AN: Oh man, frickin finally! I am SO SORRY this chapter took so long. It started out being 12,000 words – almost as long as the previous three chapters combined! I probably should've just cut it into two or even three chapters, but I'm loath to delay the AU much more and we're already looking at 21 chapters. So... this is going to be a novel. I hope you're up for it. It seems like you are, which brings me to the next point:
Thank you so, so freaking much to everyone who faved, followed, and/or reviewed! This is the most response I've ever gotten to any of my online writing, and you guys are so totally great! WOW I FEEL SO LOVED ;3;
One question for you guys, re: the footnotes. Reader response to the content has been overwhelmingly positive, but there's some contention as to the format. Several people prefer them at the bottom of their respective paragraphs, rather than between section breaks; several prefer them at the bottom, so they can reopen the story in a new tab, keep it scrolled down, and just tab between them whenever there is one. Let me know which of these you'd prefer, if you've got a different idea, or if you'd rather I just leave them out entirely.
(For this chapter, I'll leave them at the bottom for tab viewing, so that I don't go crazy trying to format them and end up with orphaned footnotes floating around like I did last chapter. Sorry about that, by the way.)
And, last but certainly not least, thanks a million to my wonderful beta proserpinasacra, without whom this would be a rambling, incomprehensible monstrosity rather than the coherent story it is.
"When we lose the right to be different,
we lose the privilege to be free."
—Charles Evans Hughes
CHAPTER FOUR: The Girl Who Kicked the Songbird's Nest.
"But Madame Lutece—"
"That's enough out of you, child. The Prophet doesn't want you reading, and I quote, 'things of such an inflammatory nature.' He's afraid you'll start to get ideas."
Elizabeth made a truly pathetic noise and threw herself backwards onto her bed. "But Madame, I haven't even gotten to the uprising yet, it's only just about to begin!"
"Yes, and that's why the Prophet has instructed me to take the book from you now," Rosalind said, not unkindly. "He seems to be under the impression that you'll try to start a rebellion yourself as soon as you read another page."
Pouting, Elizabeth sat up and hurled the book at the wall, where it made a large and visible dent.
Rosalind smiled at that. "He's not going to be happy about that," she said.
"Good," said Elizabeth petulantly. "You will tell him, won't you?"
"I shall, if that's what you wish."
"What I wish is that I could keep my book! Now I'll never know what happens, and Marius and Éponine really must run off together, and— oh, Rosalind, couldn't you let me keep it for just one more day?" She fluttered her eyelashes at the red-headed woman hopefully, but as usual, her entreaties had no effect whatsoever. Madame Lutece gave her a stern look.
"And risk the wrath of your dear guardian? My, but we are daring today."
Elizabeth's face fell and her shoulders drooped. "He... he would be angry with me for disobeying, wouldn't he?"
"He's very sensitive, for a piece of automata," agreed Madame Lutece, patting Elizabeth's shoulder. "Now, if you please." She held out a hand.
Sighing dramatically, Elizabeth slipped down off the bed, padded over, and retrieved her now rather battered copy of Les Misérables. Madame Lutece took it briskly, and then relented.
"I do believe I've misplaced your lessons for today," she said, sounding sly. "If you hurry while I go to fetch them, you might have time to read the last few pages and not tell me about it."
Elizabeth gave her a watery smile. It looked as if she were trying very hard not to cry. "That's very kind, but I just couldn't. I doubt I'd know what was happening anyways, what with how longit is, and Rosalind, what if someone dies!"
Now Madame Lutece looked as if she were trying to keep a straight face. "That is a possibility, yes."
Elizabeth took one look and saw right through her. "Oh, now I have to know! Give it here!" She snatched the book back from Rosalind's hand, threw herself down on the bed again, and began flipping to the end as quickly as she could.
Chuckling quietly to herself, Rosalind Lutece turned and headed out to fetch her bag.
