Camera Obscura (23 page)

 
 

Sade grinned, thick lips like overripe blackberries. In one hand he held a goblet, in the other a thin, surgical blade. A couple of the silent nuns were holding Milady, busy securing her to a rope hanging from a hook in the ceiling. She heard Sade say, "Hurry up, I want to start the examination–"

  Milady let herself fall, her body becoming heavy and unresponsive. The two nuns faltered, reached for her–

  She rolled, swept their legs underneath them. Her new metal leg rose, descended – crushed one of the women's kneecaps. The woman rolled on the floor, screaming, holding on to her leg – Milady aimed at the other woman's head, felt the nose smash. She rose, grinned, extended her gun arm–

  Sade's smile faltered, then returned. "I did not expect you to wake so soon," he said.

  She shot him. The Gatling gun barked, bullets smashing into the fat man's belly. Sade looked down, his smile gone, a confused expression on his face. Slowly, he reached down. His finger found a hole, pushed through. He brought it out again, smelled it, then put it in his mouth and sucked. He rolled his finger slowly in his mouth, then at last pulled it out, examined the nail for a moment, then let it drop. "I'm not that easy to kill," he said.

  He picked up the goblet he had dropped. He took a swig of wine. The wine flowed down his throat and out of the holes in his chest and stomach, staining his already-stained clothes an even darker red. Milady watched, repulsed, horrified. "Not the best vintage," Sade said. "Nevertheless, a shame to waste."

  He threw the goblet at her. It hit her on the side of the head and her missing eye flared in green pain. She kicked, aiming for his kneecap, but he caught her leg easily, grinned, and made to break it.

  She jumped, using his hands as leverage, rose high and did a back-flip. Sade said, "Impressive."

  
How did she do it?
She didn't know. A new leg, a new arm – but was it Viktor's surgery or the jade in her body that did it? She didn't know and right then it didn't matter.

  "Being a sportsman," Sade said, "I'll give you a head start." He turned away from her ponderously and, from a niche in the wall, picked up an enormous, ancient sword. He waved it experimentally, slashing the air with the dull-coloured blade, and laughed. "Oh, Milady de Winter!" he said. "You make me feel alive again."

  She ran.

  Sade roared behind her, booming out a laugh. She burst out of the room and found herself in a windowless corridor. Somewhere underground, she thought. She had to find a way up, to the surface. The corridor was dark. As she ran ghostly figures materialised at the end.

  Nuns.

  Nuns with guns.

  She raised her arm, clenched the fingers that were no longer there, a half-turn as if turning a key in a lock, and the Gatling gun barked fire. One of the nuns dropped, the others returned fire. Milady threw herself on the floor, fired again. A noise behind her – Sade lumbering after her, the great sword swishing through the air.
They put a madman in charge of the madhouse.

  She rolled, jumped, was suddenly at the end of the corridor – her foot lashing out, the Gatling gun arm slamming into heads, hands – the nuns dropped. Milady snatched up a fallen gun and kept running.

  Stairs. She ran up them, into the dark level where Sade's quarters had been. Shouts behind her, gunfire, Sade's bellowing laugh. She should have gone up, but knew they would be waiting up there… She could hear the cries of the insane, agitated, carried down from their cells above.

  She turned from the staircase, and once again entered Sade's quarters.

  A sickly smell in the air, opium and hashish and candles and burnt wax and the sharp tang of cleaning fluids, though the place was a sty. A rack of pork ribs sat on a plate surrounded by glutinous sauce the colour of blood. Flies buzzed over the food. The same map of the Arctic region, the same cuffs and whips and glasses of old wine – she needed something, something she could use – but what?

  From behind, snatches of conversation – "Where did she go?"

  "She didn't come upstairs, we would have seen her."

  "My quarters? The cheeky girl." That laugh again. She hated that laugh. She was going to choke it out of him if it killed her.

  If she didn't die before she had the chance.

  Searching the room, searching for weapons – a door halfhidden in the wall, unmarked. She tried the handle but the door was locked.

  She kicked it open.

  Darkness, the temperature a few degrees cooler. Behind her – "Milady! Yoo-hoo!" She shut the door behind her, waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Nothing there – through the green jade that had become her eye she saw rough-hewn stairs cut into the stone, leading down–

  "Where are you, my little bird?" – from behind the door.

  Trapped.

  She could make a stand right here, or she could go back down. She wondered what the stairs led down to, then decided there was only one way to find out.

  When she followed them, the stairs led down to a hallway and three doors. The ground was the same rough stone. The air was cooler here. She looked at the doors:

  
Wine Cellar.

  
Operating Theatre.

