The Immorality Engine

CHAPTER
25

Veronica crouched low behind a large rhododendron bush and peered out at the immense grey edifice of the Grayling Institute. Everything was eerily still. The sky was studded with brooding grey clouds, bearing the promise of rain. To Veronica they seemed like an omen, a threat of the storm still to come. It wasn’t just her, either: the birds in the branches overhead weren’t chirping, and the servants inside the house had appeared at the windows a number of times, looking out at the sky as if waiting impatiently for the coming rain.

Veronica realised she was holding her breath in anticipation, and reminded herself to exhale. She’d been in the same position for over half an hour and her toes were beginning to feel numb. The air was cold and damp. Close by, Newbury was kneeling in the flower bed, watching the driveway with an intense, unwavering gaze. She glanced at him and felt a surge of affection for the man.

After fleeing Packworth House they had abandoned the exoskeleton in an alleyway and hailed a steam-powered cab to take them swiftly to Chelsea. Once there, Newbury held a fleeting conference with Scarbright before changing his suit and rushing out to visit Charles. Veronica had feared he would also take measures to inform the palace about the Bastion Society. She’d been scared that he’d choose duty over any obligation he felt towards her, and scared of what that might mean for Amelia. She’d worried she might never be able to face him again if he made the wrong choice.

When he returned a short while later, he’d been pensive. He’d informed her that Bainbridge was alive and recovering in a police infirmary and that they would leave for the Grayling Institute in fifteen minutes’ time. He’d told her she should gather anything she thought might prove useful, and pointed her at the hidden rack of weapons he kept in his study.

At that, Veronica breathed a sigh of relief. Newbury had clearly made his decision. There had been no discussion, no debate. At no point did he offer her any insight into his thoughts. But he had chosen her over the Queen, and that told her everything she needed to know. More than that, though, it meant he believed her about the Queen’s duplicity. It confirmed her fear that there was something terribly amiss at the palace, because if there were not, Newbury would never have allowed the attack on the Grayling Institute to go ahead.

The consequences of such thoughts were too dreadful, too all-encompassing for her to give voice to at the time. But now, waiting in silence for the Bastion Society to make their move, it was all she could think about.

En route, Newbury had told her in hushed tones about the Queen’s foreknowledge of the attack and how she’d already begun to fortify the palace. Veronica didn’t see any way she could be so sure of an attack without knowing about Amelia’s visions, which was the final evidence she needed that the Queen had played a part in what had happened to Amelia at the Grayling Institute. Clearly, Newbury felt the same way.

Veronica wondered what he had told Bainbridge, whether he’d disclosed any of this to his old friend. She suspected not. For all of his compassion and brilliance, Bainbridge would never have understood. He was too long in the tooth, too much in admiration of the Queen. He was a good man, and he was unwaveringly loyal. That was both his greatest strength and, on this occasion, his weakness. Whatever happened next, she hoped Bainbridge would never discover the truth that Newbury had knowingly put the Queen in danger. It would be enough to tear the two of them apart.

A shrill, high-pitched whistle, as if from an overhead missile, broke the silence. Veronica cursed softly beneath her breath for allowing herself to get distracted. The attack was starting. She couldn’t see the missile, but the sound seemed to originate from somewhere just outside the grounds of the estate, beyond the gates at the end of the driveway.

Newbury glanced at her in warning. Seconds later, the lone projectile hit the roof of the building with a thunderous explosion that sent splintered roof tiles spraying into the air in all directions. Veronica ducked involuntarily. When she looked up a moment later, there was a gaping hole in the roof where the detonation had punched through to the attic space below. Yellow flames licked hungrily around the edges of the hole.

Before anyone inside the house had time to react, a dozen more bombs impacted, splashing against the building with a blinding glare. Suddenly the whole scene was a vision of perfect chaos. The sound of the explosions was like a hundred thunderclaps detonating at once, like the sky itself was being rent apart and all of Heaven and Hell was descending on the Earth. Veronica covered her ears with her hands.

A huge chunk of masonry, blown clear from the building in the fiery shower, thudded into the ground just a few feet from where Veronica and Newbury were hiding. It was all she could do not to cry out in shock as the ground trembled beneath her and she was showered with tiny fragments of stone and ash. She glanced up at the house. Part of the first floor had already collapsed, and the roof was now entirely ablaze. All the windows at the front of the property had blown out, and broken glass was spread across the courtyard as far as she could see.