Never gamble with a Sicilian, and never get into a land war in Columbia, Booker thought, with a bitter sort of amusement, as he yanked the end of the gauze tight and pulled his sleeve back down over his newest bullet wound.
He was sitting half-obscured within a rosebush directly beneath a very frustrated military automaton, which was swiveling this way and that, bells ringing, as it searched desperately for his hiding place. It shivered and fuzzed with that painful green aura, and every few seconds it would shudder, grainy-gray, and go silent, the lights of its eyes flicking from orange to green, but Booker didn't have the energy to push it around into its friendly state at the moment. He'd learned to use the effects of the rather unsettling Possession vigor to his advantage very quickly, and had even faster become exhausted by its use. His head ached every time he used it, and if he did so too often, blood began to drip sluggishly from his mouth and nose.
A sudden whirr overhead alerted him to the latest wave of officers, using their hooks to sail down from parts unknown along the dozens of steel cargo lines that connected the islands of Columbia. Booker scrunched himself down further inside the rosebush as the officers fanned out, shouting to each other as they searched for him. He peered out through the branches, assessing the situation momentarily. Only one of them wielded a gun; the others had only nightsticks and sky-hooks. That made the man with the firearm his priority, but said officer was currently on the other side of the courtyard, kicking open the door to a small shop, which had been barricaded from the inside when the fighting began. There were shouts from inside, and a woman's voice, and Booker heard the officer apologizing; then he moved on to try the next door.
Booker rolled over onto his knees and laid a hand on the cool metal of the automaton's base. It didn't feel him, being a hunk of metal, but it buzzed and scratched at his skin, and he thought that he might have enough energy after all. He pushed, and the automaton vibrated and fizzed in and out of focus and then, suddenly, snapped back into reality, rang loudly, and began firing upon the Columbian officers.
The momentary chaos created by the automaton's sudden shift of allegiance gave him the time necessary to duck out of his hiding place and dart across the courtyard to crouch behind an abandoned ice cart. The policeman with the pistol saw him, but he'd been counting on it; as soon as the officer came to flush him out, he rolled from behind the cart, grabbed the man by his collar, yanked him down, and shot him in the back of the head.
One of the other policemen had escaped the automaton's immediate line of fire, and came at him, nightstick raised. Almost laughing at the pathetic level of dedication these men had— how many of them had he killed already today?— Booker shot him too.
There was a heavy clunk as the officer fell. Booker kicked the corner of the man's coat aside to see a large green-and-red Possession bottle and two small blue phials tucked into an inner pocket. He fished one of the phials out and looked at it curiously.
Fink's Invigorating Salts, it said, on the top of its label, and For the Frequent Vigor User! along the bottom. He flipped it over. Take as Needed to Reduce Vigor Fatigue. Warning: Overuse May Cause Jitters, Blurred Vision, and Multiple Realities.
Booker blinked at it, and then, following his imprudent habit of tasting things he probably shouldn't, raised the phial to his lips.
The liquid inside was bittersweet and oddly cold, and it made the world fuzz for a moment. Then his vision righted itself with a rush of sharp clarity. He felt as if he'd downed a canister of the sharp black coffee they'd been given in the army, but at least this stuff tasted better. Booker dropped the little bottle into his bag, stepped over the officer's corpse, and slunk quickly away down a winding side-street before more armed forces could arrive.
Songbird's eyes were orange when he came in, and Elizabeth knew that Madame Lutece had made good on her promise to tell the Prophet about her insolence.
"I'm sorry," she said, and Songbird glared at her, first out of one eye and then out of the other. He whistled sharply, accusatory. "I know," Elizabeth sighed. "I shouldn't have lost my temper. But why does he care so much about what I do? I've never even seen him, and he never comes to talk to me at all! Not like you do."
She reached up and laced her hands around one of Songbird's huge claws, smiling in conciliation. Flattery was the right choice, she knew immediately: with a faint clunk his eyes cycled back to green, and he reached down and obliged her entreaty to be picked up, wrapping his huge hands around her waist and tucking her into the gap between the plates of his shoulder and one huge canvas wing. The metal of his skin was cool, and though she'd grown a bit too big to fit comfortably, she could still curl up into the little notch where his neck met his shoulder and rest her cheek against his.