  
Storage.

  She'd had enough of wine and had no wish to go back to the second of the three.

  She chose
Storage.

  "Leave my stuff alone!" a petulant voice, coming down the stairs.

  Milady, looking at Sade's storage room, the jade casting a green glow over everything. "My, my," she said, quietly, and smiled. It felt good to be smiling again.

  "We're not so different after all!" she called out. A heavy body crashing against the door. "Come out, little bird!"

  "Not yet," she said, but quietly. Surveying the room, she felt like a kid on her birthday – though her birthdays had never been as good as this:

  Machine parts, automaton parts – loose arms, loose legs, a brace of fingers – crates of bullets, a mounted cannon, curved and straight swords, a row of dusty books, miniature Tesla sets, knives, handguns, chemicals in vats, a few bottles of vintage wine, strange looking goggles, a medicine cabinet as large as a wardrobe, and there in the corner…

  She said, "Beautiful," and went for the small crate marked
Explosives.

  "Ready or not, here I come!" Sade roared.

  "Be ready in a moment, dear," she said, and helped herself to what she needed. She almost liked Sade then. He was a man of great appetite, and he kept a well stocked larder – for all eventualities.

  When he burst through, roaring and waving the sword, she turned and shot him again, but it was little use, and he laughed. His bulk blocked the doorway. "Little bird," he said, "it's time for your medicine."

  She needed to get past him. But how? He grinned, and came closer. She said, "Wait."

  "Yes?"

  Nothing came to mind so she kicked him between the legs instead – her new metal leg delivering a blow that would have felled a lesser man. But Sade was no longer a man.

  He grunted, remained standing. The look he gave her was almost pitying. He reached one fat, meaty hand towards her, the fingers curling to grab her, and she almost screamed. Instead she pushed herself towards him.

  They came together, her body against his bulk, taking him by surprise. She held on to him, one arm around his neck, and her gun arm snaked up and came to rest under his chin at an angle. "Want to dance?" she said. "Drop the sword."

  He dropped the sword. "Careful now, little bird," he said. "Citizen Sade is not that easy to kill."

  Her head was resting in the crook of his neck. She whispered, "But I don't want to kill you."

  She felt him lick his lips. "What do you have in mind?"

  "Let's step back out of the room," she said. "Slowly."

  It was a precarious position and either one of them could change the balance in a single moment. She hoped he would go along.

  He did. "I love to dance," he said. "And dancing with you, my lovely…" Slowly, bodies held together, they eased out of the room. "Turn," she whispered, and they did, until his back was to the storage room and hers to the staircase–

  "My guards are waiting at the top," he said. "You won't get away. We can resolve this peacefully – I'll notify the Council–"

  She felt his body twist even as he spoke – his hand, curling

into a fist, caught her on the side of the head, rocked her away, and then a blade was flashing in his hand, a small surgical instrument that must have been hidden up his sleeve, and it came whispering towards her face–

  She raised her arm to ward it off. It was the human arm and the knife cut through flesh. The pain burned through her – bright blood dripping to the ground, and Sade grinned. "I'll suck it right off your bones," he said.

  She fled.

  In her coat pockets the little birthday packages waited, and she dropped two down below and another when she reached the top, where the nuns waited. She fired, wondering how many rounds she had left. Not many. She hoped they would be enough. They fired back, and she had no choice but to charge through the open door, back into Sade's quarters, sending tables and chairs and maps and pipes and roast chicken to the floor, just trying to get away, get through the waiting nuns–

  One came at her with a syringe and Milady turned and grabbed the woman's arm and broke it clean – a scream, and then she was out of the door and climbing the stairway to the cells.

  Two more birthday presents in Sade's quarters, another one on the stairs – a bellow behind her – "No more games, Milady!"

  The wails of the insane filled this floor. She passed locked cells and shot the locks, and the inmates of the Charenton Asylum came out of their cells and glared around them – the smiling man and the man who ate flies and the one who thought he was a wolf – and then the attacking nuns came into view and halted, and the released inmates, as if scenting blood, turned as one to look at them.

  "Get out of here!" she shouted at them, but they only had eyes for the nuns. She didn't wait. She tossed more of the small packages into the emptied cells and when she reached the one that had been her own she went in. The window was still broken. A moon glared outside and a cloud of bats, frightened by the noise, were screeching as they flew over the roof. She kicked the bars.

  Her new, more powerful leg, metal hitting metal, bent the bars. She kicked, again and again. Behind her, screams, gunshots, Sade's voice crying, "Animals! Back to your cells!"

