The Girl with the Iron Touch

Emily looked away. “That I could make him as happy as he makes me.”

“Happiness is an individual pursuit, Em. He has to let himself be happy first. You spend far too much energy worrying about him.”

“I lo—I care about him.” She gestured at Finley. “I may not be listening at doors, but I worry about him.”

“Meow. Retract those claws of yours. I don’t care if you write sonnets about his eyes and rhapsodize about his hair. I’m just suggesting that maybe if you stopped trying to make him be happy he’d find happiness on his own.”

“How?”

“Well, maybe he’d realize that you accept him as he is. Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe part of the reason he’s unhappy is that he thinks you’re unhappy with him?”

Emily stopped—obviously she hadn’t considered that at all. “And perhaps Griffin keeps secrets from you for the same reason you’re afraid of him discovering yours—that you’ll think less of him.”

Now there was a thought. “I hadn’t entertained that possibility.” She hadn’t thought that perhaps Griffin had insecurities of his own. She was too busy second-guessing herself and worrying that he might not like her if he really knew her.

Sometimes she did reckless things just for the sheer joy of it. And sometimes she fought the urge to get into street brawls with men twice her size. Other times she felt guilty about keeping books from Griffin’s library in her room because no one else could read them. It was no more fun being too good than it was being too bad. But would Griffin still want her if she was sometimes bad? He never seemed to do the wrong thing, while she sometimes deliberately set off in the wrong direction.

Although, that blatant display of his abilities at the dock had been incredibly daring.

“You want to see if cook’s made any cakes?” she suggested, tired of thinking. Did blokes have any idea just how much of a bother they were? “We could make some tea and eat ourselves silly.” That was the “good” option. The bad was jumping on their velocycles and driving into the east end for a little danger and excitement.

“Actually, I have another idea.” Emily stopped and turned to face her. “Let’s go to the St. Pancras station.”

“I thought we weren’t going to go until we discussed it with Griffin?”

Emily tilted her head to one side. “How long do you reckon it will be before that happens?”

She had a point there. Besides, it was something to do that would take not only her mind off Griffin, but Emily’s off Sam. Lord knows they could both benefit from that!

Finley shrugged. “Why not?” She had nothing better to do. “Can we have cake first, though?” She was starving.

Her friend grinned. “Of course. One of us needs to take a por-tel with us. I told Sam I would.”

Emily had created portable telegraph devices for all of them that made communication so much easier. They were also very helpful if one of them found themselves in a spot of trouble and needed help.

They stopped by the kitchen for cake and tea—Finley made a pig of herself while Emily watched with amusement. Then, they grabbed jackets and whatever supplies each needed for poking about the station. They were going to look for clues as to where the mysterious automaton-girl had been taken, and by whom. They met at the stables—where the velocycles were kept—ten minutes later.

Finley appraised Emily’s various items. She looked prepared for anything. “Just what are you hoping to find there, Em?” Sometimes she wondered at the many devices and weapons her little friend made or possessed. What had happened to her that she was obsessed with making certain she and everyone around her was as safe as possible? It went beyond ordinary preparedness.

Emily swung her leg over her machine and gripped the steering bar as she kicked the stabilizing bar out of the way. “I don’t know, but I promised Sam I’d be careful, so I want to be prepared for any eventuality.”

That was sweet. Respectful. Finley tried to ignore a stab of jealousy as she climbed onto her own machine. Would Griffin worry about her? Would he even notice she was gone?

She wasn’t certain she wanted to know the answer.

Chapter 4

She woke up with a start, a strange pounding in her chest. Was one of her parts defective? A cog off its pattern? No, it was that organic thing—that lump of muscle that pumped blood through her system.

What was blood again? Oh, yes. It was essentially the oil that kept human organisms running smoothly.

She touched her head. Inside her skull felt odd—as though her logic engine had somehow changed—had become more. Information assaulted her at an alarming rate.

She understood it. All of it.

She was learning. She was evolving. Her heart—that’s what it was called—gave another jump.

