Hearts of Smoke and Steam (14 page)

The buildings underneath them began to give way to the shipyards and empty flats of the shoreline. Emilio was amazed that they'd made it this far. Maybe they could at least crash into the river.

He turned the control further, and they rose—just for a instant. From directly above them there came the sound of disintegrating fabric. They began to fall rapidly, dropping as if someone had cut their strings from the sky.

“That's bad, isn't it?” he heard Sarah say from behind him.

“Very,” he replied.

And as the ground leapt up to meet them, Emilio told God that if he was going to steal away someone
else
whom he cared about, that this time he must do him the courtesy of taking him as well.

K
ing Jupiter stood, slightly hunched, in front of the massive laboratory gate. He wasn't wearing his golden crown, but the ceiling was still slightly too low for him, and he kept his right hand resting lightly on the stone roof to remind him not to stand up straight. A metal key dangled from his wrist. He turned to Hughes and smiled. “It's taken me years to reach this place, but I'm finally here.”

“I thought you wanted to be on the
other
side of the door.” Hughes said the words with a tone so flat it was almost impossible for Jupiter to tell if he was being mocked.

The mechanical frame walked Hughes a few steps back from the gate, giving the gray man room to work.

Jupiter pulled the loop off of his wrist and slipped the key into the lock. It turned easily, and there was a satisfying sound from somewhere deep inside the wall. A moment later, the key slipped out of his fingers, drawn into the hole. “What? Is that supposed to happen?”

Hughes shrugged. “I stole this from Wickham's office. It's got to be the right one…” He stroked his beard. It was impossible for King Jupiter to ignore the fact that in a matter of only a few weeks, the streaks of white now outnumbered the remaining red. “But I don't know how to use it—I've never been down here without Darby.”

They both waited in silence for a few long moments until it was clear the door was not about to open, nor was the key coming back. “It has to work!”

“Maybe it knows.”

“Knows?” Jupiter replied, a clear tone of annoyance in his voice. “Knows what? That Darby is dead?”

“That you're not the Sleuth.”

King Jupiter took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and willed his anger and frustration into his hands, concentrating until he could feel the living energy flowing down his arms.

When he opened his eyes again, his fists were glowing white with power, and he smashed them hard against the iron fittings of the massive door with all the strength he could muster.

He could tell that it had been a thunderous blow, but as hard as he had hit it, the wall only rewarded him with a dull, echoing thud as the shockwaves were absorbed by the wood.

The arcs of living energy continued to race across the iron and brass of the gate for a few seconds until they finally disappeared down into the floor.

The incandescent bulbs that ringed the chamber brightened as they absorbed the power and converted it to light. One of them flickered for an instant and then flared out, leaving the room slightly darker than it had been before, but the door remained unmoved. “Damn you, Darby!” Jupiter muttered.

“You already sent him to hell,
Lord Eschaton
,” Hughes said. It was hard to tell if his use of the term was genuine or intended to mock him.

“I told you to never use that name inside these walls.”

“There's no one else around.”

Eschaton turned and glared at him in the harsh electric light. “I know that familiarity breeds contempt, Mr. Hughes, and after all the time you've spent in the company of those self-important so-called
heroes
, I'm sure your contempt for them must be very great indeed, but they are
not
fools. Underestimating your fellow Paragons would be a very bad idea. As is,” he said with great emphasis, “underestimating
me.”

Hughes's face tightened. “And what's that's supposed to mean?” he muttered. Eschaton recognized his expression as the mask the half-man wore when trying to conceal the rage that was seething inside of him.

From the first time they had met, Lord Eschaton was aware of the endless battle that Hughes fought to control his fury. And as his infirmities took a greater and greater hold, it was a war that he was obviously losing.

“Things are continuing to move forward, despite,” Eschaton said, smacking the flat of his hand against the gate, “some small obstacles. So if we fail to achieve our goals, we do so because of our
own
incompetence and impatience. That would be a great tragedy.”

“If you say so.”

Although he would not consider himself a compassionate man, it was hard for Eschaton to not to feel some pity for this pathetic figure. The Iron-Clad had once strode across the world making Hughes a giant among men. Now the parts of him that remained were growing weaker by the day.

And beyond feeling sorry for him, Eschaton did owe him at least a small debt: no one had been more instrumental in helping him to undermine the Paragons than Hughes, even going so far as to personally kill the Sleuth when he had become too great a threat.

But after the fire, Hughes had turned inward, his emotions constantly threatening to turn him from a great asset into an intolerable liability. But it was his capacity to channel that almost-limitless anger that Lord Eschaton genuinely admired about the man. It certainly made him more tolerable than Stanton.

Becoming hobbled had forced Hughes to reveal a surprising capacity for science and engineering that he had not let on he possessed when he had been the brawler in an iron shell.

That said, there was little creativity or vision in the man. He could take orders, however, and he was a more capable builder than the Jew had been, although he lacked Eli's vast knowledge and knack for genuine invention—nor did he have his steady hands and almost endless patience when it came to the detailed work.

But Hughes was
motivated.
His will to regain his lost strength and stature was inexhaustible, and he had been working almost without stop to find a way to replace his lost flesh with mechanical equivalents. He had even allowed Eschaton to run a few experiments on him with fortified smoke, although they seemed to have had no effect.

Ultimately it was a battle Hughes couldn't possibly win; the wasting disease would take him eventually. Meanwhile, there were rewards to be reaped from his desperation, because beneath it all was still a growing hatred for humanity that not only kept the man alive but also made him the perfect ally in Eschaton's attempt to cull the human race and build a better world.

“You want to open this gate, right?” Hughes asked him.

“You cannot know how badly. Beyond this door lies the secret of fortified steam.”