  Her smile was grim. She kicked, panting with the effort, and suddenly the entire panel of bars fell away from the window and crashed to the ground below. She went to the window, pushed herself up. The door behind her crashed open and Sade, bloodied and insane, filled the doorway. "Never!" he roared.

  For a moment she was suspended on the windowsill, a dark shadow crouching, her head turned to him, her coat flapping in the breeze. They stared at each other. "They should have closed this place years ago," she said, softly. Then she smiled, and blew him a kiss, and as he came charging into the room she slid through the window and fell.

  The ground came rushing up at her and she rolled with the impact, her breath knocked out of her. She rolled down the slope of wet grass and behind her the asylum stood, dark and forbidding and filled with screams. When she came to a stop she just lay there, for a long moment, getting her breath back. Then she stood up. Behind her the sound of gunshots and screams continued. She saw inmates come spilling out of the doors of the asylum. She heard Sade bellowing. Ahead of her was the gate, wrought iron, and beyond it freedom. She smiled and walked away from the asylum, her coat flapping in the wind, and as she did her hand reached into her pocket and found the Tesla transmitter she had picked up.

  She pressed the button, still walking away.

  Invisible waves travelling from her to the small packets she had distributed around the building… their own Tesla receivers picking up the signal, initiating a charge, and–

  The heat of the explosion came rushing at her back, throwing her forward, and for a moment she thought she was flying. Then the sound followed, multiple explosions joining into one giant booming wave of heat and sound and flame, and she rolled and came back to her feet and was through the gates, and when she turned the Charenton Asylum was a giant fireball on the hill, and dark shapes were streaming away from the fire and fled down the hill, and it took her a moment to realise they were rats, abandoning at last their ruined home.

  She reached back into her coat pocket and brought out her shades, and put them on, and the flames reflected in the dark glass. Then she smiled, once, and walked away, towards the lights of Paris in the distance.

 
 

 
 

Home was dark and cold, the gas lamps in the street outside whispering like grief-stricken relatives by a hospital bed. She let herself in, closed the door behind her, took a deep breath.

  She was very tired.

  In the fireplace, Grimm, dozing on long-dead coals. Milady knelt down, put the palm of her hand against the mechanical insect's head. The metal was warm. At her touch, Grimm's eyes opened. After a while Milady stood up.

  She went to her bedroom. She undressed, went to the bath and ran the taps, adding salts and perfumes and soaps into the water until the foam threatened to grow out of control. While she waited for the bath to fill she looked into the full-length mirror. Slowly, she examined herself.

  Scars, old and new. Without the eyepatch her eyes were mismatched, one dark, one a bright jade-green. She stared wonderingly at her new arm. The gun was light-weight, remarkably so. She looked at the place where her human arm ended and the machine gun began. The join was seamless.

  The arm aroused strange feelings in her. With only five fingers she was clumsy – it was hard to grasp things, hard to dress, but the machine gun arm felt, somehow, as much a part of her. She stroked it with her remaining arm and decided she needed new rounds of ammunition to be put in.

  Her leg, too, fascinated her. The same light material, with perfect joints, and somehow it obeyed her brain's commands – she raised it, kicking, then stood on it and pirouetted. She stood still and stared at her naked self in the mirror. Thinner, with a few new scars, her face gaunter than it'd been, but she was still herself, for all that. She was Milady de Winter, and she was still alive.

  And she was armed.

  Smiling faintly, she went to the bath and lowered herself slowly into the hot water. The water soothed her, bath salts at first burning, and then calming, her wounds. She closed her eyes – somehow that alien green jade could be controlled, which was another strangeness – and soon, without quite realising it, she fell asleep.

 

In the mist were the dead. Their voices called out to her. She saw Tom Thumb's face form in the mist, smiling at her sadly, puffing on a cigar. The smoke from the cigar rose and wreathed Tom's face and, slowly, it was Tom himself who became smoke, or fog, and blew away in an unseen breeze.

  For just a moment the mists parted and she could see them, could see the dead: shambling corpses streaked with silver, snakes of molten silver-grey swirling across their bodies, and there was something beautiful about them, and precious, as if they were lives salvaged, not lost. They were walking along a river, but when she looked closer the river was merely a larger snake of the same silver-grey material and the dead were absorbed into it and it became a spiral that grew distant and at last disappeared…

  Then there were cold stone walls around her and moss grew over the surface and she came to a door and she knew again where she was: this was the under-morgue, Containment Section: the place where they kept the most dangerous of their experiments, and those deemed too dangerous, by the Council, to ever be set free.

  Iron Mask section – and suddenly she was afraid.

  There was a sound coming from beyond the cell door. It took her a moment to recognise it as laughter.

