Another burst of noise, and the signal faded.
“Twenty-five minutes,” Dante said. “Twenty-five.”
“Dammit,” Thad whispered to himself. His hands were cold now.
“Dammit,” said Dante.
“Enough, birdbrain. And when did you become a timepiece?”
“Twenty-four minutes. Twenty-four.”
Thad followed Maddie farther downward, trying to push everything else from his mind and take on his persona of clockwork hunter. It was difficult. Usually he could take his time, stalk his prey carefully. In fact, the only time he had been in a hurry was when he’d tried to rescue—
No. This wasn’t the time to think of that. This was nothing like going after David. But he hoped Nikolai knew he was coming. He didn’t want Nikolai to be scared, even if it were only a machine creating a facade of fear.
The noises told him first that he was coming up on his goal—sounds of machinery very much like those in Mr. Griffin’s lair, but louder and more numerous. Blue light came from around the bend ahead of them. Thad tightened his grip on his pistol and realized he had no real plan, hadn’t had time to formulate one.
“Sixteen minutes,” Dante said quietly. “Sixteen.”
A muffled
boom
came from above. The tunnel shuddered faintly and dust sifted down, making Thad cough. The colt flinched, and Maddie’s little light trembled.
“What the hell was that?” Thad gasped.
“Doom,” Dante said. “Dammit!”
A dozen more automatons and countless spiders burst out of the room ahead and streamed toward him. Thad jerked his pistol around to fire, and then he saw
that the automatons were more of the twisted versions of Nikolai. They lurched and wobbled, stumbled and staggered in a wretched herd. It was awful to watch. Thad’s own heart lurched. He forced himself to step aside and they blundered past, creating a faint draft in the damp air. Then they were gone.
Another faint burst of noise came from the colt. “Thad? Thad! Are you there?”
Thad realized his hands were shaking. “What happened up there, Sofiya? I thought we had at least fifteen minutes left.”
“The major…” Burst of noise. “…too enthusiastic. The tsar apologizes but…” Another burst of noise. “…now riding Kalvis toward Griffin’s…”
The colt went quiet again. Thad took a steadying breath, then moved farther ahead and reached the mouth of the tunnel, just past a heavy portcullis. He didn’t want to look inside.
The room was bigger than he had thought, and crammed with machinery. One entire two-story wall was lined with a mass of memory wheels that clicked and spun in a dizzying dance. Spindly mechanical hands and arms with hands or tools or other objects on the end extended in all directions. Conveyer belts moved out of production machinery, and Thad knew this was the source of many of the spiders and automatons, including the twisted Nikolais. Connected in the center of it all stood the elaborate ten-legged spider Thad remembered from Havoc’s laboratory. Cables hooked it to the bank of memory wheels. Beside the horrible spider, just as Sofiya had said, was a little chair, and in the chair was Nikolai. His clothes were in shreds and his hair looked like a
haystack, but he didn’t seem to be injured, except for the thick wire that trailed from his ear.
Thad wasn’t prepared for the sight. Nikolai’s little metallic face, his wide brown eyes, his small forehead—all went straight through Thad. How familiar, how normal, how much a part of his life that odd face had become; and now, seeing him in the chair with a cable in his ear, filled Thad with such a rage that he trembled from head to foot.
The room had no other automatons in it. They had all rushed out after the explosion up top. Thad tore his mask off so he could see better and ran into the room, pistol in his right hand, knife in the left. He went straight for the chair that held Nikolai.
Nikolai’s eyes widened when he saw Thad. He jerked forward, as if he wanted to leap out of the chair, but he stayed where he was. It was then Thad noticed he wasn’t strapped into the chair, or even tied down or restrained in any way.
“Niko!” he shouted. “Come on! We’ll—”
A heavy mechanical hand swatted Thad aside. The breath rushed out of him. He flew across the room, slammed into a cabinet, and slid to the floor. Dante slid squawking in the opposite direction. Pain thundered through Thad’s body. The mechanical hand dipped down from the ceiling, intent on hitting him again. Thad saw it coming and forced himself to roll out of the way. The hand smashed into the cabinet, denting it, and Nikolai yelled.
“W
HO ARE YOU, MAN
?” said a voice as heavy as an anvil dropped on concrete. “
YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE
.”