The bearded man looked down at the floor. “I thought fortified smoke was better than fortified steam.” Eschaton imagined that underneath that beard, he was smirking at him.

“Better for my purposes, yes. But the smoke is a wild, uncontrolled substance, and with the steam we might even be able to cure—”

Hughes cut him off and continued. “It also has a tendency to eat through anything that isn't lined with metal.”

Eschaton didn't like be interrupted. He turned the anger into energy and let it crackle out across his skin. “It made me who I am.” After he had gained his powers, it had taken him only a few days to begin to discover that the key to controlling his abilities lay in properly focusing his emotions, but sometimes they were beyond his control. “Are you trying to make me mad?”

“I know you're a madman, I want to make sure that you're the right kind of madman.”

“And have I disappointed you? I've given you a new body, haven't I?”

Hughes's frame turned slightly and walked closer to the corner of the room. “A body which
I
stole out from the same lab we're standing in now. And I killed a man to cover it up.”

“You did. But you needed me to redesign it so that it could act as your new legs. You're many things, William, some of them quite impressive, but you are not Dennis Darby.”

“Well,
you
didn't create these legs, and you can't open that door. Seems like you may be losing a fight against a dead man.”

Eschaton felt the rage boiling up inside him. “That's
enough!”
he shouted, and let the energy stream out through his hands towards the gate. It scorched the wood and sent bolts of living electricity racing along the wall.

“What's that?” Hughes held up a hand and pointed over to the corner of the wall.

“What?” said Eschaton. He looked around, but couldn't see what it was that captured Hughes's attention.

“Can you do that again?”

“Of course I can.”

Hughes stared at him for a moment and then shook his head. “Okay, then do it. And this time look up there.”

Anger, he had discovered, wasn't the only emotion capable of igniting his abilities on command. Fear, need, even desire—anything, as long as it was intense enough to bring about the intense physiological changes in his body chemistry that could generate his unique electric powers.

But there were limits. The more he used his abilities without recharging himself, the more his own body would turn against him. His muscles were in constant tension. It took a great deal of concentration to relax his flesh and control the pain. Each blast of power left him a little more drained—one step closer to the brink of no return.

After his display with the bullet in the courtyard, Eschaton had been in a bad enough state that he had been concerned he might have damaged himself permanently. It had taken until yesterday before he finally felt he'd managed to completely shake off the loss.

He was sure that there had to be some more efficient way to recharge and repair himself than simply patience. He had tried bathing in fortified smoke, but the original incident seemed to have made him immune to any further effects. He had also begun to experiment with electrical power, but there would be better tools for that in Darby's laboratory than in his own meager workshop.

But until he unlocked those secrets, it was only time that seemed capable of returning him to full strength—not that he was about to reveal that to Hughes.

Letting himself focus fully on his frustration at Darby's ridiculous tricks and traps, he gathered energy into his arms. When he felt the tingling that told him he had reached his capacity, Eschaton clapped his hands together and slammed them hard against the iron bindings. The living electricity exploded out of him and into the steel. This time, as it arced across the wall, he managed to see what Hughes had been pointing at: a small iron bolt on the wall sparked to reveal the energy that was shooting upwards through it.

“And I suppose you…think you know where that goes, Mr. Hughes?” he said, trying not to gasp for breath as his lungs spasmed and his heart thudded in his chest.

“Not for sure. But since you asked, I do have a theory, Lord…King Jupiter.” The clanking machine turned and began to walk out of the room. “Follow me.”

As he watched him go, Eschaton looked at Hughes's waddling frame. Hughes was correct when he said that Darby had surpassed him in some areas. While they might have been equal in terms of invention, there were places where the old man's abilities had excelled far beyond his own, including two-legged locomotion. Despite many attempts, the ability to create something that actually walked had always been one thing that he had never quite seemed able to master elegantly.

Most of the devices that Eschaton had created over the years relied heavily on wheels or broad, flat feet designed to maneuver up stairs and the like. He'd come up with some machines that mimicked the human stride, but they had a bad habit of toppling over whenever their movement was interrupted.

He had also struggled with mechanical locomotion, and had finally determined that in order to create true two-legged ambulation it was necessary to have some kind of rudimentary integrated intelligence that regulated balance. Tom had been the proof that he was right.

But even knowing Darby's secrets hadn't been enough, and no matter how he tried, Eschaton hadn't been able to fully solve the problem. In the end, it had taken Darby's technology to allow Hughes to walk.

He and Hughes had tried to be careful when they rebuilt the frame, but many of the pieces that they had removed had been a mystery—most likely elements designed to integrate with the original Automaton.

Even beheaded, the frame integrated some kind of intelligence of its own…The proof of Darby's genius was walking up the stairs right in front of him.

But genius wasn't everything. As he followed Hughes into the granite-lined halls of the main building, Eschaton couldn't help but feel a flush of pride at having successfully managed to infiltrate the impenetrable Hall of Paragons! (And did his cramps loosen just a bit? Did positive emotions have a beneficial effect? He would have to experiment further…)

His plan had been simple and straightforward—chop off the head, and the body would fall. But even that was easier said than done, and this was far from the first time he'd hatched a scheme to kill Dennis Darby. The difference was that this one had finally
succeeded.
In retrospect, it was clear that it had been his own hubris that had been getting in the way of his success all these years.

For so long, he had been obsessed by the need to show Darby the error of his ways
before
he killed him. He wanted the old man to admit his inferiority before he sent him off to meet his maker. And that had been the seed of failure in every plan: the old scientist truly was every bit as clever as his reputation suggested, and no number of intricate puzzles and carefully laid traps had been able to prove his undoing.