Secrets of the New World (Infini Calendar) (Volume 2) (23 page)

Farahilde slowly put her hand on the knob—she didn’t want to admit just how much anxiety she was feeling at that particular moment—and opened the door. None of them were quite prepared for what awaited them on the other side.

At the end of a hallway, a large group of figures were marching toward them in perfect unity. These beings were obviously not human. They were beige-colored and wore tuxedos, but they had no faces. Their movements were stiff and mechanical.

“
Say hello to the Clockworkx. They are servants created by my people.”

Farahilde limbered up her knuckles. “Say
good
bye to the Clockworkx,” she said.

“Farahilde, wait,” Jeanne said. “We have no idea as to their capabilities.”

“She’s right,” Frederick added.

Farahilde shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

She felt a surge of adrenaline, and she was afraid if it wore off she would hesitate to attack these strange enemies. She figured that Gnostagar bastard must lie beyond them, so they would have to go through them anyway.

So she ran at them, Jeanne following behind her and muttering curses. She wanted to keep herself between the enemy and Frederick; he had battle experience, but not nearly as much as she herself had.

The hallway was just wide enough for two of the automatons to stand side-by-side. She stabbed the first clockwork man with the blades of her gauntlet, but to no effect. The thing just stood there, staring at her even though it had no eyes. After a moment it casually took hold of her wrist. She was surprised by its strength. It effortlessly pulled her hand out of its chest. It then punched her in the chest, sending her flying into Frederick. They both went down.

“Farahilde! Are you all right? Talk to me!” Frederick yelled.

She couldn’t respond. All the wind had been knocked out of her. She struggled to take in breaths.

The Clockworkx at the head of the murderous procession raised their arms. Their four hands flipped down, revealing dark chambers. Jeanne seemed to sense what was coming, because she shielded Farahilde and Frederick as the automatons opened fire. She held up an arm to shield her head from the deadly barrage, but it obviously hurt like hell. She collapsed as soon as the attack ended.

“Fräulein!”
This is the end
, she thought.
We’re going to die here, thousands of miles from home.

Suddenly there was a commotion behind the Clockworkx. There was yelling and grunting. “Listen to me!” someone yelled. “Their heads are their weakest part. Slash them at the neck!”

She got to her feet. “Understood!” She didn’t know who was helping them or why, but her course was clear.
Payback time
. “Watch over her,” she said to Frederick. He looked conflicted, but nodded anyway.

She strode up to the Clockworkx who had just sent her sailing. Its hands flipped back into place. Perhaps it was out of ammunition. She didn’t have time to think about it as the mechanical man attempted to backhand her. It may have been incredibly strong, but her finely honed instincts were not to be underestimated. She ducked the attack and slashed at the glorified doll’s neck per the instructions of her mysterious new allies. The thing’s head separated from its body, leaving only sparking wires and a smelly black liquid in its wake.

She did the same to its friend before it could react, and the one behind it, and so on. She dispatched mechanical man after mechanical man in a decapitation ballet until she reached the end of the queue. There she discovered more broken automatons and the identity of her mysterious allies.

“You sure love takin’ your sweet time,” Jean-Louis said. He and Emil stood over the broken bodies of their inhuman enemies in the room beyond the hallway.

“Watch your tongue, you bumpkin,” Farahilde said. She may have been grateful for the assist, but she wasn’t about to be disrespected by some country lowlife, especially one that had so recently helped frame her for heinous crimes.

Jean-Louis moved to close the distance between them, but Emil held him back. “We don’t have time for this,” he told Jean-Louis.

“For once, we agree,” Farahilde said. She then remembered the two people she had left behind and went to go check on them. Frederick helped Jeanne to her feet. “Are you all right, fräulein?”

“I’ve been worse.”

“It’s a good thing you were wearing armor,” Frederick said.

Emil and Jean-Louis came over to join them. “Can you walk?” Emil asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Jeanne assured them. “The armor took the brunt of it. Still, those mechanical men were more dangerous than we expected. We need to be more cautious.”

“Kinda difficult when we don’t know what to expect,” Jean-Louis said.

“That’s a good point,” Frederick said. He then asked the Frenchmen, “Say, what are you two are doing here? I thought you weren’t allowed back in the President’s Palace.”

“In case ya haven’t noticed, this
aint
the President’s Palace,” Jean-Louis retorted.

Emil added, “Indeed. We don’t know
how
we got here. One minute we were on the
Minuit Solaire II
trying to make repairs, and suddenly there was a loud noise and a blinding light. The next thing we knew, we were in this strange house.”

“It was the same for us,” Frederick said.

“I have a theory,” Jeanne said.

Farahilde arched an eyebrow. “Do tell.”

“If the Gnostagar who taunted us over the speaker was telling the truth, then we’re still in the same general location in Washington. Add to that the fact that this building is much bigger than the President’s Palace, then perhaps this area has been painted over, as it were, the existing landmarks replaced with this mansion.”

