Broken Hero (17 page)

Hannah is definitely looking a little askance at the world right now.

“Told you,” I say.

“And Lang, well he must have been a master at manipulating those frequencies. I mean this thing is quite ingenious.”

“Tabitha,” Felicity cuts in, “maybe we can cut to layman’s terms.”

Tabby tears her eyes away from Clyde, glowering. “Fine,” she says. “Luddites. To do with pocket realities. Lang made one. Little section of some other-where, tucked off from the mainstream composite reality. This is the key. Unlocks it. Lets you in.”

Pocket reality. My job is full of things that sound awesome right up until you have to actually deal with them.

“So,” I say, “that thing opens a door into another reality?”

Clyde nods enthusiastically. “I know! It’s brilliant.” Then his brow creases. “Again with all the caveats about Lang being an absolute arsehole of the highest magnitude. It really is a shame.”

“And what’s in this reality?”

Tabitha looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Don’t know. Haven’t been there. But what would you put in a secret reality only you can access?”

Hannah leans forward, both elbows on the table. “Secrets,” she says, her grin broad.

And yes, that does make sense. A hidden key for a hidden pocket of reality. It’s not exactly going to be something he created to deal with his lack of closet space.

Which leads to the next question.

“OK,” I say, “so now we have a door to kick down, how exactly do we find it?”

Tabitha looks from me to Clyde. “Fucked system,” she says very deliberately.

I realize that it would be very hard to tell if Tabitha ever spontaneously developed Tourette’s.

Still, Clyde reaching across the table and high-fiving her is probably a fair sign that didn’t just happen.

“The what?” I manage.

Tabitha rolls her eyes at my ineptitude. “Functional Userface for Counter-Thaumaturgy. F.U.C.T. FUCT system.”

I glance at Felicity. She shrugs apologetically. “Unfortunate acronym.”

Hannah is laughing silently to herself, shoulders shaking. “God,” she manages, “I can’t bloody tell if this is the worst military intelligence division or the best. I really can’t.”

Felicity’s face hardens. Tension knots around the corners of her eyes. And something is going on. Something more than just her desire to make Hannah feel at home. I should have asked her about it on the way home from the club last night, but it’s hard to launch into what you know will be an exhausting conversation when you’re already exhausted.

“Best.” Tabitha stabs the word across the table. “Fucking obviously.”

Kayla shrugs. “Meh.”

I resist the urge to bounce my forehead off the table’s surface. Instead I say, “I realize that getting us back on track is a perilous and likely fruitless thing for me to try, but what exactly is the F.U.C.T. System—” I am careful to simply spell out the acronym, “—and how do we use it?”

“Database,” Tabitha says, flipping her laptop open. “Created in the early eighties, during magical arms race. Government got paranoid. Worried about thaumaturgical bombs. Dirty magic. Wanted an early-warning system. Created the FUCT system.” She doesn’t spell it out.

“In case we were ever fecked,” Kayla contributes. Hannah snorts. Tabitha rolls her eyes.

“It was a huge undertaking, actually,” Clyde cuts in. “Really quite impressive. I mean, assuming you’re the sort of person who is impressed by the scale of government-sponsored undertakings. You might not be of course. In fact, it might be fair to assume that you’re not. Can’t really see it being everyone’s cup of tea. Might have been poor word choice on my part. Maybe I should have gone with ‘noteworthy,’ or possibly even ‘surprising,’ though that also makes some assumptions about your expectations from the government. Very tricky thing this whole language nonsense.”

“Focus,” I suggest.

“Oh yes,” Clyde says. “Well, essentially they mapped the thaumaturgical frequencies of the United Kingdom. Went around, took a lot of measurements. Not an easy thing to do by any means, because, well, what they discovered was that it fluctuates. The thaumaturgic resonance of any one place has a certain amount of wobble. And thaumaturgic activity in an area can throw the wobble even further out of whack. I mean, our own activities… we’re changing that map ourselves. That’s why I try to log all magical activity at the end of every month. The system has an algorithm built in to try to grow over time, but it’s very tricky. Still, at a large scale it’s still pretty accurate. Best thing we have. London, for example, has a pretty constant background resonance of forty-seven to fifty-two Woltz.”

“Waltz?” asks Hannah. “You have to dance to measure magic?”

