The Dead Empty

The Dead Empty

A Tale of the Machine City

Now:

THE CROWD FILLS near the whole of Malabar Square with a sea of turbans and brown bodies, arms raised, fists pumping in synchronicity, voices pealing, roaring. Loud. Rhythmic. Musical. Painted signs ride the human tide like armadas amidst a tempest. Sari banners whip and ripple, a cacophony of color and caste. The man standing above, upon the stage, facing the crowd, lowers his hands, trying to quell the tumult, soothe his audience, slip a word in edgewise. Emile Urunta. Man of the hour, maybe even hours. Organizer. Polarizer. Womanizer. Man of many followers. Talents. Izers. In his bid for silence so that he might conclude his speech, nodding, smiling white, he submits to the praise, basking in it like sunshine. The crowd roars louder. He has failed, failed because they admire him, because they adore him, because they love him, and they need to make sure he knows it. Nodding, demurring, he wipes a hand across his smirking mouth. He knows it, and they should love him, a right smooth fucker is he.

“Unionization’s a threat to the natural order o’ things,” the big Texan drawls, laid full out beside me, peering down his rifle barrel at Urunta, then into the crowd.

“Then why take the job?” I muse aloud, looking away from Urunta and forgetting my first rule — don’t talk to the Texan — I realize it and punch my own leg in retribution, but keeping an eye to the crowd the whole long while. My name’s Avinash Singh. I’m a professional, and I’m watching for any black-listed mugs or thugs. I haven’t gleaned a glance. I adjust the focus on my telescopic monocle. Looks ridiculous, works smooth as velvet.

“Man’s got to chaw,” the big Texan answers. “Ain’t that a fact…” I don’t know his name. Never thought to ask it. Probably never will. He sighs, musing, glances my way, sidelong, one bushy eyebrow raised, “So … Urunta saw fit to hire another beaner…” I’m fair sure he’s not talking to me, but he is making noises with his mouth in my general vicinity.

I offer a smile, my winningest, smooth my prim mustache, two strokes, thumb and forefinger. Devil may care. “I believe the proper nomenclature is wog, old boy.” Our perch is a hastily erected scaffold rising outside the Naydari Textile Factory, the very place the mob’s trying to organize against. Precarious. The scaffold sways and creaks beneath us. Recycled bamboo and corrugated sheet metal. Legs dangle from the platform above, a brave few sharing our bird’s eye of the proceedings. The factory rises at our backs, a blood-red brick monstrosity, a temple to the subjugation of mankind, machinery inside grinding out heart and lung and soul, the cheapest commodities in the Machine City. Mortise Locke.

“Huh…?” the Texan says, nonplussed. “Sorry, ‘bout that.” He might even mean it. “You can shoot, though?” he asks doubtfully, glancing at the Webley-Colt strapped at my hip. “Ain’t no distance rig, boy.”

My reply is accompanied by a sweaty pale rictus. Trembling. “I can hit the broad side of a barn,” I answer, humblest of the humble. I can, long as it ain’t moving. “In any case, my understanding was the shooting part was your realm of expertise.”

He shrugs, Aw shucks, glides his callused hand along the octagonal barrel of his Henry rifle, then to the stock and pneumatic pump. The Hank’s oiled. Polished. Gleaming blue steel and burnt-umber oak. An expensive piece and the old son knows how to wield it. I’ve seen him. Backwards, at fifty paces and using a mirror to aim, he can snuff a lit cigarette clean out of a pretty girl’s parted lips. Why the hell he does it I haven’t the slightest, but he can and does. He shakes his head, sighs like a lovelorn chippy gearing hard on her long lost beau, and laments, “I miss the sound of real gunfire…” He spits brown juice down into the crowd. Unmindfulness, his one great strength. “Air shit. Steam shit. Gas propellant shit. I miss gunpowder. I miss the real thing. The bang.”

I don’t. A woman screaming my name amidst the throes of passion, soon-to-be-sated lust, her stifled grunt as she comes. Hard. Those’re the sounds I miss, and I heard them just last night. The first two, anyways. But I don’t say that. I don’t say anything, cause I’ve had just about enough of this shit-kicker, and if I open my mouth something bad’s likely to result. And most likely to me.

“You seen anyone?” the Texan asks hopefully down the barrel, trawling along from brown face to brown face, hoping, Aye, hoping I give him full license to play God, to pipe a thimble’s full of lead into the brainbox of some poor sod. Hell, if that doesn’t make you feel better…?

“It’s tough…” I shake my head at the Hindi crowd. Mostly Hindi. Some Sikh machine workers, of course. Some Muslims, too. A contingent of Persian dyers. I take another look at Urunta. He’s discoursing hard now, in control; he owns them, cruising along, talking his talk. He’s a speck of brown against the factory, him and his bodyguards, all dwarfed by the brick bastard. “Hell, we all look alike,” I say.

“Ain’t it a fact…” the Texan drawls, nodding his big stupid head, still staring down the barrel, face still beaming full of hope, glorious, glorious hope.

* * * *

Now:

CROWD-CUTTER’S A four-foot-tall wedged shield, an inch thick, three-foot wide, angle similar to a chevron if eyeballed from above. Akin to a steam engine’s cowcatcher but it ain’t for cows. Weighs about two hundred pounds. Rough welded. Black iron. Ain’t pretty. But bullets don’t even bother trying. Peter Coldman lifts it like wicker. He sniffs, coughs into his hand, knowing all eyes in the paddy-wagon are on him, expectant, and he don’t like it.

“Bugger me, you all crystal on the skinny?” Coldman asks them, giving his bowler hat a fine pat on the crown, dropping it lower, just above his numb black eyes. His bowler’s iron plated inside. Fine work. It ain’t no trifle. “Eh?”

