Camera Obscura (19 page)

 
 

The grey mist dissipated. The electric corpse twitched and shook, sparks and smoke rising from Ampère's chest. His eyes bulged out, then fell altogether and rolled on the floor, leaving two empty sockets behind.

  A lifeless figure lay at her feet. The room was dark, and outside the storm had abated, the clouds slowly dispersing.

  She turned away and was sick.

  After a couple of minutes she felt better. She didn't know what lay inside Ampère's castle, and didn't want to find out. She went outside and closed the door behind her.

  
Clap.

  The sound jerked her head upwards. She scanned the night, saw nothing.

  
Clap. Clap. Clap.

  "Tômas."

  "Milady. Is it true you killed your first husband?"

  "Show yourself."

  "And your second?"

  She turned, round and round, searching for him. Where was the voice coming from? Her gun was in her hand. The other gun was still safely hidden in her coat, and she didn't dare reach for it…

  "We are not unlike, you and I."

  "Don't flatter yourself."

  "I was flattering
you
–" he laughed. "I want to show you something."

  "Then come out and show me."

  "All in good time, Milady. All in good time." The voice circled around her, invisible, unseen. "I have seen so much. There are no words to describe the things I've experienced. I have seen the universe, Cleo."

  She had not been called that in a long time… Tom, she thought. Tom Thumb had called her that, the last time she saw him alive.

  "I saw the stars of deep space," the Phantom said. She searched for him but couldn't find him. "The swirling galaxies," the Phantom said. "I have seen suns explode and life flourish where no life should be… And I have seen the lizards."

  "Oh?" she stopped, stood still. Was that a branch cracking underfoot?

  "I have seen rings in space, enormous structures, and dark ships like whales sailing between the stars. I've seen worlds beyond the world, I've seen wonders such as I can't–"

  She turned and shot. A silence, then a low, husky laugh. "Good try," Tômas said.

  "You could return with me," she said. "We can try and find a cure. Reverse you–"

  "
Reverse
me? I am beyond human, Cleo. I am the next step. I am better than all of you."

  "You're insane," she said.

  "And you're a fool," he said. "Do you think the Council would be grateful to you for destroying their key?" He laughed again. "It is of little consequence. It was but a fragment, a small thing. I am a key unto itself. And there is a door, too… a gateway in Asia, and its gatekeeper selling tickets to the highest bidder – who do you think that would be? France? Chung Kuo? Perhaps the Sioux Nations? Or the fat-bellied lizards and their human servants?"

  "Why do you care?"

  Circling again. Was that a shadow, moving? She fired, and the shadow dropped back. "That almost hurt," he said. Then he was closer, very suddenly, and she fired with the gun while reaching for the other, the one with the grey-metal slugs–

  And – "I don't," he said, and he was very close. She saw him then, illuminated in the moonlight, a steely-grey monster, naked now, grey swirls like living tattoos on his skin. That elongated skull, and the row of teeth that opened in a hungry smile… "I've waited a long time for this, Cleo," he said, and then he seemed to be everywhere at once and she could not reach the gun, her hands would not obey her and she tried to turn – too late – and felt an explosion of pain erupt in the back of her skull. She fell to her knees, tried to raise her gun arm but weights were dragging her down now, down into black and murky depths from which she couldn't rise… Her hands fell to her sides and there was pain again, a lot of it, and she fell sideways, and into a dark abyss where no dreams came.

 

Movement. Her head was aflame. Pain spread out like molten silver throughout her body. She was being carried. His hands were on her like a vice. She was dangling from his shoulder, her head almost grazing the ground. She saw tombs pass by, upside down. "Lovely Cleo," he said. "Soon, now…"

  She passed out again, mercifully.

  

And awakened, to see the stars overhead, no clouds, no rain (she would have prayed for rain, craved water). The pain in her head was a dull constant sound, a hammer hitting a distant anvil.

  Notre Dame de Paris. In the ruins shadows fled from the Phantom and its prey. She stirred, trying to – trying to – she had a–

  His hand on her neck and she could no longer breathe. "Into the under-city we go, we go," he sang to her. "You and I, how pleasant it will be…"

  The fingers pressed on her throat and squeezed; she couldn't breathe…

  Darkness again.

 

Going through the passages of the under-city, going through the catacombs… She thought she saw Q, hidden in a corner, watching her sadly. She tried to whisper to him, but no words came. Past fires and beggars and lizard boys, past the sorry denizens of this sorry dark world. "Not far now, my love…" he whispered, and there was pain, there was so much pain, and she sought escape in the cool and empty darkness, diving inside it, her last thought a wordless cry, an old prayer:
Please
don't let me wake up again.

 
 

 
 

"Why the cemetery?"

  "All those lovely corpses… my little garden of the dead. And that fool Ampère to store them and study them and keep quiet about my little indiscretions. You spoiled my little arrangement…"

  "The Council put you on body-snatching detail–"

  Sounds in the dark, metal sliding against metal, and she tried not to think of that. "They didn't count on you getting infected yourself?"

