Winterbay (7 page)

Mira placed the Aleve on the workbench with the other combinations and studied them.

She was gambling that the Machine had been built “upward” like pretty much everything else in Winterbay, and she’d made her combinations accordingly. There were Gravity Voids, two of them, in addition to the one she always wore around her neck for emergencies. After all, you never knew when a nice pocket of zero-G might come in handy.

There was the Aleve, two Dynamos, a Lithe, a Reflector, and a Gravitron for good measure. They all sat on the workbench, humming audibly, ready to be used, and Mira smiled at the sight. In spite of how dangerous using them promised to be, she still—

There was a loud, hollow thump as the lights inside the engine room suddenly shut off and plunged everything to black. The engines died and went silent. Mira froze in place, a little unnerved, but nothing else happened. Through the walls of the ship, she could still hear the other boats outside churning in place, which meant whatever the problem was, it was isolated to Armitage’s vessel.

It must be a breaker, she reasoned, which wasn’t great news. She didn’t much care for the idea of sitting here alone in the dark, and she had more artifacts to make.

Mira stumbled around until she found her pack, then dug out her flashlight and flipped it on, revealing the engine room again in bits and pieces as the light moved.

Where would the breaker box be on a boat? A quick scan of the walls with her flashlight revealed it wasn’t in the engine room, but this wasn’t the only space below deck.

When Reiko had led her down here, Mira had seen two doors: the one they went through into the engine room, and another on the other side of the stairs that went toward the bow of the ship. It seemed like her best shot.

Mira grabbed her pack and moved back into the small hallway outside, pushing through the thick blackness of the ship with her flashlight. She found the door where she remembered it and tried the handle. It was locked. Naturally.

Mira hesitated. Just because it was locked, that didn’t mean she couldn’t get in. There were ways, but Armitage probably wouldn’t like her snooping around. At the same time, he would like it a lot less if he got back and she hadn’t made enough artifacts to get the job done. She needed those lights back on; there was no way around it.

Mira dug through her pack again and pulled out a keychain loaded with about a dozen small keys of different colors and shapes, each marked with the δ symbol. They were Skeleton Keys, major artifacts from the Strange Lands, and they would open any lock that took a key. They were rare and very valuable, and this key ring represented Armitage’s entire collection.

She plucked one loose and looked down at the door. The lock was made for a much larger key, but that made no difference. As Mira shoved it into the lock, there was a spark and a hum, and it somehow reorganized its shape to fit inside the keyhole.

Mira twisted the key and, with a flash, the door clicked as it unlocked. When she removed the key, there was a spark … and the entire thing crumbled into a palmful of metallic shavings and dust that she brushed off her hands. Skeleton Keys could only be used once.

Mira forced the door open, dragging it across the steel floor with a sound like nails on a chalkboard, then stepped through into the dark room on the other side.

The first thing she noticed was the smell, the unpleasant mix of gas, stale water, and fish from outside. The second was that, even in the dark, the room just felt
wrong.
It was the only way she could describe it. It was cold here; there was a heaviness to the air that was unsettling. All her flashlight lit was the floor in front of the door. She could raise it and reveal the room, but Mira had instincts, and they were telling her that was a very bad idea. Whatever went on down here, it wasn’t anything she wanted to see.

Luckily for her, the breaker box had been installed right near the door. She opened it and shined her light in. One of the breakers had flipped. Mira shoved it back into position. In the next room, she could hear the engines begin to hum again, and she breathed a sigh of— A single light in the ceiling flickered weakly as it powered on with dirty-brownish light. Mira knew she should spin around before she saw what was there, but she didn’t move, frozen either from fear or from some morbid curiosity. She just stood there and took in the entire room at once. She immediately wished she hadn’t.

There were only a few things of note inside. One was a chair, a thick metal one that was bolted into the floor near the back. Where the footrests were, thick leather restraints lay, ready to be locked in place. It was the same on the armrests.