Wide eyes, nods, grins reply, Ayes, all around, a full house. Within the metal box, his audience is clogged thick, toughs, shitbums, dregs, all, without exception. Shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, they’re crammed on thin wooden benches. Nervous. Eager. But unanimous. Jolly fucking good. Most of them are carrying two-by-fours or the like. Thick-scheduled iron pipe. Truncheons. Obtuse weapons. Blunt weapons. Effigies of themselves. Of himself.

Coldman grins, just the tips of his teeth gleaming like grey tombstone granite. He’s nervous speaking, leading, running a show, and as he lays his massive paw on the door handle he remembers, turns back, fixes them all an eye fit for murder. “If it comes to it, none o’ you lays a grubby paw on the gimp, savvy?” he rumbles. “Only me.”

Nods. A few grumbles, then silence, except for the rumble beyond the doors, coming up through the floor, vibrating the benches, the walls, the ceiling. Energy’s in the air outside, rising fast, roaring hard; it’s from the crowd and it’s seeping through.

“Tally ho…” Coldman turns, wrenches the knob, dropping his shoulder into the double doors, banging them wide, flooding the dank compartment cool with air and harsh grey, blinding, the cheer of a thousand ragheads beyond all clamoring for something real, something better, something that ain’t never gonna happen. Out of the back of the wagon, he drops, lands, both feet slamming like sledgehammers into the cobble. Then he’s off, trudging, pounding, gaining steam with each step, a locomotive chugging, pistons pumping, his shoulder lowered, the crowd-cutter held up before him like the shield of some Athenian hoplite charging the darkies at Marathon. He don’t glance over his shoulder; he don’t give his men no thought; they’re there behind him or they ain’t, and Coldman don’t give a hang either way. The man’s focused, has purpose, and bodies are scattering, breaking as he storms through them from behind—

* * * *

Before:

“THEY SAY YOU’RE sharp as a razor, Mister Singh.” On Urunta’s wall hung a mural depicting Shiva the Destroyer performing his namesake duties on a pair of blue-skinned demons. Four arms each. Tusks. Good quality work, but not the best.

“Just Avinash,” I said.

“Hrrrm…” Urunta frowned in displeasure. “Business should be conducted with due decorum, Mister Singh.” He sat back, considering as he withdrew an ornate octane lighter and a single Golshthammer cigarette that probably cost more than my shirt. As he lit it, he considered then took a pull. Tendrils of smoke slid from his mouth, groping toward his secretary seated nearby, a svelte young thing all bustling curves encased in streamlined fabric. Smooth. Sleek. Tailored to magnificence. She raised an eyebrow Urunta’s way, posing a silent question. Urunta smirked, shaking his head minutely, then cast his attention back my way. “Ahem… They say you’re so sharp that I must use the utmost caution not to cut myself.”

“They are so many liars, Mister Urunta,” I said. I was sharp, a gods-damned sickle-bladed scalpel. Once upon a time. “You must know that. A man of your position?”

He smiled at that. “Rumor and innuendo, not admissible in formal court, but within the hallowed halls of public opinion? Indispensable, indeed. It provides a baseline of sorts that a man such as myself will often use in the place of first-hand knowledge. Priceless. The trick of it all is to cast a wide net. Many and disparate sources. Come, come. Tell me that in your profession you do not do the same.”

I nodded. I did. I do. “Sure.”

“Then you’ll take the work?”

“I’m no shooter,” I said. “I want that clear. Security’s not my forte. Or muscle. You want a Hindi knuckleduster, hire my brother.”

“Hmm… Nikunj, yes.” Urunta nodded, his eyes bright, clear. “A name in his own right. He’s already on board, in fact. He shall be working under your direction. As shall the rest.”

“He’s jake with that?” I asked, absentmindedly picking at the scar at my neck, a lumpy line thick and hard as a centipede’s carapace; it wended its way inside my shirt, across my chest, bifurcating at the lower end of my sternum, traveling onward, downward. It was one of many, the northern reaches of a regular topographic map, lines of distinction, elevation, degradation. “We have … a variegated history.”

“He offered considerable assurance that it would not pose even the echo of an afterthought.” Urunta waved a hand, as though dismissing my ill-found fears like he were some magician. Hell, maybe he was. “Indeed, he seemed eager…”

Eager? Lords. My brother, the hero, the saint, the dirty fuck.

* * * *

Now:

FROM THE TANGLE of legs dangling from above comes a hoot, sharp, penetrating, distinctive. Not unlike an owl’s.

“What in Brahma’s…?” I turn, lean in, magnify, focus. My monocle whirs quietly as I pull the alarm. Bells jingle not far off to the left and right, from other scaffolds, alerting other spotters, other shooters. They all must see it, but it’s protocol. The crowd’s reacting like a spooked herd, those close anyhow, some running, some pushing back, surging, others turning to fight, others just freezing, eyes wide, immobile. Typical chaos rising. I’m grateful for the rickety perch.

“Where—?” the Texan grumbles without glancing my way, eyes down the barrel, grimacing, trying to hold aim as bodies start clambering down from above, the platform going all willy-nilly. “God damned scaffold-rats—”

“Two o’clock,” I answer, holding on, near falling, pointing. “There. Big chap. Bowler hat. See him? What the hell—?” He’s carrying some shield contraption and pounding through the crowd like a steamroller over dominoes, leaving a swathe of shattered bodies behind and aside. A line of fifteen men are ripping on his six. Armed. All of them. What the hell are they doing? Strikebreakers? No. Too precise, too focused. Not enough mayhem and murder. Not surgical, but … they’re heading for the main stage. “Shit—”

“Got him…” the Texan drawls, taking aim. We’re swaying now, slow, regular, near all of the scaffold-rats having abandoned ship by now. He fires, gun kicking — a big whoof! — like some asthmatic dog barking or choking on a chicken bone, and I see sparks flower off the big chap’s shield, one off his hat. More then, from the other perches. None slows him so much as a mite.