  "Oh, I think you'd be surprised," he said. Flames, burning metal. She bit down hard, trying to focus. "I suspect they wanted to see how it would affect me. Not just me, Milady de Winter. Another part of my job was to bring them test subjects. Little kids from the street, old women, old men, a whole crosssection of society – as long as no one would miss them. Little kids…" he said. "Like you'd once been."

  She thrust against the restraints, wanting to get at him, and he laughed. She was strapped into one of Viktor's operating tables. They were in the under-morgue, and it was locked up tight, and there were only the two of them.

  "I didn't mind," he said. "I liked it. It gave me…" He sounded thoughtful. "New abilities," he said. "I no longer needed to serve the Council. The new me had no one to serve but itself."

  "But they sent you to get Yong Li," she said. He snorted. "That sad little man… I merely reversed the operation he'd already undergone. He was a little like me, and glad not to be, I think. He was grateful for my knife."

  "But they sent you. To get the key."

  "Yes…" he said, not sounding certain.

  "But you wouldn't give it back to them."

  "I was happy," he said. "In my little garden. I was going on a long journey, you see. To another place."

  "What happened?"

  "The key was not enough. It was like the hole in a camera obscura – enough to show the image coming through, not enough to cross over. No, the gateway is only one and it is far from here, in Asia, where the fragment came from. I will be going there soon, to meet the Man on the Mekong."

  "Does he have a name?"

  "He might have had one, once. What do I care for names? I shall cut his belly open and walk through the doorway."

  "You're insane."

  "No," he said. "I am pain."

  He turned to her then. He was wearing his iron mask again, and one of Viktor's white smocks. He looked down on her. He had stripped her down to her underclothes. Her coat lay crumpled in a corner. The gun, she thought. The gun must still be there.

  It would not do her any good. It was as far as if it were the other side of a vast ocean. And now she could smell the burning metal, and above her the Phantom raised a red-hot cleaver. She strained against the straps but it was futile. Fear blossomed inside her like a fever. "The heat will cauterise the wound," he said conversationally. He had tied her up with her arms spread out, and her legs. A strap pressed her forehead down, another choked her neck. She couldn't move.

  She couldn't escape.

  "Please," she said. "Please. Don't do it."

  When she looked at his hands she could see the grey swirls intensifying, moving in the red glare of the knife. "Don't–"

  The cleaver, a butcher's tool, came down hard.

 

She had screamed. For a moment, joyfully, she lost consciousness. But it returned, too soon, far too soon, and then she cried, and the pain was horrifying, it was everywhere, everywhere but in one place.

  He had cut off her right arm, just below the elbow.

  And now he showed it to her, waving it in front of her face before throwing it away across the floor. She cried, she couldn't help it. She begged him to stop, or tried to. The sounds that came from her mouth were barely human.

  "No more questions, Cleo? No more
investigating
, no more mystery-solving? I'm disappointed. You must have so much you want to ask me still."

  She screamed. He said, "That's not a question."

  The next time she was conscious he was pulling a needle from her arm. "This will help," he said.

  He'd picked up a surgical blade. One of Viktor's. He played with it in front of her eyes. She could no longer think. Her whole being was fear, as pure as an animal's. She shook and tried to move away and there was nowhere to go. "Perhaps… an eye?" he suggested.

  She tried to shake her head. She moaned. She tried to kick. Her whole being was shaking uncontrollably. "So I could see you better with it, my dear…" he said and laughed.

  He reached for her and stroked her hair. His hand was very close to her eyes. She closed them, praying to whatever gods or spirits there were to hear her, but none came. His thumb stroked her closed eyes. "Left… or right? What fearful symmetry you have, Cleo."

  Then he pressed, and pressed, and pressed, and the pain was worse than before, and she knew she was dying.

 

"Look," he said. There was a bloodied ball in his hand, and he was waving it before her. He had just injected her again, she didn't know with what. One of Viktor's potions… to keep her alive.

  "What is a human?" he said. "How much can we reduce while we remain? Legs? Hands? Eyes and ears? What is left when all the outside appendages are taken out?"

  Her one eye moved rapidly, uncomprehending. He threw the eyeball at the wall. It slid down, and there was a circle of blood where it had hit. "That is what I wish to find out, Milady. I am so glad you've agreed to help me."

  She whimpered. She was reduced to nothing, a burning darkness, a sun flaming with pain. To live was to hurt, to suffer. Somewhere in the back of her mind Milady still existed, beyond the wall of torment, but she was dormant, hidden well behind, a tiny presence in the mindless pain.

  "I want you to see what I see," he said, earnestly. Somehow that was more frightening than anything that had come before. His hand disappeared, returned…

  Something green. It shone with its own internal light. "A fragment of a fragment," he said, and giggled. She tried to speak, to say, "No, please, please please don't don't d–"

  His hand came down. His thumb pushed into the open socket of her empty eye.

  She screamed.

  "Another injection?" he said. He sounded irritated now. She felt a needle slip into her neck, then all feeling stopped.

  "There," the Phantom said. "That's better, now."

  His thumb, pushing… There was a scraping sound. No pain, but the feel of something hard moving,
grating
against her skull. "Soon," he said. "Soon you'll be able to see.
Really
see. It is a great gift I give you, Cleo."