She turned at the sound of a hundred mechanical hooves striking the gravel, and gasped at the dozens of men charging along the driveway on shining brass horses. Cogs and gears groaned under the strain as the clockwork beasts reared and charged, bearing their riders into battle. The men themselves were resplendent in the grey suits and bowler hats of the Bastion Society, but wore shining steel breastplates over their jackets, along with arm braces and leg guards.

The sight would almost have seemed comical, if it were not for the huge Gatling guns that hung off the sides of the mounts, burring and spitting a hail of destruction upon the house and its occupants. Many of the men also carried swords, which they held aloft as they charged, screaming bloody murder as they rode towards their target.

Behind this sea of brass and flesh, five of the armoured exoskeleton suits lumbered slowly, relentlessly, towards the house, their claws opening and closing in readiness. They planned to pound the building to dust and gravel, she realised, to leave no part of it standing. They would destroy everything in their path, ensuring all of Fabian’s work-whether it was a living subject or a folio of notes detailing his treatment of his patients-was destroyed.

And all the while, bombs continued to drop from the sky likes hellish, fiery rain, creating a firestorm the likes of which she’d never seen.

Veronica saw movement in the doorway of the institute. She leapt to her feet, disregarding her cover. The figure emerging from the doorway was Amelia.

Veronica watched her sister rush out, barefoot, beneath the portico, charging headlong for the stone steps. She was dressed only in a flowing white nightgown, her hair a stark, raven black, trailing behind her as she ran. Veronica looked on in horrified slow motion as one of the mounted men yanked hard on the reins of his mechanical beast, pulling it round so that he could swing his Gatling gun around on its pivot. The weapon sang with a menacing whine as it spat hot lead at its target, and Veronica screamed as she watched her sister’s white gown blossom with scores of bright, crimson petals where the bullets struck home.

Veronica tried to run, but Newbury was there, grabbing her around the waist, dragging her back beneath the cover of the trees, kicking and screaming. He forced his hand over her mouth to keep her from shouting, and she twisted and writhed in an effort to get free, all the while keeping her eyes locked on the body of her dead sister. She didn’t want to believe what had happened; couldn’t acknowledge it was over.

But moments later, through the veil of her tears, Veronica saw another figure burst out of the doorway, similarly attired. This was followed by another, and then another, and she realised with mounting relief that the dead woman wasn’t her sister at all, but one of her duplicates-set free, she guessed, by the collapsing structure of the old house. A shattered wall or a buckled door must have allowed them to escape, and they flowed out in their multitudes like ethereal ghosts fleeing an exorcism.

Veronica relaxed in Newbury’s grip, and he set her down. She watched his reaction intently as he saw swathes of the Amelia clones pour forth from the building, only to be mowed down indiscriminately by the riders and their mechanised weapons. Blood sprayed in wide arcs as the bullets shredded the defenceless girls, and Newbury’s face hardened as he realised the peril the real Amelia was in. If they didn’t get her out soon, she really was going to perish at the hands of a revolutionary or, perhaps worse, as the building itself came down around her shoulders.

“Come on,” said Newbury, taking Veronica’s hand and leading her around the back of the building under the cover of the trees, trying to stay ahead of the mounted men who were busying themselves with the hedonistic slaughter of her not-quite-sisters.

Veronica had already pointed out the location of the kitchen window. Newbury ran for it now, keeping a tight hold of her hand as they pounded across the courtyard, running through the middle of the deranged war zone towards the blazing inferno.

Gunfire rattled close by, and Veronica turned her head to see a mounted figure charging towards them, his sword held aloft, his Gatling gun spitting furiously as he swung it around on its cradle, aiming to mow them down as he galloped past.

For a moment Veronica hesitated. She didn’t know which way to go. She knew she couldn’t outrun the horse, and if she threw herself against the wall of the house, the man would have a clear shot at her as he rode by. But she wasn’t about to allow this ridiculous man, this pretend knight, to end her life like that.

She turned and charged at the window, leaping into the air and burying her face in the crook of her arm as she dived at the pane of glass.