“Armor.” I glance at the main stage, at Urunta. He’s leaning forward over the podium, a quizzical look on his face, squinting, trying to suss out what the hell’s going on. His guards are scrambling aware. “Hit the tail,” I order.

The Texan grumbles to himself, doesn’t like some wog barking orders at him but does as I order cause it’s right, and he likes to shoot people. He drops the man behind the big chap. Whoof! Then the next one. Whoof! Then the next. The other tail segments are ducking now, aware, trying to hide in the maddening crowd, a whole hand of sore thumbs all sticking out. Atop the other scaffolds, my squads fire, but the big chap keeps right on rolling. Only five jackboots are stumbling along at his back now, single file, soiling their breeches most like, the rest nothing but a trail of broken breadcrumbs leading back toward a paddy-wagon rumbling on the fringes. Another segment drops. The big chap’s only halfway through the crowd. He might make the main stage, but it doesn’t seem like the smartest of ideas until I look back at Urunta just in time to see a triad of someones slather a burlap sack over his head and drag him kicking and screaming off behind the stage.

Urunta’s guards lie cast about on the stage like wooden soldiers, stiff, immobile, and the big chap keeps right on rolling…

* * * *

Now:

PETER COLDMAN VAULTS one handed up onto the stage, wood panels underfoot screeching in protest as he pounds to the back end of it, launches off, lands, and makes for the factory’s front doors. One opens as soon as he reaches them, and he piles through, dropping the crowd-cutter clanging at his feet soon as he’s inside. He doubles over, hands on knees, breathing hard, fast, rasping. The others are there, his men, Whistler at the door, the other two, Rims and Veer, struggling with Urunta, a lively chap, hooded, flailing about, screaming and generally carrying on until Peter Coldman cold-cocks him in the head, casually dropping him. Rims and Veer catch him and hold him up, limp, sagging and dangling, by his arms. One leg twitches.

“Any…?” Coldman huffs.

Whistler finishes bolting the massive double doors. “Naw.” He turns round. “Aced, all of them.”

Coldman nods, grunts, looks around, rises, catching his breath, heart slowing. Slowing. Slowly.

“A brutal showing, Mister Coldman, worthy of your barbarian heritage,” says Salantir Naydari, owner of the factory, flanked to either side by a phalanx consisting of more than a few darkie soldiers. Uniforms. Sleek. Trim. Black turbans. Shiny buttons. Corporate mercs. They look like they should be turning cranks for dancing monkeys, clanging cymbals. “I admit that I bore considerable reservation as to the efficacy of your scheme.” Eyebrow raised, his face ashen, sweaty, Naydari studies the hooded form. “The outcome, however, has proven satisfactory. Quite so, in fact.”

Coldman straightens his back, vertebrae cracking one by one, rising to his full height. Towering. “My steel, guvnor.” He doesn’t ask for it; Peter Coldman rarely, if ever, asks for anything. Most are eager to offer whatever he desires long before it gets that far.

Naydari may be something different; it seems as though he believes so at any rate. He glances sidelong to his men, raises his hand, gives a come-hither beckon of his thin index finger, and two soldiers haul a lockbox up from behind the phalanx and drop it at Coldman’s feet. The box clangs loud in the dead empty of the factory, hollow, echoing amidst the gleaming machine brass, the precision jungle of gear and drive-shaft. Machine oil permeates the air, thick, cloying, pervasive. An iron rainbow vaults overhead, an arch, a gear of gleaming, toothed metal rising from the near side of the massive space, waxing up and across, celestial, just shy of kissing the ceiling before turning, falling, waning down to the far side and dying within a massive square bulkhead.

“Crack it,” Coldman commands.

Outside, the crowd’s screaming, pounding at the doors.

Whistler hops to, scrambling for the box, unlatching it, flipping the top back on well-oiled hinges. A brimful of steel coins gleams within.

“Jolly good…” Coldman nods to Rims and Veer. They drag Urunta before Naydari. Urunta gasps suddenly, his head moving, rising beneath the hood.

Rocks bang off the wire-glass windows from outside.

“He had best be without serious harm,” Naydari cautions quietly, his thin hands gripping his cane before him. Bird bones. A stiff wind might knock him over, but he jaws with authority like he ain’t no darkie and Coldman is. His hackles rise as two of Naydari’s mercs break rank and step forth, gathering Urunta from beneath the armpits, holding him up. Veer and Rims step back as Urunta jolts suddenly, a real jack-in-the-box, kicking wild, slashing his arms free, twisting, tearing the hood from his face.

“Gods damn you!” Urunta screams. His face is a perfect mirror of Naydari’s own.

* * * *

Before:

URUNTA SAT FORWARD in his chair. Eager. Playacting? Maybe. Most likely. His secretary scribbled at her desk, the looping swirls of her hand poetic in its graceful form, her dark brown eyes down on her legal pad, consumed, her thick black hair hanging with a gleaming sheen.

“You’re certain none of the others working beneath me will harbor misgivings?” I asked.

“I can assure nothing, Mister Singh,” Urunta said. “Men are men, and men bear prejudices, old and new, like the leaves of a tree, only to fall, to disperse come the onset of winter.”

“Unless it’s fir. Then we’ve bigotry year round.”