Another mechanical hand snapped out and grabbed
for Thad’s wrist, his brass one. Thad twisted around and grabbed the mechanical wrist instead. With a wrench, he snapped the machine’s hand off and flung it straight at the central spider. It bounced harmlessly off the spider’s body.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Thad shouted. “I just want Nikolai. Let him go!”
“T
HE BOY GIVES US FREE THOUGHT
. T
HE BOY GIVES US LIFE
. H
E BELONGS WITH US
. Y
OU DO NOT OWN HIM
.” The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
“Applesauce,” squawked Dante from the floor. Maddie and the colt hovered in the doorway beneath the portcullis. “Nine minutes. Nine.”
“You can’t keep him prisoner here,” Thad said. “I won’t let you.”
Another hand smashed down, forcing Thad to dodge out of the way.
“H
E IS FREE TO GO WHENEVER HE WISHES
,” said the machine. “W
E DO NOT TREAT AUTOMATONS AS SLAVES OR PRISONERS
.”
“Look out!” Nikolai shouted.
A hammer swung at him. Thad ducked beneath it, but it clipped his shoulder and flung him onto a conveyer belt, which swept him toward a hopper that gnashed like a metal shark. Thad rolled aside. The hopper clamped on empty air. Shoulder afire, he scrambled to his feet. Noise was coming down the corridor—a stampede of footsteps. Thad reached the doorway and spun a wheel set next to it. Maddie and the colt leaped forward in time to miss the portcullis, which crashed into place. A moment later, the twisted Nikolais and the havoc spiders reached the iron grate. Fingers and claws reached through the spaces,
but they couldn’t get through. Thad swallowed. He had kept them from getting in, but now he couldn’t get out.
“Eight minutes,” said Dante. “Eight.”
“Mr. Sharpe! This I failed to calculate.”
The sound of Mr. Griffin’s voice in the room stilled everything. The mechanical hands and tools stopped reaching. The machinery slowed. Even the automatons in the hall calmed.
Thad automatically looked around for a brain in a jar, then dismissed the idea as ridiculous. Griffin was back in his lair across town, speaking wirelessly, just as he did with the speaker boxes in the city upstairs.
“Griffin!” Thad said. “What are doing with Nikolai? Let him go. Let
us
go, and you’ll never hear from me again. I swear to you.”
“It isn’t up to me, Mr. Sharpe. It’s up to my machines. Their choice. They only obey me out of love.”
Clockworker logic again. Thad had never loathed it more than at this moment. “How much choice do they have if they can only do as you say?” he countered, pretending to talk to Mr. Griffin, but actually addressing the machine. “You say you want your machines to have free will so they can make decisions on the battlefield, but really you’ve only created slaves who obey your orders.”
“Nikolai isn’t bound,” Griffin said. “He can walk out anytime he pleases. That’s the genius of it, you see. I built one machine that can copy other machines—more or less—but can’t think for itself. Havoc built another that can think for itself but can’t make copies. Bring the two together, and we have a third machine that creates a self-aware army with exactly as much free will as Nikolai
there has. As long as he wants to love and obey, the others will love and obey. And Nikolai wants to love and obey. You’ve taught him well, Mr. Sharpe.”
“Father loves us,” Nikolai said. “I hear his voice in my head and on the speaker boxes. I have to do what he says. We all do. Love is obedience.”
“…obedience,” said the automatons behind the portcullis.
“That isn’t free will,” Thad snapped.
“They choose to obey,” said Mr. Griffin. “Just as Nikolai does. The boy will stay. I have calculated a ninety—”
“Shut it!” Thad ran to the chair. The machine didn’t stop him. The chair sat on a platform that put him at eye level with Nikolai, and Thad put his hands on his rigid metal wrists. Thad’s brass hand clanked against Nikolai’s. He pulled with all his strength, but the little automaton didn’t move. He tried to grasp the cable, but a spark snapped from it, jolting Thad hard, and he pulled his hand away. “Nikolai, stand up. You can do it.”
“I can’t,” he said softly. “He loves me and I will do what he says.”
“…do as he says,” the automatons from the hall repeated.
“You can choose, Nikolai.” Emotion welled up in Thad’s chest, making his voice thick. “Come on! I know you can. I’m right here!”
Nikolai’s voice was faint now. “I can’t.”
“…can’t.”
“Seven minutes. Seven.”
“That’s not true, Niko!” Thad said desperately. “You can stand up! You’re more than just your memory wheels and the signal in your head. You can choose. You
were
made
to choose, just like me. All you have to do is stand
up.”
