Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (80 page)

The girl's round
eyes got somehow rounder, and her pupils shrank away to little dots.

“Wh-why would you
do that, sensei?” she asked.

“Because, dear
Quill,” I said, “there is a fairly strong chance that your sensei is a complete
idiot.”

“Oh,” she said,
noticeably
not
arguing against my self-lobbed insults. “So what can we
do?”

“...well...give me
a minute.”

One minute later.

Well, five. Five
minutes later.

Probably more.
Probably considerably more. I sort of caught a blank in my head and lingered on
it for awhile, staring into nothing while trying to form the image of a plan in
my mind.

“Mister Pocket!”
Quill eventually spouted.

“I'm thinking!”

“We...don't...have...the...
time!
”
she whined.

“All right. I have
an idea.”

“Do you?”

“Of course,” I
lied. “Just, uh, just follow me.”

We cautiously
moved out into the hall and shuffled toward the area in question. I remember
consciously controlling my breath as I walked, softly exhaling puffs of spent
air while gingerly moving my feet.

When we got to the
archival wing of the library, we saw that the connecting door was still ajar.
Quill and I pressed ourselves against the walls upon each side of the doorway
and bent ourselves away from the line of sight.

“What do we do
now?” she whispered to me.

And
then...well...a strange moment overcame me. I remember standing there,
half-terrified, staring at the girl across from me. She was quivering and
looking to me for guidance. And right then, I am ashamed to say, a cruel
contemplation wafted into my head. How bad, I asked myself. How bad did I need
Dolly? What tactics would I entertain if they would ensure my reunion with the
clockwork girl? I had already thrown Eddie to the wolves, and he had just saved
my life. But that was different...wasn't it? That was a moment of
cowardice...right? The questions plagued me, and all I knew for sure was what I
needed.

I needed an
address. And to get that, I needed a distraction. I looked Quill over. She
seemed as small as a dormouse in the dark. She looked brave...but frightened.
Alert...but overwhelmed. Trusting...but vulnerable.

I needed a
distraction. Something to keep the Magnates busy.

Bait.

“Mister Pocket?”
Quill whispered to me. “I said, what do we do now?”

I realized I was
looking at the gun I had taken from her bag. I looked up to her and blinked.

“Se-sensei?” she
mouthed. “Are you still with me?”

I looked again at
the gun in my hand, took a deep breath…

…and handed it to
her.

“Here,” I said
softly with a smile. “You should hang onto this. For protection.”

“I'm not sure I
understand,” she whispered.

One last, heavy
breath, and I had my decision. “In a moment, Quill, I am going to reveal myself
to the Magnates.”

“What?!?”

“I'm going to
provoke them, and then I'm going to run like hell. As soon as I've lured them
as far out as possible, you get in there, and you find that address. Are we
clear?”

“But you'll be
weaponless!”

“Are...we...
clear?
”

Now it was her
turn for the deep breaths. “Clear,” she eventually said.

“Good. Now, I
don't know how long I can outrun these apes, so I need you to search as fast as
you possibly can.”

“Got it.”

“All right,” I
said, creeping quietly backward. “Just a moment.”

I snuck quickly
away and returned with a sturdy book nabbed from the first bookcase I’d
happened upon.

“All right,” I
announced, wiping the dust from my shoulder with a first edition of
Twenty
Adventure Stories for Young Boys.
“It's time. Go hide somewhere nearby.”

She nodded and
scurried off, finding some unseen hole for cover. “Please be careful,
Professor.”

And then I walked.

Foot over foot, I
stepped rigidly into the city archives with only a single book clenched in my
hands. It was pathetically unheroic. The chamber, I remember, was surprisingly
bright, as a huge, domed, glass skylight covered the large room, letting my
sourly-sweet moonlight drip its way inside.

The soldiers were
all hunched with their backs to me, sniffing under tables and between shelves.
I took aim at the broadest, squarest back I could see, and after tightening my
throat, I pulled back my arm and heaved the book directly at my target.

Thwop! The
projectile hit the bloke just below the neck and his posture sprung itself into
proper form. With some unearthly howl, he twisted his frame around and shook
his claws at me.