Urunta grinned. “A razor…”

“How shall I put this…?” I started. “What caste I currently reside within has been … called into some question. In Malabar and the Dirge, it’s a problem.” I was an untouchable, the lowest of the low, which meant no Hindi’d take orders from me, or even so much as acknowledge my existence, barring other untouchables, and there was no way in hell’d I’d front a crew of gutter-dregs.

“That’s of no concern to me.” Urunta waved that magic hand. “It’s part of what I hope to accomplish in all this, a full erasure of caste lines, economic barriers, social distinctions. All one.” He brought his hands together, fingers spliced tight, trembling. “Bringing humanity together, not such a tall order, is it, eh?” He was tired. Worn. I hadn’t seen it at first, but it was there and in force. “In any event, as I said, I cast a wide net in my search. Your name came up. Repeatedly. Insistently. You’re not well liked.” I nodded. It was true. “Some men hate you. An alarming number, really. A considerable amount of others utilized the word loathe. Despise. Detest…”

“To be blessed with such literate enemies…” I mused.

“Yes, quite droll. One asked me where he might find you. He offered me a not-inconsequential sum of steel for knowledge of your current whereabouts. Fear not, I demurred.” Sitting back, he took a pull on his cigarette. “All this I chose to view as a glimmer of grudging respect shining through the miasma of hatred, a beacon in a storm.”

“What if I am just a shit?”

“What if you’re not?”

“In any case, a beacon? Seems a bit much…”

“Well…” He laid his hands out, palms up, apologetic, false. “I am an orator, after all. Merely utilizing tools at my disposal in an attempt to rouse my audience…”

“Don’t rouse me. Just fix me the truth.”

“The truth is the truth. You’re good at what you do. And you know Malabar’s people, people that may have tangential dealings with the types that might…” He paused. “Mister Singh, I can hire any number of competent shooters. What I require is someone who can direct the shooters should such need occur, someone whose word I can rely upon in difficult moments. Someone who will hold true to his word in dire situations.”

“Such as…?” He wasn’t telling me something.

“Accept my offer and you’ll be briefed fully.”

“Mind me asking why you’re doing all this…?” I looked around. There was money in it, no doubt, but there was more on the capital side of things, as always.

“Would, for the good of all mankind, be acceptable?”

“No,” I replied.

* * * *

Now:

RISING FROM A CROUCH to one knee, a hand laid on the rung, I freeze — a gun’s trained on me. I can sense it like cold weather in my bones. Spine stiffening. Tingling. The Texan. The man’s an enigma swathed in bone-white linen ghosting through amber fields conflagrated with charred crucifixes. I know it, and so I turn, hands up.

“Well, you turned out to be a heel,” I deadpan.

“Ain’t it a fact…” The sliver of his grin curls up at the terminus of the blue steel perspective line, and I just shake my head. Wait. Dead to rights. He has me. That’s what he’s thinking — just as a blur leaps down from above, two bare feet thudding, shattering into him, through him. Nikunj. My insurance policy. My brother.

The Texan twitches on the platform, posturing, decorticate. Something’s broken inside, and the crowd’s mad beneath, seething, slamming into the scaffold risers, surging past, around, a river of flesh scrambling for the factory doors. I’m busy holding on for dear life, trying not to piss myself.

Swaying to and fro, but maintaining his balance like some lifelong sailor on deck amidst a storm, Nikunj glances down, all nonchalant, at the Texan, like he’s wondering if the Texan’s a book he might like to peruse. He raises an eyebrow my way, his bundi dagger sharp in his fist. The Texan just lays there bleeding. broken.

I nod.

“You certain?” Nikunj gives me the hard stare.

“Since the moment I met him,” I say, as I swallow my gorge and start climbing the flimsy ladder.

* * * *

Now:

WHISTLER DIES FIRST, but it’s close indeed. A real neck and neck footrace, photo finish as Naydari’s mercs pounce, laying down a barrage of iron and lead, sending Coldman’s crew jitter-skipping back, back, back, ripped all to piss. Two mercs scuttle forward for the lockbox and drag it back.

It’s a hard rain pouring, horizontal, but Coldman’s slickered for bear. Bullets ping and ricochet off his armored greatcoat in a hip-hazard blizzard, his arm raised over his face as he endures. Each shot a hammer blow to the arm. Leg. Liver. Grunting. Wincing. It’s all he can do. Cursing, he steps back … back … back, surrendering ground until his foot’s against the iron door. The mob beyond screams for blood.

Naydari stands there watching, a reptile glare as the phalanx consumes him in their advance, seething forward, around him, to finish the job—

* * * *

Before:

URUNTA’S SECRETARY ROSE abruptly from her seat, smoothing out her skirt with one hand, clutching her paperwork to her breast with the other. Urunta and I both rose, the gentlemen, offering stilted bows. From beneath her bangs, she said in a husky lisp, “Mister Urunta … Mister Singh…” before strolling out. Mirroring Urunta, I watched her hips sway from side to side, with smooth metronomic precision, the pendulum swing of nature.

I glanced down at the ring on Urunta’s finger.

He caught my eye, raised an eyebrow. “I did not take you for the proselytizing monogamist type,” he said, all stern, patriarchal.

I shrugged, answered, “Means nothing to me,” because it didn’t.

“I wonder, have you ever held a position of power, Mister Singh?” Urunta stood up high, chest out, hands clasped behind his back, lecturing an ill-mannered student. “Ever hold the lives of hundreds, thousands, weighing on your shoulders? Whole families. Lines? Ever have the price of their collective souls tied into every decision you make? Every word, every whisper…?” He ran a well-manicured hand through his thick black hair. I could almost see his cracks. “Being in power … a man’s got to possess some means of relieving pressure. Something…” He pontificated on…

I’d heard similar rationalizations from bums in the bread line. “What are your concerns?” I cut him short. Fire lit within his eye; he didn’t like that, being interrupted. “With regards to the rally,” I added for clarification.