Her keeper whistled fondly and flexed his wings out, cradling her, and Elizabeth smiled sadly. He could be demanding and impatient, and he was very strict, but still, she supposed she loved him. He was her only friend, up here in her lonely chambers in the sky. Even Madame Lutece only came to her at the behest of the Prophet. She doubted anybody else knew she even existed at all.
"Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit—!"
Booker stumbled up the hill as fast as he could, panting curses, shoving barrels out of his way and ducking around corners at random. Behind him, the man in the terrible flaming machine roared and rattled and clanged in pursuit. Fire exploded around him and he barely managed to get clear, wedging himself between a gate and a wall and fumbling with the cartridges of his filched volcanic pistol. What he wouldn't give for his old Springfield...
But Booker had more pressing concerns, like the rapidly-approaching monster of a man, who, having lost sight of him, was now hurling clusters of embers into every hiding place he found. The resulting explosions were edged in grainy gray, and Booker wondered what sort of terrible mind had come up with such a vigor.
Puts a whole new meaning to the word 'fireman', he thought wryly(1), as he slotted the new cartridge into place.
Another shout and round of explosions signified the approach of the fireman around the corner. Booker gritted his teeth against the mounting pain in his arm, took a breath, and darted out from his hiding place.
"False Shepherd—!" the fireman bellowed, rounding on him, and Booker flung out a hand and the fireman shuddered and jerked and stopped.
Gasping, Booker sank down onto a crate and ran a hand through his hair. The more he used the vigor, the shorter it lasted— but the ones he'd fired in the beginning were still working, and he thought that maybe he might have a plan after all.
He staggered to his feet and headed up the hill, praying that his old friend the automaton turret was still on his side.
To his utter relief, it was. The fireman loped amiably up the street after him, but halfway along the block jerked to a stop and once again shuddered violently. The haze surrounding him fizzled away, and the engines somewhere within his terrible suit roared to life again—
And the automaton came alive as well, spraying bullets across the courtyard. The fireman shouted and tried to lumber into cover, but while Booker, though tall, was at least human-sized, there was nowhere big enough to accommodate the monstrosity's flaming bulk.
There was a high-pitched mechanical whine, and then the fireman exploded.
Debris, shrapnel, and embers rained everywhere. Booker threw his arms up over his head just in time; glowing coals pattered down around him, striking his skin in a bright painful shower before rolling onto the ground and fading out.
Mildly burned, but otherwise alive, Booker got stiffly to his feet and looked around. The only evidence of his inflammatory foe was a large scorch mark on the cobblestones, several scattered, smoking chunks of metal, and, sitting in the gutter a dozen feet away, the red-orange bottle of a vigor.
He went over to it, picked it up, and turned it over in his hands. A horned, tailed woman blew a kiss of flame from her position atop the cork, and the bottle was labeled in crimson ink.
"'Devil's Kiss'..." he read. "Well, you only live once(7)."
The vigor was spicy-sweet like cinnamon, cloyingly thick, and warm. For a moment nothing happened, and Booker felt a swell of disappointment. Then red spots exploded across his vision, and through the staticky haze his shuddering hands peeled and blistered, the skin sloughing off to show bone beneath. Carving Anna's memory into his hand had not burned so fiercely; but before he could cry out, the pain had ceased, leaving him shaking, sweating, and entirely unharmed.
What asshole thought that was a good idea? Booker didn't really understand how the vigors worked, but it seemed to him there had to be a better way than intense hallucination to indicate that they had. He ran a hand through his hair, shook his head, and walked stiffly to the end of the street. There, he leaned against the brass gate for a moment to catch his breath, staring out over the sea of clouds.