They’d given her a name—Endeavor 312—which she didn’t like, and clothes, which she did. They’d also given her access to a water closet should she need to expel fluid again. And they’d given her food and water—things that would act as fuel in her changing system. Things she would have to expel later on, only to continue taking more in. It seemed wasteful to her, but she understood the necessity.

It had been explained to her that she was the first of her kind, that she would notice changes. The spider had told her not to get emotional over them. She wasn’t quite sure what emotions were, but she knew it was linked to this pounding beneath the cage that protected her internal workings.

Voices. That’s what had brought her system to wake. The machines had gone to gather supplies, leaving her alone. They told her that soon others would join them. Was this them?

She rose from the horizontal rest bay. No, that wasn’t what it was called. It was a bed. An odd term. Rest bay sounded much more accurate. Slowly, she walked across the dirt floor—it was cold against the bottom of her bare feet. She was much more aware of temperature fluctuations now, and anything else that engaged her sensory inputs. Her endoskeleton was now completely covered by the pale membranous material that was sensitive to everything around it, including a breeze that seemed to blow through the cavern.

It smelled of age and dirt and metal down here. She knew she was underground because of how muted the noise of the city was. And this was a city, because she felt the rumble of trains, both above and below street level.

Slowly, on limbs that felt awkward, she went to the door of her room. It didn’t want to open at first, but one good yank solved that problem; the entire metal and wood slab came free. She propped it against the wall and slipped out into the main chamber.

There were boxes and crates everywhere, and more slumbering automatons, too, though none seemed to have the same covering that she did. They didn’t wear clothing, either. Some of them looked battle-scarred and patched together while others gleamed with the brightness of new metal.

Normally she would stop to inspect them all, but she wanted to see their guests. There was another door on the far side of the room and she moved toward it. There was an odd-looking glass-front box mounted on the wall—it showed the catacombs beyond the door. She knew this because part of her was still machine and she understood.

A photographic camera had to be positioned somewhere near the ceiling out in the catacombs, not far from the door. Harnessed Aetheric energy fed the images seen through the lens of the camera to the receiver in the box with the glass front.

The visitors appeared on the glass. She grinned and hurried toward the door. Halfway there, she came to an abrupt and unanticipated stop.

Scowling, she looked down at the limbs that refused to move. She pulled and strained but to no avail. She could not move. It was then that she became aware of a humming noise and realized that she was more prisoner than guest herself.

The spot where she stood was home to a powerful magnet, one that froze the metal inside her to the spot. This was why the others felt they could leave her, leave the other slumbering machines—because there was little chance of escape.

And if there was little chance of escape, logic insisted that she was to be kept there regardless of her own thoughts on the matter.

She stared at the girls on the grainy surface of the glass, and then through a small slit in the door. There were two of them—one tall with light hair streaked with dark and another shorter one with hair that looked like ropes.

Part of her reacted to the sight of them. It was her heart again, kicking up a fuss in her chest cavity. She knew them. She didn’t know how, but she had seen them before. The little one especially.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement and jerked her head around. For a moment she was terrified of the strange girl staring at her from just a few feet away. The girl had curly red hair, honey-colored eyes and pale skin. She was tall and slender and dressed in ill-fitting clothes.

The girl was her. It was nothing but her own reflection staring back at her from the scuffed surface of a long, framed mirror. She reached up—it took real effort to lift her arm under the magnet’s pull—and touched her hair, then looked back at the girls outside. They walked past the door to where she was as though they didn’t even see it.

But she saw them. Or rather, she saw her; the red-haired girl. Her mother.

Somehow, in what was left of her logic engine memory capacitors, she recognized a physical connection between herself and that tiny girl. She recognized another connection with the taller girl, as well, but not as strong. She reached forward, but the two couldn’t see her. She opened her jaw to cry out, but only a low keening noise filled the room. The fleshy thing in her mouth still didn’t work properly.

To her left yet another door opened. The old woman stood there, and she did not look amused. Her disapproval was made disconcerting given the odd angle of her head. She looked like a corpse that had been reanimated after its neck was broken, though how she knew that was an apt description was a mystery.

“What are you doing?” the woman demanded. The hitch in her voice box sounded worse. “Were you trying to leave?”