“Security,” he deadpanned.

“Specifics, I mean. What do you fear? Disruption? Abduction? Assassination?”

“Does it matter?” he demanded.

“It’s a week till. I’d have preferred three-months-notice. Six better. A year, ideal. This thing’s big. How many workers are attending? Five thousand?”

“Ten.”

Ten thousand? I whistled low. “I’ll keep my ear to the ground, but it helps to know what to listen for. This is slipshod planning.”

“You’ll be compensated adequately.”

“Only reason I’m here.”

He raised a hand, finger pointed, then paused, lowering it. “May I be frank with you?” He clutched at his lips with one hand, as though contemplating ripping them off.

“It’ll only hurt you if you’re not.” Which wasn’t true. Shit-storms could take down anyone and everyone, but I didn’t say that. A warm breeze was blowing, though; I could feel it.

“What would you say if I told you I had no father or mother…?”

“I’d say you’re like ninety-nine percent of the street rats trawling the gutters of Malabar. But you made do. Rose up. Overcame. Bootstraps and all. I read the papers. Risen from the slumtowers of Calcutta Flats to the heights of power in the borough. What’s next? Gonna take on all of Mortise Locke?”

“No.” Urunta shook his head. “You misunderstand me.”

* * * *

Now:

WE MAKE THE ROOF, me pulling myself up like some skinny schoolboy eking out a pull-up, arms shivering. Nikunj’s topside already, having bypassed me on the bloody toothpick ladder, somehow; he’s picking daisies when I finally clamber topside; he strokes his chin, surveying the roof. It’s a flat expanse maybe a hundred yards wide by twice that long, shaped like a fat letter ‘L.’ Without a word, Nikunj, the Texan’s Hank in hand and a coil of rope wrapped around his torso, lopes off along the precipice. North. I follow.

The blasted sky’s mottled black and grey. High noon. Or so. The mob below churns like a hurricane tide, mad, dashing against the doors, the walls, the windows below. It screams like some insane thing, raw noise, hurling curses, bricks and stones arcing up, over. We’re so high up that the missiles laze in towards us, most bouncing, careening off the roof parapet; the others, devoid of momentum, reaching their peak, plummet back down.

Nikunj steps away from the edge, finds an iron-barred skylight, kneels down and peers through the grit and grime, wipes a corner clear with his hand. His eyes narrow. “This bloke worth all the ruckus?” he whispers.

“You been out of Malabar some time,” I say.

He nods, staring down. Some sort of showdown’s playing out below. Salantir Naydari stands bent, crooked. He could be Urunta’s sickly twin. A whole squad of men, corporate mercs, back him. The front ranks stand still as statues; the two ranks to the back are leveling weapons. The bowler-hatted ogre stands opposite, slouched, monstrous, alongside his three men, Urunta slung between two of them. A lock box sits open as a bear trap between the two factions. Inviting. Visions spring suddenly to mind; I know the ogre…

Nikunj unshoulders the rifle.

“South…” I mutter, cause that’s where this shit’s headed.

The ogre’s men drag Urunta forth…

“Might be Urunta can make a difference,” I say, watching it play out a hundred feet below. “A big one. Wove a workforce of Hindi, Muslim, and Sikh into one force.” Below, the mob reaches a crescendo at that very instant. “Takes some doing. Willpower. Promises made. Kept. Hired me himself, he did.” I hold up my hand. “Shook this very hand.”

Nikunj aims down the rifle barrel.

“Wait,” I say.

“For what?” He grimaces.

“They want him alive.”

“You certain?”

“I am for now.”

* * * *

Now:

THE MONSTROUS SLAB of iron at Coldman’s back chimes like high-pitched rapid fire thunder as bullets ricochet off. His crowd-cutter lies a foot away, limned in a ray of hope, out of reach; might as well be a mile. Does he go for it? Naw. Coldman gropes behind himself, blind amidst the buzzing flurry, and lays a massive paw on the double doors’ slide lock. A burly affair. As wide as his arm, heavy, a long tooth of gleaming brass. Oiled. Greased. It glides smooth, clacking, unlatching—

Like the initial crack forming in a split log, the slab doors jump as though struck beyond with a battering ram; then that crack grows smooth and slow and then fast, fast, faster, a ray of grey light, keen as a sepoy’s sabre, stabbing in through Naydari and his men. Eyes go wide as a swarm of arms snake in through the crack like tree roots prying a stone apart. Along come a flock of screams, roars, curses, promises. The doors open, gaining speed, momentum, And Coldman’s holding onto the slide bar still, his massive boot wedged into the bottom rail, riding the door on its inward swing, snatching his crowd-cutter on his arc ride.

The mob pours in, busts through, an animal clawing its way mad for murder. It’s hungry; it’s starving; it’s ravenous. Bullets fly, Woofing, thudding, pinging. Men fall, but the ones behind claw onward, trampling, surging forth as a single entity.

Coldman launches off the door, scrambling out of the way of the mob, hauling past machine stations, ducking drive-shafts, sliding through bottlenecks and looms, pounding on and on as the factory fills—

* * * *

Before:

“AND SO YOU ARE prepared, at any cost, to mete out the terms of the contract?” Urunta asked.

“You still haven’t explained your concerns adequately, from where I’m sitting.”

“What are your concerns, precisely?”

“Alright. Why even risk the rally?” I asked. “And why outside the factory? On Naydari’s turf? You thumbing your nose?”