  She shivered. He ran one finger, lightly, down her cheek. "Hush now. Can you see? Can you see it yet?"

  "You're crazy," she said, or thought she did, and he laughed. "What shall we do next?" he said. "Hmmm?" He seemed to give it some thought. In her head the alien object felt as if it were reaching inside her, as if a larva had been planted in her eye socket and was now emerging, questing out…

  The Phantom said: "An ear, perhaps? Or a leg? Not your tongue, my dear. I like to hear it when you voice your opinions – and you are ever so vocal…"

  The cleaver again. When had it come into his hands? The man in the iron mask never smiled, never changed expression. "This is so much better than with corpses," he said softly. Then the blade came down again, above her knee.

 
 

 
 

Awakening. Pain. It came and went in waves; she rode them, cresting higher and higher. Thinking:
no more no more no more
please please please no more kill me–

  Blinking her one eye. Darkness. Silence. The monster was hiding, was waiting to pounce.
Please please please don't–

  Calling on old gods of a place she had long forgotten and never believed in. But a child believes. Once again she was that child; alone and afraid in the dark, in the city, hiding from predators, fearing every footstep. Knowing they were coming, that you couldn't run forever, that sooner or later it would happen, and they–

  His voice, in the distance. Speaking, the corresponding voice echoing strangely. Communicating with someone through a Tesla set, the little part of her mind that was not yet insane thought.

  She couldn't move. And the pain was a part of her now.

  Her leg was gone. So was her arm. She was no longer strapped in, in those two places. There was nothing left to strap in.

  Something moved in the darkness and she almost screamed, but wouldn't, no, she wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

  Only it was not the Phantom.

  A familiar shape. Slithering quietly, cautiously, along the cold stone floor.

  A familiar insectile head. The quiet hiss and whirr of gears.

  Grimm.

  She closed her eye. When she opened it Grimm was still there, moving towards her. It raised itself up. Grimm's soft metal tongue hissed out, touched her skin like a kiss.

  "Oh, Grimm," she said, or tried to. "Oh, Grimm."

  Grimm's mouth found the first of the leather straps. Grimm's tongue licked it, and the leather hissed. Her little familiar was eating the straps. "Hurry," she whispered. "Hurry!"

  The next time Grimm's mouth moved a drop of acid fell on her hand. She bit her lips until the blood flowed. She would not make a sound.

  Beyond the small area of the surgery the voices were fading and she knew the Phantom would be coming back. "Hurry," she said, and then, with a final hiss of Grimm's tongue, her body was free, and her arm.

  With a clumsy hand she loosened the neck strap, then the head. She was clawing, panting, desperately fumbling with the remaining strap, the one that had held bound both of her legs, and now…

  She fought the strap and tried very hard not to look at the empty place where her leg had been.

  She heard his footsteps. Grimm slithered away. Then she was free. She tried to stand and of course couldn't. She fell down on the hard floor.

  The Phantom appeared. "What are you–?" he said, and then he laughed. She dragged herself forward, one-armed, her one leg kicking. Slowly she progressed, her one eye fixed on the coat lying a few feet away.

  "You are like a strange new creature," the Phantom said. "And I have created you. Crawl, little fish. Where are you going?"

  She kicked, and pushed, clawing her way one inch at a time,

leaving a slimy trail of blood against the stone. He was striding towards her then, not hurrying, enjoying the wait.

  She was almost there.

  And then so was he, and he kicked her, and her ribs flamed in pain and she rolled from the impact–

  Her body found the coat–

  And there
was
something hard inside, a metal pipe, the Toymaker's curious gun–

  The Phantom's next kick found her head, broke teeth. Blood filled her mouth. She could barely see – his ghostly outline was above her, descending with a flash of metal–

  A knife, descending–

  She fumbled in the coat, one-handed, reaching for that inside pocket, and her fingers closed on the smooth cylinder of the gun–

  The knife was coming down very fast–

  She rolled, or tried to. The knife grazed her face, sliced a part of her ear–

  She couldn't release the gun from the coat!

  The knife rose, began to come down again–

  She watched the expressionless iron mask and the blade, afraid, unable to think–

  The knife whispered as it cut through air, towards her, and–

  She fired, blindly, through the coat's material.

  There was a burning smell.

  The knife clattered to the floor.

  The Phantom took a step back, and then another. He looked down.

  On his chest, an explosion of grey. The moving shapes resembled nothing, suggested everything. They were volcanoes and hurricanes, earthquakes and floods. The grey flooded him, and she fired again, and he stumbled and fell to his knees.

  He looked at her through the iron mask. He raised his arms, examined his hands. His fingers were melting, and he screamed. The grey engulfed him, like molten silver, burning.

  The gun dropped from her fingers and she fell back, knowing she was dying, welcoming it. To die would be to never again experience pain. Dimly she was aware of Grimm beside her, Grimm's dry tongue on her cheek. "Oh, Grimm," she said, or wanted to. "It had all been–"

  Then her eye closed, and she knew nothing else.