And then she was hurtling through the shattering window, colliding painfully with a butcher’s trolley and sending plates, cutlery, and fragments of broken glass careening all over the floor. She skidded to a stop a few feet from the door. Behind her, Newbury fell through the opening, nursing his hand where he’d sliced it open on the jagged glass. Bullets from the Gatling gun rained into the room for a moment, and then the man and his mount were gone.

Veronica scrambled to her feet and checked herself over. Remarkably, aside from a few minor scrapes and a smarting elbow, she was unhurt.

The kitchen was already deserted. She guessed the staff must have bolted at the sound of the first explosion, probably hiding elsewhere in the house or trying to find another way out.

The kitchen behind her suddenly erupted in noise as the man who had been shooting at them outside aimed his Gatling gun through the open window and hosed the room with bullets, trying to pick out her and Newbury. Veronica kept low and wriggled towards the door on her belly, grabbing a steel tray and holding it over her head as a makeshift shield. The man’s gun wouldn’t pivot low enough to reach them on the floor, so he continued to hose the walls above them, meaning she had to watch for falling debris from above as she tried desperately to get to the door and away from the hail of bullets.

Seconds later the gun whirred to silence and Veronica was through the door. She glanced back to see Newbury right behind her. She helped him to his feet.

The hallway was in a atrocious state, with fallen chunks of masonry blocking a number of the corridors that stemmed from it and flames curling at the edges of the doors, spiralling plumes of thick black smoke into the air. The first floor above them had been almost entirely destroyed, and through the splintered, smouldering floorboards Veronica could see grey clouds hanging low in the sky, and the fiery trails of bombs as they streamed towards the building, causing the building to shake with every impact.

“We have to get to Amelia, now!” Newbury bellowed, and he set off down the hallway, ducking beneath a shattered beam as he led the way to her room via the route that Fabian had taken when he’d taken Newbury to see her sister during their previous visit. Veronica hoped they weren’t already too late, and that she hadn’t made a terrible mistake.

Amelia sat in her wheelchair by the fireplace and watched as the world came to an end. It was just as she’d seen in her vision, and she was prepared. She wasn’t scared so much as resigned, ready to finally face the death that she’d been holding back for years.

She would have liked to see Veronica one last time. It saddened her that she’d never have a chance to share a kind word with her sister again or-perhaps more important-to thank her for everything she’d done. Veronica had sacrificed so much for her. She’d fought against their parents’ prejudice at every turn, and, as a consequence she’d finally been cast out of the family home on a pittance, forced to take a job as an administrator at the museum and to spend what money she had securing an apartment of her own in Kensington. Amelia wanted her sister to know how grateful she was for that, the difference it had made. She was sure she had lived as long as she had because of that sisterly patronage.

Amelia glanced out the window. The once beautiful garden had been transformed into a blazing vision of Hell. The ancient gods, once standing proud in their evergreen vigil, had been reduced to nothing but cinders and smoke. She found it ironic that something so beautiful should be so difficult to create and yet so easy to destroy. She supposed that was true of life, too, and the fragility of it terrified her.

She had no idea why the building was under attack. She supposed she didn’t really want to know. It was enough for her to know that today was the day she had foreseen in her visions. She was ready. And when Mr. Calverton came for her, as she knew he would, with his leering face and ghastly, piercing eyes, she would produce the poker she had secured in the folds of her blanket and she would defend herself. She didn’t hold much hope of success, but if Veronica had taught her one thing during her short time, it was to fight. And while it wouldn’t ultimately save her life, fight she would.

Amelia turned at the sound of her door creaking open. So soon? She had hoped for at least a little while longer. But when the man in the doorway stepped forward, she was surprised to see that it was not Mr. Calverton, as she had expected, but Dr. Fabian.

The doctor stumbled into the room, catching hold of the doorframe to prevent himself from toppling over. She saw he was badly wounded, his left thigh burned and bloody through a rent in his torn trousers. “Hello, Amelia,” he said. His voice was reedy and high-pitched. He was clenching his teeth in pain, opening and closing his fists in an effort to stave off the agony of his wounds. He edged farther into the room.

Amelia was overcome with sorrow for the man. “Dr. Fabian! You shouldn’t be here. Go. Get out, before it’s too late. Leave me here.”