“The factory is a symbol to the people. A paean to the subtle art of subjugation. I think it prudent that the people address it themselves. A meeting of visceral confrontation. A revolution must be enacted by its people, Mister Singh. I am merely here to help them along, to facilitate, to nudge them in the right direction.”

“You think it’ll succeed? You think it’ll make things better?”

“Have you strolled the streets of Malabar lately?”

“I have.” I nodded. “The cesspit swirling.”

He frowned at that, lips pursed, but he didn’t deny it. He wouldn’t deny it. Couldn’t. “Is that not answer enough?”

* * * *

Now:

“SHIT — ” I bark as I scramble after my brother, across the rooftop, me wending through a metallic mushroom forest of squat skylights and air vents, him vaulting them one-handed, leaping like a bloody gazelle, never losing momentum or speed, only ever gaining it.

I’m huffing behind, sputtering, snatching glimpses of the merc phalanx below, all hauling through the maze of machinery. Naydari’s going for the back door. The mob’s coursing in still, and black smoke’s already rising as Nikunj reaches the far end of the roof. He drops immediately to a crouch, laying the barrel of the Hank across the roof’s parapet, and takes aim. Fires.

I nearly slog into him, missing him by inches, dropping breathless against the short wall.

“I got him,” Nikunj grunts.

I magnify with my monocle in time to see the last of the mercs barrel-ass into the open maw of a steam-wagon, black smoke pouring out in gouts. It starts off, rolling slow, leaving Naydari’s body laid out in the street. A head shot. The back. Ugly. I snap my monocle shut. “No, you didn’t.”

* * * *

Now:

THE FAR DOORS SLAM shut as Coldman reaches them, only moments after Naydari’s phalanx pours through. Hammering rings out then as the mercs chock them from the outside. Coldman drives his shoulder into the metal doors, jumping them nearly off their hinges, but they hold.

The mob’s there with him then, a sea of darkies all clambering at the doors, breaking windows, ravaging machinery. A wrench bounces off Coldman’s shoulder, and he raises the crowd-cutter too late to ward it off. Another tool soars past his head as the mob takes note of the giant in its midst. Screams now, curses as bodies converge on him from on all sides, skinny arms and long fingers clutching at his armored coat, punching at his legs and chest, latching like weeds onto his limbs.

“Raghead shits!” he roars, casting bodies back into the fray, punching, swinging, hammer-fisting them off. He freezes then as one by one the light of the skylights winks out of existence as though a storm’s raging toward him. And it is. The burning reek of smoke’s in the air suddenly, unmistakable, a choking fume of thick black greasiness clawing like the devil across the ceiling.

* * * *

Before:

“ARE YOU FAMILIAR with Salantir Naydari?” Urunta asked.

“I’ve heard about him.”

“Textiles are not the sum total of his holdings, however,” Urunta said. “They are, in fact, a drop in the bucket as they say. His holdings range from any number of endeavors. Most notable in this instance? Biotech.” He paused, steepling his forefingers pressed against his lips. “Have you ever seen Salantir Naydari?”

“No.” I shook my head. “He’s something of a recluse.”

“He is that, indeed.” Urunta nodded. “Understated, but true. If you had seen Salantir Naydari at his apex, you would have noticed a certain resemblance to myself. You would have thought us twins, no doubt.”

“And now?”

“He has waned to his nadir.” He took a deep breath, as though preparing himself to step off the ledge of a high building. “His humanity…” He paused, started again. “Naydari was born with a defect, a disease that manifested itself in early adulthood, causing his own immune system to systematically destroy his own organs. One by one. He has labored many years to overcome this malady, spearheading many transplantation advances, initially utilizing parts gleaned from … shall we say, questionable sources.”

“Black market?” I asked.

“Yes, naturally,” Urunta said. “But finding a donor whose body type is match enough to allow successful transplantation has ever been the crux of his dilemma. Just because you possess a viable organ does not mean your body will accept it. Complex mechanisms are at work. And so he sought to circumvent this dilemma through cloning advances, and he is near to achieving his end.”

“So how do you know all this?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.

“Because I am a clone of his.”

I sat back. “Bullshit.”

Urunta waited for it to sink in. It took its sweet time.

“You said near to achieving his end,” I said. “From what you’re saying, though, seems he’s already accomplished it.”

“Yes and no.” He rubbed his forehead. “Where to start…? I was part of Naydari’s thirty-first attempt at cloning. Seven years of trials. The eighteenth specimen of what would come to be known as his alpha corps, as he liked to refer to us. Number eighteen out of 324. I was labeled Prime amongst all of the alphas, for it was I alone who survived both the incubation and progeric stages. The successful experiment. The proud son.” He glanced up at me, answering my unasked question, “The others fell to the same congenital defect owned by our progenitor, only in them it was enhanced, virulent, rapacious. Not unlike Naydari himself.”

“What is it he wants?” I asked. Besides power? Besides freedom? Besides immortality?

He held his hands out. “Me. All of me. You see, the brain is everything. It represents the sum total of our being. Hearts? Simply mechanical devices, wonders of nature in many respects, but merely pumps. And kidneys? Filtration systems. The digestive tract? An energy absorption system. And the list goes on and on. All, if not easily, then ultimately, replaceable. And that was what he sought to do as one after another, his organs failed. We, my damned brothers included, were so many spare parts. But I alone am his magnum opus, his vessel.”

“You look fairly whole,” I commented.

“I escaped.” Urunta struggled, lifting his left foot up onto the table. He pulled up his pant to reveal prosthetic leg below the knee. Dull grey, he knocked on it, metallic, hollow. “Most of me, that is…”

* * * *

Now:

NIKUNJ REACHES THE ground eons ahead of me, sliding down the rope so fast I can smell his palm flesh burning. He’s off and ripping past Naydari’s corpse, after the steam-wagon, the heavy iron juggernaut, a parody of a locomotive, rolling forward without tracks through the streets, gaining speed.