“Men!” he yelled.
“The boy!”

I turned on my
heels and broke into a run as they made noise and started firing
any-and-everywhere.

“A little loud for
a library,” I huffed to myself as I ran headlong down the aisles of the great
building.

It didn't take
long for them to get close, with my heavy boots and weak spirit slowing me down.
Yet somehow, I managed to keep a few steps ahead. Don't ask me how.

I ran and ran and
ran and ran. It felt like I spent years between the stacks. My eyes soon
watered, making each book that lined the library blend into the next. A sharp
pain was developing under my ribs like a spreading fire, and I wanted so badly
to stop, to lie down.

But I ran.

Toward the end of
my chase, they were nearly upon me, screaming commands and flinging ammunition.
Glancing briefly over my shoulder, I saw shot after shot collide just behind my
heels, leaving disfiguring holes in the gorgeous flooring.

Fortunately, these
boys couldn’t maintain the greatest aim while sprinting in the dark.

But that didn’t
mean they couldn’t get lucky.

Ping! A shot
smacked into the thick plating that covered my right heel. I gasped, and the
stun of the hit nearly made me trip over myself.

At this point in
the run, I had no true path in mind, so rather than attempt something
intelligent like a great sweeping loop back to the city archives, I chose to
crash elbows-first through first set of doors I reached.

Which is an
awfully good way to end up trapped at a dead end.

“Damn it!” I swore
as I galloped into a half-circle reading room lit a by a single, skinny window.
I hobbled to the glass, sloppy with sweat, and tried madly to break the pane.

The Magnates soon
arrived behind me, and where I had failed in shattering the window, they had
quickly succeeded, breaking it with a quick bullet meant for my head.

I rolled to the
side and clung to the wall, certain that each breath I brought into my body
would be my last.

Then, without word
or warning, a spinning, shiny blur whizzed into the room from beyond the broken
window and lodged itself in a gunman’s forehead. A pitched knife. He shrieked,
clutching his bleeding head and dropping down. The attention was instantly off
of me as the remaining soldiers turned their guns to the window and pulled on
their triggers.

It was the only
opportunity I had, so I broke into a sprint. The fallen man with the split
temple was quick, though, grabbing onto my leg as I ran past. I fumbled
forward, kicked back, popped the bloke in his jaw, and plunged to the floor.

“Don’t let him get
away!” the knife-headed man screeched as I twisted around on the floor. I
looked up and saw the instruments of death in the mob’s hands, saw them drawn
again to me. Death was moments and inches away.

Another blurry
blade was launched through the small window. It arced high and severed a cord
affixed to the ceiling. Attached to that cord, it is significant to note, was a
very large and pointy chandelier.

“Pocket!” a
familiar voice screamed. “Watch out!”

Doing as
commanded, I rolled out to the side just in time to miss the falling, pointy,
deadly, and aesthetically-pleasing fixture.

“Good God!” I
yelled, watching the chandelier plow the soldiers into the floor in a most
gruesome fashion.

Completely
stunned, I shifted my weight on the floor and felt something crunch beneath my
knee. There were little pieces of glass beneath it, but not from the crash.

These pieces were
green.

I had, in the
turmoil, dropped and rolled upon my ridiculous and already-broken eyeglass,
reducing it to a little glassy mess that would surely go unnoticed next to the
giant, nasty one to my immediate right. I looked once more at the little pieces
of green and tried to think of something poignant, but someone was hissing my
name.

“Pocket!” it
hissed once more. “You all right in there?”

The voice was on
the opposite side of that knife-vomiting window. I weakly stood and approached
the face outside that was attached to the sound.

“Thank you, B,” I
wheezed to the lady in hiding, taking a much needed breath and keeping my eyes
off of the twitching pile of soldiers beneath the chandelier.

“Don’t thank me
yet,” she countered, peering into the small opening. “More of them are coming.”

“More?!?”