“Oh no,” Clyde says with a guileless shake of his head. “Spelled with an ‘O’ instead of an ‘A.’ Named after Eugene Woltz. Estonian chap who developed the whole system. Defector from the USSR. Probably explains why the FUCT acronym is what it is. English as a second language and all that. Probably someone should have mentioned it to him. But, ah well. Anyway, a nice chap, though unfortunately rather violently dead. Tends to be a habit with pioneering thaumaturgists. That’s why I stick to the tried and true. Too much respect for keeping my spine within my body to be a real pioneer, unfortunately.”

I’m not sure that last sentence really deserves an “unfortunately.”

“But,” I say, “if the system is so inaccurate, can it really help us?”

“Yes,” Tabitha cuts in. “Obviously. Why I mentioned it.” She shakes her head, momentarily overcome by the sadness caused by my mental inadequacies. “Pocket reality. Stable anomaly. Shows up.”

Hannah and I both say, “Erm,” at the same time.

“Oh,” Clyde cuts in. “So yes, the wobble. It makes picking up fine fluctuations difficult. Actually buggered the whole system from being able to do what it was meant to be able to do. The system has a very bad name because of it.”

“Worse than FUCT?” I ask, slightly dubious.

“Well, that is the bad name,” Clyde says.

That makes about as much sense as anything.

“But, what it is good for is spotting large scale patterns and anything stable. London is a large scale pattern. We get the consistent Woltz reading for it. Anything big like that isn’t going to change much. Except Sheffield. Sheffield’s just weird. But, also anything that’s going to be stable for a very long time is going to be easy to detect. Like a pocket reality that’s going to exist indefinitely. Going to be, by definition, incredibly stable. Needs to be so the key can get into it.”

“And we know the… frequency… of this reality.”

Clyde reaches awkwardly into another rear-facing pocket and pulls out something that looks like a microphone that the Jetsons would own. He hands it to Tabitha who plugs it into the USB slot of her laptop. “Do it,” she says.

Clyde slips another battery under his tongue, mutters, and twists. The key gyrates through realities, aligns, unfolds, emits its light. Tabitha holds the scifi microphone up to it.

“Got a reading,” she says as the light blinks out. “Three hundred and eighty-four point oh six nine seven Woltz.”

Her fingers fly over her keyboard. She grins. “And a match. Three hundred and eighty-four point oh six nine seven Woltz.”

She spins the laptop around so we can see. In the center of an incredibly convoluted interface is a window where a series of interconnected blue lines intersect and diverge in a pattern that in no way resembles anything recognizable.

“Erm.” Hannah and I harmonize again. I flick a glance in her direction but she isn’t looking at me. I’m not sure what I’d do if she was looking at me. I can hardly accuse her of stealing all my best lines.

Tabitha zooms in heavily. Starts to zoom out. Slowly I start to see a vaguely familiar pattern.

“Wait, isn’t that the Underground?”

“That’s near Hammersmith, ain’t it?” Hannah is leaning forward again, a look of tight concentration nearby.

Tabitha examines her screen. “Yeah,” she says, something that almost sounds grudgingly impressed. “Service tunnel. Got the GPS.”

“All right then.” Felicity claps her hands. “Field team, you have your target. Tabitha, you stay here and run the forensics suite on that ornament, see if we can learn anything else about it.”

We all stand, start milling toward the door. My heartbeat has picked up. Is this how I always feel before a mission? I’ve lost confidence in my body’s reactions.

As we reach the door, Felicity taps Clyde’s arm. “Fix your trousers before you go,” she says. “You look a bit of a fool.”

I always assumed that walking onto the London Underground tracks would be accompanied by crowds of aghast men and women, shrieking sirens, and officials in neon yellow safety vests bellowing that you were too young to die. Apparently, though, if you just stroll along with enough confidence no one gives a damn.

The space feels narrow and cold. The smells of wet wood, gravel, and concrete are tight around us, along with a foul undercurrent that lies somewhere between stale urine and the cabbage that used to get served at school lunch. Graffiti is thick on the walls—taggers’ names in bold ballooning fonts, professions of love and hatred, an image of Hitler and Nelson Mandela making out.

Metallic clanging echoes down the tunnel, impossible to locate.

“Was that close?” Clyde asks. His voice jumps through several different registers. Considering how his morning went, I’d expect him to be a little calmer.

Still, the tracks do seem to be emitting a faint hum.