Dropping to the cobblestones, I collapse forward, hands to knees, trying to catch my breath as I listen to Nikunj’s feet padding across stone, as I hear pounding reverberate from inside the factory doors, as windows smash, glass flying outward, those within screaming black bloody murder. Smoke’s pouring from the windows. I glance again at the retreating steam-wagon disappearing in the distance. Then at the back doors.

The barrels of two long-guns are wedged beneath the two doors. I scramble over to them, grab one and pull, lifting with everything I have — it doesn’t budge. Fists pound from within. Smoke breathes out. I try the other gun. It, too, won’t budge, so I start kicking it one way then the other, and the door jumps open a fraction. Again I kick it and again and again, worrying it back and forth, the door opening a piece with each kick as steel scrapes along stone. A skinny arm emerges from between the doors along with tongues of smoke. More arms emerge. I keep kicking until the door yawns wide, vomiting bodies from the depths of hell. The ogre stumbles suddenly out of the maw, the great bowler hat atop his head smoking, his face, his arms, the rest of him bathed black in soot. He collapses to one knee before me, hocks a wad of grey phlegm from the deepest recesses of his being. With one great arm, he clutches at my shoulder.

Bodies continue vomiting forth from the smoking factory dragon, stick figures staggering, dropping, gasping, crying.

I shrug the ogre’s paw off and step back, out of reach, drawing my Webley-Colt. I hold it on him, aimed at his right eye. I’m willing to bet it’s not armor plated. My hand’s trembling like a wet dog, but even I can’t botch this shot.

The ogre glances up, a trembling line of black saliva dangling from his lip. “Thought you looked familiar…”

“I thought the same.”

“Can’t place you…” the ogre grunts; he hacks, spits. “Little … addled. Was it good times…?”

I can feel myself strapped to that table once more, see that ogre looming over me, taking my arms in hand and breaking them. I swallow. “No,” I answer finally.

“Heh … figured as much.” He nods, wipes black runnels of sweat from his burnt brow. “Ain’t gonna beg, if that’s what you’re waiting on.” He sniffs, cracks his neck, squints up at the fractured sky. “Wasting grey-light.”

I squeeze the trigger, and nothing happens. Nothing. The ogre rises over me. I squeeze it again — nothing. My gun’s fouled, broken, jammed, something, and the ogre keeps right on rising, looming like some mountain out of the sea. He cracks his knuckles, and I know I’m a dead man, but he pauses. Takes a breath. “I remember you now,” he says, nodding. “We’re even.” He turns and trots off through the crowd, loping all round-shouldered and massive. I just stand there.

Nikunj is at my side an instant later, his breath labored but even. “They got away.”

“Like hell they did,” I say.

* * * *

Now:

EMILE URUNTA COMES TO in the back of the chuffing steam-wagon, black smoke and char tasting foul on the dead air, the iron floor rumbling underneath him as it roars down the cobblestone streets. It’s black as a coal miner’s lungs, and Urunta crawls along the floor, feeling his way around his new coffin. He’s thrown against the wall as they make a turn, skid to a halt. There’s nothing inside to find, to feel, nothing but smooth flat expanses of iron. Footsteps pound above, moving over him, and Urunta scrambles to his feet, his head pounding, the taste of blood in his mouth. He nearly keels over, wondering briefly if he’s got a concussion, but he has no frame of reference in the dark.

A door unlocks at the far end of his coffin, and Urunta hurls himself at it, dropping his shoulder into it, forcing it open. He stumbles out. A merc pounces on him, tackling him; then others are on him, too, grappling him, arm-barring his hands behind his back, handcuffing him. They drag him, struggling, up to his feet.

The mercs force march him helter-skelter down a hall, through a door, and into a brightly lit room. Halogen lights blare bright as day, brighter, like something out of a hospital. A surgical room. That’s clear. To punctuate that thought, two masked men in leathered slicks enter, strolling through the door, their gloved hands out before them. They reek of astringent, of carbolic acid. In the center of the room, two metal tables lie parallel, gleaming beneath the antiseptic glare. A pair of cryobaths are built into the floor, the water and ice all blue and cold.

Gleaming steel saws and obsidian scalpels are lined up like soldiers on a tray as Urunta’s dragged past. More masked men enter. Flicking a boot out, Urunta knocks the tools flying through the air, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory as they manhandle him, slam him onto the table and strap him down—

Borne slumped in upon a wheelchair, Salantir Naydari enters the room then, a thing terrible to behold, jawless, drooling, a husk of humanity forfeit. His trembling nail-less hand, at the end of his sole appendage, long and lithe, palpates at his toothless, sucking mouth, pulling at his lips, fingering his gums as he glares with hunger, with need, with feverish entitlement. His mad eyes ablaze, Naydari whispers hoarsely, a whining junky-need rising in timbre in his voice as he clutches at his slick hairless chest, his grey skin delicate and slick as an amphibian’s. “Hurry…”

* * * *

Now:

“THIS WAY.” I point. The flash-wagon careens through Malabar, Nikunj behind the wheel, it roaring past the factory, through Calcutta Flats and onto Sleeman Street, past the looming Razor towers and along the Quarantine walls rising high into the fissured sky.

“You’re certain?” Nikunj asks.

“Sure,” I reply. “Take this right.” I slide a finger down the stiff collar of my new uniform, starched near to plywood.