“If this was caused by the Gnostagar stones being put into place, then maybe we just need to get them
out
of place to make everything go back to normal,” Frederick said.

“Sounds like a plan,” Farahilde said. “Let’s get moving.”

Emil and Jean-Louis grimly nodded. They didn’t like it, but working together was their best chance of stopping the Gnostagar invasion.

Chapter XVI: Kingdom Come

Washington (?), December 13, 1792 (Infini Calendar), unknown time

They made their way through the massive house, encountering no more of the Clockworkx. Eventually they came to a pair of large wooden doors with ornate brass handles. The doors were unlocked, so they went through them.

Before them now was a grand throne room. Many torches lined the walls, and red flags with strange symbols hung from the ceiling. A sweet smell was in the air.

The assembled stones were in front of the throne, only now they were upright in the shape of a door. A translucent greenish-blue light pulsated within the ethereal door.

On either side of the door two figures were lying prostrate: George Washington and Leopold. “Leo!” Farahilde yelled. Both of them stared at the new arrivals, but neither said anything or even so much as moved a muscle.

“Mr. President!” Jeanne called out to Washington.

“Welcome to the future home of the Gnostagar,” said a shadow behind the door. He stepped away from the semi-transparent light and was revealed to be a bald, elderly man with glasses and wearing colonial attire. He looked like any other citizen of Washington.

“Who the hell are you?” Farahilde demanded to know.

Jeanne stepped forward. “Wait—I know him! There is—or was—a portrait of him at the President’s Palace. That’s Ben Franklin!”

He nodded with satisfaction. “The artist certainly did me justice with that work.”

“So you’re a Gnostagar?” Farahilde asked.

He removed his glasses. “Correct. My name is Shabalesh. I came here centuries ago with the original scouting party.”

“You came to conquer?” Emil said.

He shook his head. “Not all of us. Allow me to explain.

“Our world lies outside of time and space. We spent untold millennia observing the course of human history. We know what has happened and what is to come. We had the power to open a door into one of two worlds—this one or the original—but no way to keep it open for long. One day, however, we discovered the existence of coralite in this world, and we knew it held enough high-level energy to open a door and keep it open indefinitely. Whatever strange power Jeanne d’Arc possessed was sufficient to split time and alter the geography of this world. We simply had to gather the stones that composed the door again and power them with coralite.  It was a long and difficult undertaking because the stones had dispersed to the four corners of the globe upon the initial closing of the door. In order to achieve that goal, we used our natural shape-shifting ability to infiltrate the growing world governments.”

“But why do you come as conquerors?” Frederick asked. “Why do you want this world so badly?”

Shabalesh pointed to the ceiling. That was when they realized it was made of glass. Up above it, beyond the strange fog, was the afternoon sun. “That is why. Our world is dark and cold. We don’t have anything like it. It is a thing of
beauty
. You humans take it for granted, but we do not. When we first came here, we were struck by its radiance. After an eternity locked away in our dimension, its warmth gave us a joy that defies words.”

“But you don’t have to subjugate us,” Jeanne pleaded. “Surely we can co-exist peacefully.”

He burst into laughter. “You can’t even live with
yourselves
peacefully. I told you—we have seen the future. You’re going to darken the sky with a horrible war. You’re going to take away the sun. We cannot allow that to happen. That’s why we’ve manipulated your technological progress to go down a different path. Of course, not all of us agreed with that decision. The Gnostagar split into two factions, and civil war was the result. My side was the one that eventually opened the door.”

“We Hapsburgs will never be your puppets,” Farahilde spat.

He laughed even more. “That’s what you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was your sister who championed our technological divergence. Didn’t you ever wonder why she felt so strongly about steam power?”

Farahilde said simply, “She was a visionary.”

“She was so much more than that,” Shabalesh said.

She felt a profound fear rise within her. She didn’t want to hear what he would say next, but she sensed he was going to say it whether she liked it or not. “Out with it.”

He said, “She was one of us.”

Her emotions exploded. “You lie!” She took a step towards him with the intention of giving him a slow death, but suddenly her strength gave out. She fell to her knees as a result of her muscles refusing to cooperate with her. “Dammit…thought the poison was out of me…”

“It’s not that,” Shabalesh said. “Look at your friends.”

With astonishing effort she managed to turn her head towards the others. They were also on their knees. “The…hell…?”

Shabalesh walked over to stand triumphantly over her. “The reason we had that little discussion was to buy time until my drug entered your system. Now you are helpless, and the door will open in a matter of minutes.”

“D…Drug…?” Jeanne managed to say.

He nodded. “Surely you noticed the sweet smell in the air. That’s something I came up with to stop you all with minimum effort.”

Farahilde struggled to move, but it was hopeless. Her body wouldn’t obey. “Bast…ard…”