Near the chair was a single workbench, and it was scattered with tools that contained grim implications: pliers, clamps, a heating torch, a mallet, a variety of knives and razors. Underneath the chair, the floor was stained with dark splotches, and as awful as all that was, something much worse drew her attention.

A jagged hole had been cut into the center of the floor, and Mira saw water lap gently up and over the edge and drain back down. It had been opened to the lake below. Something about the sight of that hole chilled Mira like nothing else in her life. From her vantage, she could just see into the blackish depths that sank straight downward.

Mira’s mind went blank. Somehow, she managed to make herself move back through the door and slam it shut, and when she did she planted her back against it and remembered to breathe once again, swallowing frightened gulps of air.

When her hands stopped shaking, she was overtaken with a flood of thoughts. That hole in the floor meant Armitage was more than just a businessman or even a scoundrel, he was a killer. A malicious one, and he would have no problem dumping what was left of her down that hole, where she would settle with the remains of everyone else who had sat in that chair.

It meant something else, too. It was pretty clear that if whatever Armitage wanted was so valuable that someone equally as sadistic had made this Machine to guard it, he very likely had no intention of letting her live once her usefulness ran out. People who made things like that room back there weren’t the kinds of people who liked loose ends.

Mira looked at the stairs leading up and out and back into the Underworks. She could go right now, find another way out and back into the city, leave and never look back. Armitage might send Reiko after her, or he might not, but it was a gamble that would be worth taking. Because she was facing certain death just by continuing now.

Olive’s last words echoed in her mind.
Remember what your lines are …

Then again … how was her situation any different than it had been? The Machine itself was certain death, and yet she had been willing to face
it.
It was because the plutonium was worth the risk. Getting it now, saving months of time, having the key component of her plan to fix everything at Midnight City—that was worth almost anything.

The realization calmed her nerves somewhat, and she felt her breathing begin to slow. After all, wasn’t she actually in a
better
position than she had been? Before she’d had her suspicions, but Mira hadn’t really realized what kind of man she was dealing with in Armitage. Now she did. Now she knew what was going to be waiting for her if she managed to beat the Machine. Which meant … she could prepare for it. She could be ready.

A slight smile formed on her lips, along with the beginnings of a plan. She needed to make one more artifact combination, one more, and then—

Mira heard the boat vibrate and the sound of something like chains moving through pulleys outside. It had to be the bridge that connected the boat to the Underworks, which meant Reiko and Armitage had come.

With wide eyes, Mira dashed back toward the engine room. She had to make the last artifacts and get one into position before the pair showed up … or it was all over.

An Idea

Mira’s hands were a blur as she finished the first combination, listening to the hum as it Interfused. Above, the bridge had been retracted back into place, which meant Reiko and Armitage would be on their way down soon. Mira didn’t know how much either of them knew about artifacts—given this was Winterbay, the odds were good they didn’t know much—but she couldn’t take that chance. If they recognized what she was making, it would send up red flags, and red flags were not what she wanted Armitage to see right now.

She shoved the first combination in her pack and went to work on the second, stringing together a mixture of batteries, paper clips, pieces of mirror, coils of copper wire, dimes, quarters, and vials of silvery dust. It was a three-tier artifact, three separate combinations merged into one, and she finished the first just as she heard the door at the top of the stairwell open.

Mira’s heart beat frantically; her hands shook. She’d never made such a complicated artifact so quickly, but she didn’t have a choice. She had to concentrate. The hum filled the air as the second tier Interfused.

The door to the room shook … but it didn’t open.

Mira had shoved the dead bolt home right after she closed the door. It should keep them out long enough for her to make the third tier and finish the—

She heard the metallic sound of a key fitting into the lock from the other side.

Mira’s eyes widened. The simple idea that Armitage might have a key had never even occurred to her. She’d bought herself seconds only, not minutes.

She forced her hands to move, placing one component after the other in a mass with the previous two tiers, blending them together, making sure the alignment was right and the polarity of the coins was correct and doing it all at breakneck speed.

The lock clicked. The door began to groan open.