Nikunj torques the steering wheel right, and we burn down Garuda Row and into the high end of Malabar, relatively speaking. A gleaming tortoise shell of a building, a geodesic half-sphere, emerges from behind a bulwark of black obelisk circling the property. Naydari BioCorp. The gate at the front looks solid.

Nikunj punches the throttle, and I swallow hard as the flash-wagon jumps, pouring it on, me holding on for dear life, arms straight out before me, bracing on the dash. Nikunj’s not going to stop. The gate’s articulated black iron and the flash-wagon smashes through it like brass knuckles through teeth. Guards scatter on the far side, uniformed men diving aside, one firing from the hip, fanning it like some Hindu cowboy. But we’re still gaining speed, somehow, and we’re through the courtyard, smashing through the front doors, glass shattering, steel whining, scraping, before we tail out into a skid, halting on two wheels, angled to roll before momentum finally dies, and the flash-wagon falls back to four.

Nikunj pulls a lever and a thick cloud of smoke erupts from beneath the flashwagon, consuming everything in a haze of white.

* * * *

Now:

THE SURGEON PRESSES a button, and the bone saw whirs to life, spinning, screaming so high pitched it near approaches silence. He nods in approval and glances down at Urunta. Something lies within that surgeon’s eyes, the only flesh visible above his mask. It might be sorrow, sympathy, empathy, but he kneels by the cryobath anyways, the saw screaming silent.

Eyes near popping from his head, Urunta screams, teeth bared, mouth held just out of the water as he flexes against his bonds. Ice water laps against his face, his ears, his nose. Muscles cramp from cold. Seize. He’s past shivering, past the raw cold burn, past feeling, past hope. His sole consolation now lies in madness. Reality breaks for Urunta as the saw descends toward the line the surgeon has etched around his now-shaven skull. His compatriot is already hard at work cutting on Naydari. To transfer Naydari’s sick mind into Urunta’s healthy body which’ll make the sum total of what’s left of Urunta grey slop in a wet bag.

* * * *

Now:

NIKUNJ’S LAUNCHING OUT of the rig and into the billowing white before I can even see straight, but I clamber out, covering my mouth with a fist, coughing as I stumble along. Nikunj turns and waits on me, and the smoke clears. Long marble floors stretch out into dark hallways going on for eternity. A decorative waterfall bubbles along happily as feet stomp en mass toward our position.

A cadre of mercs pours through the decaying mist, weapons drawn. They pause in line, a firing squad, weapons leveled at us, squinting as the smoke finally clears. The waterfall bubbles cheerily, and steam hisses from the flashwagon.

I clear my throat and step forward, aiming my ire at their squad leader. “Lieutenant!” I roar. “They’ve gone in after Mister Naydari. Assassins. Three. Toward the surgery floor. Take your squad and pursue. Shoot on sight,” I command, inflating my chest, letting my sleek new fitted uniform do the work. It’s gleaming and audacious, and the lieutenant is drooling down the corridor quicker than Pavlov’s dogs, his pack in tow.

Nikunj and I stroll out of the building and through the courtyard, toward the open gates, Nikunj stepping in my wake, me ordering mercs about like Napoleon’s long-lost more handsome brother. We’re out the gates when the first explosion sounds. A primary charge. Not much more than a pop from this distance. The secondary charge detonates almost instantly after, followed by a blast wave rippling reality in a half sphere for quite some degree and distance.

* * * *

Before:

“BUT WHY THROW in the towel?” I asked. “You’re on top. You’ve done what no one else in this city’s been able to accomplish, and you’re just on the cusp of uniting the whole of Malabar. Don’t you want to see it through?”

Urunta nodded. “I do indeed, more than anything, truth be told, but I think it an impossibility. Naydari’s resources are effectively without limit, as are the depths of his depravity. I am alive today merely by luck. There have been many attempts on my life, and there shall be innumerable more until one day one inevitably proves successful.”

“Hire more men,” I countered.

“The more men I hire, the more prove turncoat.” Urunta leaned back in his chair, taking in his portrait of Shiva. “My faith in humanity has … no. I shall not waver. You say I am throwing in the towel? No. I am choosing my destiny. Fall I shall, yes, but he shall fall with me, and with his fall the people, my people, shall ascend. Unite. This rally shall prove the nexus, the beginning of all to come.”

“What is it you think’s going to happen?”

“He will take me.”

I shook my head. “But—”

“Yes. He will take me but in doing so expose himself.”

“You think he’s going to be there to snatch you?” I scoffed. “Himself?”

“No, of course not, but the facilities required to conduct the surgery are extensive, quite extensive, indeed. His biotechnical corporation in Malabar. The switch will be performed there. It has to be performed there.”

“And you want me to torch the place while you’re both inside?”

“It is the only place, the only time to be certain he is present, descended from his ivory tower. Vulnerable.” Urunta reached below his desk, withdrawing a box. He placed the box upon the desk. A black uniform lay within, folded neatly, a barrage of brass buttons all gleaming. An insignia for Naydari BioCorp was sewn into the chest. “A captain’s uniform from Naydari’s mercenary guard. Credentials as well. Use them as you see fit. In my garage below is a flash-wagon fitted with a titanium ram. Mathematically, my man says it should prove sufficient to breach the building’s considerable outer defenses.”

“Mathematically…?” I echoed softly.

“Yes,” no hesitation, no doubt, “and within the cargo hold of the flash-wagon I have amassed six hundred pounds of crystallized TNT. There’s a clock-mech fuse attached. You can set it as you see fit, but best you not be within the structure or within its immediate vicinity when it detonates.”

“Will it be enough?” I asked.

“Yes.” Urunta held out a hand. “Are you still game, Mister Singh?”

“I am,” I answered, taking firm hold of his hand. “As long as you pay me up front.”