  The fear grew in her like a poisonous fungus, and for a moment she couldn't move. The laughter in the cell grew in volume and frenzy then, abruptly, stopped.

  The silence was complete.

  Containment Section, the under-morgue: she knew what lay beyond that door, though that was impossible – wasn't it?

  She had killed him herself. She had watched him die – surely, surely she had watched him die?

  Figures came walking down the corridor. Ghostly, they appeared, as if not quite real – Viktor, and three armed guards. When they walked past her it was as if
she
were the ghost. She realised they couldn't see her, and then thought, with some relief:
This is just a dream.

  Viktor went to the door and slid a small panel aside. He peered into the room, then brought out a small metal device from his lab coat. An Edison recorder, portable. He began murmuring into the device. "Subject shows extreme resilience. During the last week alone the changes in his physiology have been astounding. When first captured, subject appeared close to death, infected with the…" a pause, then Viktor said, with apparent distaste, "the so-called Grey Menace, at an advanced stage and shot through with Houdin's –" another short pause – "codename the Toymaker's experimental vaccine, delivered by means of a projectile weapon employed by Council agent de Winter."

  The Phantom was alive.

  She felt her throat constrict with bile. Her fingers curled into

a fist and she wanted to put it in her mouth, to stifle the screams that wanted to come. Viktor said, "The subject's mind appears beyond repair. Yet his body, remarkably, is adapting. When first captured, subject had assumed an almost entirely inhuman appearance, particularly in the elongated shape of the skull and facial features, partially disguised by the subject by use of an iron mask. Now, however…"

  Viktor paused again, and cleared his throat. There was silence from beyond the door. The three guards stood motionless. "Perhaps the effect of the Toymaker's vaccine helped to stabilise the subject's deterioration. But I suspect it is a foreign agent responsible for the change. The subject now exhibits a remarkable ability to alter his physiology at will, a mimicking as that evidenced in more primitive life forms… Physical strength is increased as well. As to the subject's mind, however…" Again, Viktor stopped. "Evaluation period extended by order of the Council, transferring subject to experimental sub-station Zero, Charenton Asylum." He pressed a button on the recorder, then slipped it back into his pocket. Speaking through the panel in the door, more loudly: "De Sade's looking forward to examining you, Tômas."

  A growl from inside, then a burst of laughter. Viktor motioned to the guards. He put his palm against the door, waited.

  The door slid open.

  Milady stared, horrified, at the Phantom.

  Gone was the mask, gone were the inhuman features of the face. The man who occupied the cell was handsome, brownhaired, and shackled to the floor and walls with heavy metal chains. "Viktor," he said. "It's good to see you."

  Viktor made a jerking motion with his head. "Take him," he said. Milady watched as the three guards entered the cell…

  The Phantom raised his head and looked directly at her. She took a step back, and he smiled, revealing white, even teeth. His eyes were the colour of green jade.
Stop!
she wanted to shout, but they couldn't hear her, couldn't see her. She wasn't really there. By inserting the fragment of jade into her eye, she suddenly realised, the Phantom had turned
her
into the lens of a camera obscura.

  His eyes were on hers, and his smile became a leer, and she could only watch as his skull began to shift and change, and teeth grew as his mouth extended–

  
Viktor, stop!
but there was no one to hear her, and the guards were reaching for the chains and setting the Phantom loose when he rose, in one smooth, too-fast motion, and his hands had become talons, and he ripped the first man's face off and plunged his hand into another's belly before they even knew what had happened. The third guard raised his gun to fire… but the Phantom took it from him, like taking a toy gun from a child, and bashed him on the side of the head with the butt of the gun. He stood there, and his features slowly melted, the skull contracting, until the mild-mannered, handsome man he had once been stood there again – but this time he was unshackled and holding a gun, and a very frightened Viktor was backing away slowly as the Phantom advanced… The Phantom's jade eyes were on Milady's and he smiled, and said, "Sweet dreams, Cleo. I'll see you soon…" With one swift motion he had reached Viktor, and grabbed the scientist by the scruff of the neck. "Let's go, doctor," he said. "My ship awaits, and time and tide…" But she could not hear the rest, and the fog seemed to rise around her, flowing from the walls of the undermorgue, and the Phantom soon seemed a distant figure at the end of a white corridor, a cowering Viktor by his side, and then they were gone, or she was gone, and there was nothing but the mist, and the voices whispering far away about
three
dimensional space-time constraints
and
quantum permutations scan
and
checksum errors
and then they were all gone and she was floating face-down in a white, feathery sea, and it was rocking her, gently at first and then harder, and harder, until she thought she would drown and, crying out, opened her eyes.