“We’re close, right?” I ask, trying to keep my voice flat.

“Here it is.” Hannah has been leading the way, seemingly at ease with our trespass. She swings her flashlight to the right, illuminates a paint-crusted door. She fishes out a ring of keys, selects one. “It’s great the stuff MI6 gives you,” she says. She slips it into the lock.

It doesn’t turn. “Oh bloody hell,” she says. “I hate it when they get like this.”

The tracks are definitely humming now. Squeaks and clanks bounce down the tunnel walls toward us.

“Kayla,” I say, “maybe this is one for you.”

“I’ve got this,” Hannah says, still jiggling the key. “Give me a moment.”

A loud screech—wheels changing tracks—that does not come from far away.

I think about Hannah’s request. Not for very long. “Kayla,” I say. “Now, please.”

Hannah is still bent over the lock when Kayla’s foot hits the door. Metal screams. It flies open, ripping the keys out of her hands.

Hannah stands indignantly. “Was that entirely necessary?”

Behind her the yellow glow of headlights starts to illuminate the tunnel.

“Yeah,” I say. “I kind of think so.” And then Clyde and I are bundling after Kayla into the service tunnel as fast as our feet will carry us. I look back. Hannah stands there, shaking her head, and then finally, finally steps into the tunnel. Two seconds later, an underground train fills the tunnel behind her in a scream of sound and rushing air.

Over-confident or just stupid—I try to work out what impression Hannah is trying to make on me. Or maybe it’s not for me, because Kayla fist bumps her for some reason.

The door opens onto narrow stairs that take us another thirty feet down, before opening up into a much larger space. This tunnel—the one that supposedly houses Lang’s pocket reality—is three tracks wide, and lit by intermittent service lights, strung together by thick orange cable. The space feels almost luxurious after the confines of the tunnel above. It even smells better. Lang sure knew how to pick his subterranean lairs.

“Should be about a hundred yards this way.” Clyde points, glancing down at a rather sophisticated GPS device Tabitha outfitted him with. “Then we’ll try activating the key.”

We make our way forward, the silence slightly awkward. Kayla whistles. A noise devoid of tune. It doesn’t help.

I’m trying to work out a way to talk to Hannah when she hesitates. I almost walk into her back.

“What’s that?” She flicks her flashlight over to one side of the tunnel. I peer. Something glints. Something metal. Something big.

Behind me I hear Kayla’s sword leaving its scabbard.

And it takes me a moment, but… It’s a leg. A vast robotic leg.

An Uhrwerkmänn’s leg.

“Oh, I was really hoping this would be a quiet little jaunt into another reality.” Clyde sounds profoundly disappointed. “The furthering of human knowledge and understanding. Why does everything have to be about violence?”

“OK,” I whisper. “Hannah, you—”

She’s already rolling her eyes when a vast grating voice booms down the tunnel toward us.

“Is it coming?” the Uhrwerkmänn calls. A Germanic gravity to its vowels.

I’m not a hundred percent certain, but I’m pretty sure that means it knows we’re here.

“I wait f-or it but it never c-omes.” The Uhrwerkmänn hitches oddly in the middle of words, sputtering through speech.

Then it stands. As massive as all its kin. I hear the battery bouncing off the back of Clyde’s teeth. I draw my pistol. And oh shit, here we go.

“I wait and I wait, but it never comes.”

The Uhrwerkmänn steps into the light. Narrow frame, long limbs. Damaged too. One shoulder is exposed, gearwork clacking, pneumatic tubes wilting around the joint. Large convex dents mar its domed skull.

But it stands tall. There is a sense of… nobility in its slow forward pacing. Something in the angle of the skull, in the bearing of its mangled shoulders. And though most of it is caked in grime, in places the metal still gleams brightly.

Volk’s story flashes through my mind. The Uhrwerkmänner refusing to be seduced by the Nazi philosophy. Sacrificing themselves rather than oppress others.

“I’ve got a clean shot,” Hannah whispers.

“They twist, you know?” says the Uhrwerkmänn, shifting conversational gears without warning. “They twist and they twist, and they twist.”

Clyde glances at me. I’ve lost track of Kayla.

The Uhrwerkmänner’s hand hangs unmoving in the air between us.

Curiosity overcomes me. “What does?” I say, loud enough for it to hear. It’s not like I’m giving our position away.