Mira wrapped the components with green thread into a roughly triangular shape. The air flashed, and there was a hum as the artifact Interfused. She shoved it into her pocket and, at the last minute, grabbed her pack from the workbench and flung it toward the corner of the room.

Her heart pounded as the door opened.

“Time’s up. Pencils down.” Armitage stepped in, followed by Reiko. He was carrying the heavy black case with the radiation symbol, and the sight of it was almost enough to make Mira forget her anxiety. It was a reminder of why she was taking all the risk.

“Why’d you lock the door?” Reiko asked, her eyes finding Mira the moment she stepped inside. Her daggers hung from their sheaths on her chest.

Mira shrugged. “Room full of artifacts in Winterbay. Guess I’m paranoid.”

“Paranoia’s a very good trait,” Armitage replied. “Keeps you alive. It’s what I would have expected from a Freebooter.”

The three stared at one another in silence. If they had any suspicions about what she’d been doing down here or what she might have seen, Mira couldn’t tell. She told herself to stay alert nonetheless.

Reiko had a coil of thick rope wrapped crosswise around her Bowie tee, and she threw two thick leather straps with clips onto the workbench. Mira slipped them both around her shoulders, crisscrossing her chest, and buttoned them together. Then she reached for the artifacts on the bench and started clipping them to the straps, trying not to let her shaking hands show.

“You know, the reward for you is higher than any bounty I’ve ever seen,” Armitage said casually.

Mira looked up at him warily, but Armitage stared back with an almost insulted look. “May be lucrative for a bounty hunter, but it’s spare change to me, girl. I’m a lot more interested in our arrangement. Makes me curious, though. What’d you do to earn that kind of attention from the Gray Devils?”

Mira looked down. This wasn’t her favorite subject. “I used to be one of them,” she said. Armitage raised an eyebrow in interest. “I … made something I shouldn’t have. Something they wanted.”

“Wanted pretty bad, looks like,” Armitage replied. “Artifact combination, I’d guess.”

Mira just kept gearing up, clipping the artifacts she’d made to the straps. “Could be.”

Armitage smiled. “Like I said, only thing I’m interested in is our arrangement.”

“And I still don’t know what that arrangement really is. You still haven’t told me what this Machine’s protecting.” Mira tried to look nonchalant as she moved toward her pack in the corner where she’d thrown it.

“Are you sure you really wanna know?” Armitage asked from behind. “Odds are you won’t like the answer.”

“I think I’d like to know what I’m risking my life for, yeah,” Mira said. She slowly knelt down to her pack, and as she did, she pulled the triangular combination she’d made a moment ago out of her pocket.

“But you
do
know.” Mira heard Armitage pat the black case. “You’re risking your life for
this.
Only one risking anything for the Machine is
me.
”

“What are
you
risking, exactly?”

“Lots of things.” Armitage looked at Reiko. “A valuable associate. Respect topside. All these artifacts I’ve collected over the years. You’re a Freebooter, you know better than most that risk comes with the game.”

In a smooth motion she hoped was blocked by her back, Mira set the combination upright in the corner, making sure to face the business end toward the center of the room. No one behind her seemed to notice. “Are you gonna tell me or not?”

Armitage paused. “An
idea.
”

Mira grabbed her pack and slung it over her shoulder, looking at Armitage dubiously as she did. “The Machine is guarding … an idea?”

“Told you you wouldn’t like it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Armitage studied her a moment. “Might not guess it now, but I grew up in a pretty unintimidating environment; nice, cushy, cardboard cutout neighborhood in Jersey. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t scary. All places have their scary parts, and mine was school. I didn’t fit in real well, and when people don’t fit in they usually end up adopting the same strategy: keep a low profile, stay off the radar. There was one kid, though, name was Max. Big brute of a kid, looked about ten years older than he was, and he was a tyrant. Sent more than one kid to the hospital, did a stint in juvenile, the usual, and it seemed no matter how low I tried to keep, he always spotted me. I took four beatings by Max before I finally got tired of it.”