“That’s what I
said. Your friends on the floor there are just the first round. Those who
didn’t barge inside scurried off to get reinforcements.” A faint bit of gunfire
barked in the distance. “Aaaaaaand…” B added, “…here they are now.”

My mind raced so
fast that I could feel the sides of my skull pulsing. I gripped the slim window
frame with both hands and took a few breaths.

“All right,
Madame,” I spoke, “I want you to get out of here before you’re spotted.”

“Without you and
Quill? How stupid do you think I—”

“You’re a sitting
target here. You’ve gotten lucky so far, but that doesn’t mean you’re
invincible.”

“Oh, you think
just because—”

“Get back to the
ship and circle this place from on high. When you see me and Quill get out, for
Christ’s sake, be ready to get us onboard.”

She crossed her
arms and made a defiant face.

“If you have
something to say, B, say it,” I growled, “because I don’t have time for this.”

The pirate queen
bit down on her lip as if actually trying to keep her sharp tongue within her.

“Fine,” she said
at last. “All right, fine. Just promise me you won’t get shot.”

“I won’t if you
won’t.”

“Deal.”

We parted ways and
I hurried back toward the city archives, and upon reaching my destination, I
hastily swung open the door.

“Quill! I—”

“AH!” she
screamed, firing bullets toward me.

“Whoa, whoa! Stop!
Quill! It’s me! It’s Pocket!”

“Mister Pocket?”
she shivered, slinking into my field of vision. “My God! I am so sorry!”

“It’s all right.
No damage done.”

“The other men…are
they…coming back here?”

“No,” I said,
catching yet another breath, “but their friends are.”

“Their friends?”

“Reinforcements.
They’re on the way.”

“I see.”

“I’m glad that you
do,” I said, wiping away a bit of sweat with my cuff. “So please tell me that
you’ve found our address.”

“I have!” Quill
announced, her face glowing. “Took a little bit, but I absolutely—”

“All right. Come
with me, then.”

“Wait, wait. I
need something to copy the address upon.”

“Just tear out the
page. We’re in a hurry.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Quill—”

“I can’t defile a
book, just like that! Books are wonderful creations! They’re the collected
thoughts, words, and expressions of the world, of the human experience! Surely
as a writer, you can understand.”

“Fine,” I
grumbled, rummaging through my coat. I found a folded square of parchment with
some old, silly poem jotted on it and handed it over. “Write on this.”

She looked
baffled, delicately touching the paper.

“But…Mister
Pocket,” she said, “don’t you need this?”

“I need
Dolly!
”
I exclaimed, staring her down. She looked into my eyes with nervous
comprehension.

“I…understand,”
she meekly nodded.

She silently
picked up an ink pen left on a nearby desk and transcribed as I tried to
assemble our escape plan.

“All right...” I
mumbled, pacing back and forth, “…maybe this place has a back exit or
something. Some way to get out other than the front do—”

I heard shouts and
crashes from somewhere not far enough for comfort. Quill gasped and my stomach
turned over. They had arrived sooner than I had expected. I hurriedly shut the
door to the archives and began pushing every piece of furniture I could move in
front of it.

“Nightmare…” I
groaned, slowly shuffling a short shelf heavy with collected volumes of
newsprint from London's past. “This is...a nightmare.”

Quill, finished
with her work, grabbed desk lamps and chairs, anything her small hands could
seize, and assisted me. In a very short time, we had a decent barrier, and
sitting down before it, we listened to the footsteps of the soldiers echo
through the building. I wasn't sure, but it sounded like they were a much
larger mob than the one that had previously pursued us.

“Well,” I said
quietly to Quill, dropping my head in my hands, “that's it. We're done for.
Cornered. It's only a matter of time before they find us, and we have nowhere
to run.”

“We mustn't give
up hope, Mister Pocket!” she said back.

“Hope's a tease,
Quill. I should've dumped it off somewhere years ago.”

“Come now, please!
Don't say things like that! The Madame's still out there, after all. She'll
think of something.”

“Hmph,” I said,
glaring up and again noticing the large skylight that comprised most of the
ceiling above. “Something like
what?
”

Quill also looked
up, and glancing over, I saw her smirk.