Fabian used his index finger to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His expression was hard. He shook his head. “No, Amelia, you’re coming with me.” He sounded definite, commanding.

“No. I’ll only slow you down,” Amelia protested. “I’m dying anyway-we both know as much. You should save yourself. Your work is too important.” She knew the likelihood was that they’d both die in the blaze if he attempted to rescue her, especially reduced to such an awful condition himself. At least this way one of them could survive.

Stubbornly, Fabian kept on coming towards her. “No, Amelia. You’re too important. Too…” He trailed off, gasping in agony as he forced himself to walk, dragging his damaged leg across the carpet. Behind him, through the open door, Amelia could see the hallway was fully ablaze. The stink of burning wood filled the air, and smoke boiled in through the opening. He must have staggered through the flames to get to her.

“Listen, I rea-” She stopped dead at the arrival of a second person, who burst in through a plume of black smoke as if emerging suddenly from the flames themselves.

The woman was wild eyed and dressed in a filthy white nightgown. She was painfully thin and her head was adorned with a spill of thick, black hair. Amelia had to look twice before she realised exactly who the newcomer was.

It was her.

The duplicate held its head back and screamed in wild abandon, a deep, guttural wail that bore more resemblance to the cry of an animal than that of a human being. Amelia screamed in terror at the nightmarish thing, and the strange, feral woman-who looked almost entirely like her-glared at her, drooling and swaying.

Amelia looked to Fabian, who was backing away from the duplicate with an expression of horror and surprise.

The other Amelia rushed towards her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her violently in her chair. Amelia wailed as her doppelganger gnashed its teeth only inches from her face. It smelled of faeces and soot, and its nails dug into the soft skin around her neck. She tried to push the thing away from her, but it hung on to her with surprising strength. She called out to Dr. Fabian, but he didn’t respond.

Still holding on to Amelia, the doppelganger’s head lolled back, its eyes rolled up in its sockets, and it began babbling under its breath. “Cracking walls and fire and pain. Brass engines of destruction will tear down the world, and the man with the white face shall come out of the darkness. The one who sits in the chair. She is the key. She is the nightmare at the eye of the storm.”

Amelia screamed. It was describing the contents of her vision. It was impossible. She wondered for a moment if she were already dead, if this were some sort of terrible purgatory, if she were hallucinating because of the fire, or because of her illness. She didn’t know what to think. But she knew she had to get away from the creature, somehow. She couldn’t bear to look at it any longer, with its dark, feral eyes; the way it screeched like an animal.

Acting purely on instinct, Amelia slapped the duplicate brutally across the face once, twice, three times, until the creature’s eyes snapped back into place, its head rocked forwards, and it was once again glaring at Amelia with smouldering, animalistic menace.

Amelia raised her leg and jabbed her foot into the duplicate’s abdomen. It doubled over, howling in shock, emitting a harrowing screech that chilled Amelia to the bone. It lunged at her, its nails raking her cheek as it tried urgently to scratch out her eyes. Amelia flailed her arms in an effort to defend herself, doing whatever she could to keep the crazed thing at bay.

Suddenly she remembered the poker she had hidden in the folds of her blanket. She grabbed for it, feeling its cold, hard shaft beneath the wool. With one hand she fought to extract it while using the other to fend off the mad doppelganger as best she could. She wasn’t strong enough, however. The creature batted her arm away and lurched forward, grabbing her head between its hands and squeezing, as if trying to crack open her skull with its bare hands. “Let the demons out!” it screeched. “Free the spirits! Save yo-”

The words turned into a gurgle as Amelia thrust the poker deep into the duplicate’s belly. Warm blood gushed over her hands and knees. She sobbed as the creature continued its assault, still gnashing its teeth and attempting to prise open her skull. She thrust the poker deeper inside the thing, twisting it, trying anything to get it to stop. She didn’t know what else she could do.

And then, as quickly as the attack had come, it stopped.

Amelia, gasping, peeled open her eyes. Dr. Fabian was there, struggling with the duplicate as he hauled it off Amelia, dragging it back towards the open door. The black shaft of the poker was still protruding from its belly, blood coursing down its legs, staining the front of its white nightdress. The duplicate kicked and snarled, gouging great scratches in Fabian’s arms, but he held it fast, whimpering with pain as he fought to stay upright on his damaged leg.

