquid and marked DEATH; an enormous energy rifle pointed at the ceiling. Others were a mystery: a single automaton with no features; a trumpet; a thick book; five live hamsters in a cage with no food or water. Each object had a small placard in front of it with a name and year. The very first one, closest to the door, was a large iron ball with spikes. The faded placard read RICHARD W., 1829. A chill ran down Gavin’s spine.

“Incredible,” Gavin breathed. “The power in this room could destroy the world a hundred times, and we walk around above it, living normal lives.”

“Our lives are far from normal,” Alice said tersely. “We need to find the cure and get out.”

They followed the tunnel to the back, where the placards were fresher. The line of inventions stopped, though the Vault itself continued for some distance.

“The Ward means to continue collecting these dreadful things,” Alice said. “Look!”

She picked up a largish spider made of polished black metal. Several tubules ran up and down the spider’s legs. The placard read EDWINA M., 1858.

“That’s the cure?” Gavin said dubiously.

“It’s the only Edwina invention in here.” Alice snatched it up. “We don’t have time for doubt. Let’s go!”

They hurried back to the entrance of the Vault, each of them carrying a doomsday device. Gavin’s heart beat fast, and his hands tightened around the Impossible Cube. Every move he made changed history, altered millions of lives, and that responsibility frightened him even more than the possibility of being caught and hanged. Maybe this was how Queen Victoria and President Pierce felt all the time.