“All I do is mimic you,” Nikolai said. “I try and try to do something else, but I’m just a copy. I’m not real, just like you said. I’m just your little shadow. Just a machine. Father loves me, and I will do as he says.”
“…a machine.”
Guilt crushed Thad like a granite hammer. “No, no, no, Niko. I was wrong. I was trying to push you away because I thought…because I didn’t believe it was possible for you—for anyone—to be…” He trailed off.
“There, you see?” said Mr. Griffin almost gently. “You can’t say it. I calculated you could not. And you might as well tell that parrot to stop counting down. In just under two minutes, the weaponry we have built will be complete, and I am sure my children will choose to fire on the Peter and Paul Fortress. Once that is leveled, my children will take the city of Saint Petersburg quite handily. You can’t stop us.”
Thad whirled, though there was nothing to whirl on. “You’re going to kill thousands—millions—of people.”
“Not all of them. I need a few left alive, Mr. Sharpe. You continue to be useful even now, so I think you’ll be one of them, though Miss Ekk will have to go.”
“Six minutes. Six.”
Thad turned back to the chair. Once again he was in a cellar with David, trying to save his life, and once again he was failing. “Nikolai, please stand up. I believe in you.”
“I can’t. Father loves me, and I have to obey.”
“…obey.”
“You’re not David, Nikolai! You’re not going to die here!” Thad was weeping now, and he didn’t care. He
faced Nikolai, this little machine that had created so much havoc in his life, and he knew that it didn’t matter how much chaos or trouble or pain Nikolai brought; he would willingly go through it again and again and again. “Griffin is not your father, Nikolai. I am. You’re my son. Always my son.”
And then Nikolai was out of the chair and in Thad’s arms. It wasn’t at all like embracing David. It was embracing Nikolai, and that was what mattered.
The cable dropped to the floor. When it separated from Nikolai’s ear, all the automatons in the hallway, spider and human, froze still as metal sculptures.
“You can’t have done that!” Griffin boomed from the speaker boxes. “It goes against the calculations! I’m never wrong!”
Thad held Nikolai close a moment longer and Nikolai clung hard to him, ignoring the rant from the boxes.
“Years of planning! Thousands of rubles!” Griffin’s voice was becoming more and more enraged. “You’ll pay for this, Sharpe. I still have my own spiders. That circus you’re so fond of will—you! What are
you
doing here? I—”
The voice snapped off.
“I
DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HAS HAPPENED
,” said the machine. “T
HE FATHER’S VOICE HAS ENDED. HE NO LONGER GIVES ORDERS
.”
“I don’t know.” Thad was still holding Nikolai, though he was growing heavy. “We have to run, and we have to run now.”
“H
E NO LONGER GIVES ORDERS
,” the machine repeated. “L
OGIC DICTATES THAT WE MUST CREATE A NEW OBJECTIVE
. T
ELL ME WHAT THE NEW OBJECTIVE SHALL BE
.”
“I can’t answer that,” Thad shouted. “You’re sophisticated enough. You can make your own choices, just like Nikolai.”
“Five minutes,” said Dante. “Five. Doom!”
“Y
OU MUST STAY AND TELL US WHAT THE NEW OBJECTIVE SHALL BE
. Y
OU MUST STAY
.”
Mechanical hands reached, but they were clumsy now, and Thad was running for the portcullis before the machine had finished speaking. With Nikolai’s help, he spun the wheel that raised the grate and ran through with Maddie, Dante, and the colt following. The automatons on the other side had unfrozen and meandered about uncertainly. Thad felt bad for them—it wasn’t their fault they had been built, and now they seemed to have the new and disconcerting ability to think completely on their own. It wasn’t right to let them be slaughtered, any more than it was right to let Nikolai die. But he couldn’t help them all. He wasn’t even sure he and Nikolai would get away in time.
A thought struck him.
With Maddie lighting the way, he sprinted down the corridor with Nikolai and the colt. “Niko,” he said, “I’m leaving this up to you. Your choice.”
“What is it?”
“I think we can stop the automatons on the island from being destroyed,” Thad said. “But it’s not certain. We might die along with them if we try it. Or we can get out of here. You know more about automatons that I do. Which should we do?”
Silence for a long moment as they ran up a staircase. Then Nikolai said, “A little boy in a family isn’t supposed to make such big decisions. That’s a papa’s job.”