With an almighty effort, Fabian pitched around and hurled the duplicate out the doorway and into the raging inferno. Amelia heard it cry out, and she caught one final glimpse of it as the hungry flames took to its hair, creating a halo of flickering fire around its head. Then it turned and bolted down the corridor to its death.

Amelia felt nauseated. Her mind was reeling, trying to process what she had just seen. She didn’t know what to think, how to feel. She could hardly believe the atrocity she had just witnessed.

Amelia tried to get out of her chair, but she simply didn’t have the strength to lift herself, not after the attack. Blood was streaming down her cheek in a warm trickle. She turned to Fabian. “You did this,” she said, her tone accusing. “You told me you were trying to help me. You were always there for me, always by my side. I trusted you! And this is what you’ve been doing? Copying me! Experimenting on me! Turning me into a curiosity for your laboratory games.” She sobbed, more out of rage than fear. “Was this why I was so important? Why you had to come here to save me? So you could continue with your disgusting experiments?” Fabian simply glared at her, his jaw fixed. “Get out. Get out of here, now!” She gestured towards the door, then wiped the dripping blood from her chin with the back of her hand. She would rather die in the fire than allow Dr. Fabian to continue to exploit her, to turn her into more perversions of nature like the one she had just encountered. That was a transgression she could never, ever forgive. A violation. An atrocity.

Fabian’s face seemed to darken. His forehead creased into a harsh frown. He began creeping towards her again, but this time she knew it was not altruism that was driving him, but greed. “You ridiculous little girl,” he snapped. “You ungrateful, snivelling wretch of a woman. After all I’ve done for you!” He limped across the carpet towards her, dragging his leg. “You’re coming with me. You’re my way out of all of this. You’re the only one that ever worked.”

Amelia knew then that she had to get away. Out of options, she flung herself out of her chair and onto the floor, landing on her belly and jarring her elbow. She grabbed fistfuls of the carpet in her still-bloody fingers and began to pull herself across the ground, trying desperately to get away from the monster that had once been Dr. Fabian. She could barely believe it was the same man who had been so kind to her, who had helped her through her seizures and spent long hours in the chair beside her bed, ensuring she was safe. Protecting his investment, she realised with a sense of dawning horror. It was all pretence, every moment of it. The very thought of it made her skin crawl.

Ahead, Amelia could see the French doors that looked out over the garden. They were locked, as they had always been locked, and Amelia realised that she really had been contained in a prison, and that Veronica had been kept away purely to prevent her from discovering the truth. She’d been a fool to fall for it, for Fabian’s false charms. All along, the locked doors should have told her what was going on. Nevertheless, locked or not, the French doors were her only hope of freedom. If she could get to them, she might be able to smash them and climb out.

Just as her fingertips encountered the glass, however, Fabian caught her by the ankles and dragged her away from the doors, turning her forcefully over onto her back. She cried out, and he grinned down at her from above, his face contorted into a sneer. She kicked out at him weakly, and he raised his arm and backhanded her savagely across the face. The pain was like an explosion in her head.

“Stay still, you little bitch!”

Amelia fought as he grabbed for her arms, trying to pin them by her sides. She realised she was sobbing, tears of desperation coursing down her cheeks. “Get off me, get off me, get off me,” were the only words she could find, and she repeated them over and over like a mantra. “Get off me…” But Fabian had hold of her wrists now, squeezing them painfully as he forced her into submission.

“We’re leaving,” he said as he stooped to try to pick her up.

And that was when she saw the white-faced man over his shoulder.

Amelia screamed. Mr. Calverton was there behind Fabian, his strange, blue, unblinking eyes staring down at her, just as she’d seen in her visions. Any hope she had left dissipated at that moment, and she ceased struggling. She knew she’d never be able to fight both of them. It was over. She was about to die.

Fabian grinned.

Mr. Calverton, still unseen by the doctor, reached for her as if to help Fabian subdue her. Amelia issued a low, desperate moan. And then, through the veil of tears, she saw something she’d never even imagined in her dreams.

Mr. Calverton had his hands around Fabian’s throat.

Fabian attempted to shout something, but it came out as only a strangled gurgle as Mr. Calverton wrapped his white-gloved fingers around Fabian’s neck and used his thumbs to crush the doctor’s windpipe.

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.