Fireworks still sparkled in the air over some of the other islands every few dozen seconds, and distant music drifted on the breeze; it appeared word of the False Shepherd's coming had not yet reached the entire city. That was a small blessing, at least: it was difficult enough to get close to Monument Island without the entire city on the lookout for him.
He still had to figure out a way around this latest roadblock the end of the street presented, though. The fact that he'd reached a point where his island appeared to be constructed to dock with another was a good sign, but the board with all the docking times of all the other islands it connected to had been yet again pasted over.
Monument Island, 12:00 - 1:00. Closed by Order of the Prophet.
Below that, though, was a subscript that had not been present on the other signs. Booker peered at it more closely. "'To visit the Island outside of standard docking hours, or for a special event, please consult the Monument Island Railway for further debarkation times'," he read aloud. "Huh."
Straightening up, he shaded his eyes and squinted up at the tower. If he looked closely, he could just catch the glint of swooping steel rails, connecting the tower physically to several other islands. Most dipped down into the cloud layer and were lost, but one arched towards his own island to disappear behind a restaurant to come to rest not too far away.
"Finally," he said, half-laughing with relief. Any longer, and he'd've had mind to just give up the whole endeavor, toss New York, and deal with whatever Hell Samuels sent after him on his own terms. It might yet come to that still, but at least now he had a definite lead.
A throb from his wounded arm reminded him that he still had matters more pressing than even the job at hand. At best, the restaurant might have a stash of medical supplies; at worst, there would be gin and linen. He'd been in the army; if he couldn't scrap up a working bandage on the fly, he'd have been dead amongst the cactus a decade ago.
Pistol at the ready, Booker edged open the restaurant door, peered inside, and seriously considered shooting the occupants just on principle(8).
"We have company."
"We do indeed."
"What are— whyare you following me?"
"We were already here."
"Why are you following us?"
Booker lowered his pistol and gave a weary sigh. The sister smiled serenely at him. He did his utmost to ignore her, but he could feel her eyes on his back as he skirted between the tables and bumped open a door marked 'Employees Only'. The room beyond was small, with a deep basin, several spare wait uniforms, piles of clean linens, aprons, and dishtowels, and, blessedly, a small medical kit tucked under the sink. Above that was the same painting of Comstock's Lady, the one of her in the dark blue walking gown.
Booker looked up at her with a degree of calm that surprised him. "So now you're gonna follow me around, huh? Should've stayed gone, for all the good it did you."
"You know," the brother said casually from beyond the open door, "talking to paintings is a definite sign of madness."
"Thanks for the tip," Booker grumbled back. He snatched the canvas pouch up from under the sink and left the little room as quickly as he could.
Both twins were giving him odd looks when he emerged. Still pointedly ignoring them, he settled himself on a bar stool, rolled up his sleeve, and then, gritting his teeth, yanked the gauze off of his arm.
The wound was shallow, and the bullet had missed the bone, but that was only a small mercy. Bandages pilfered from a kicked-over vending machine, no antiseptic, and several hours' worth of running and fighting had not done him any favors. The puncture was raw, half scabbed, and sluggishly oozing blood; the skin around it was reddish-purple, swollen, and hot, and it hurt.
"God damn it." Booker had dealt with field infections before, and it was not an experience he cared to repeat.
The Twins exchanged glances. "We have just the thing," the sister said.
Booker glared bloody murder at them. As usual, they remained perfectly unfazed.
There was a moment of awkward silence. Booker was beginning to get the impression that this would be a common occurrence whenever he dealt with them.
"...Well?"
The brother reached under the counter and came up with a yellow bottle, not unlike the sort the vigors came in.
"Be careful," the sister said. "It can sting a bit."
Booker rolled his eyes and reached for the bottle, but the brother pulled it back with an odd expression of perplexed curiosity upon his face. "What's that you've got for me in that satchel of yours?"
He stared at the other man in mild disbelief. "You want me to pay you, you're gonna have to do better than that."
"Fine. I shan't fix that device you have for you, and you'll never find out what your dearly departed lady friend had to say."
Booker blinked at him, entirely taken aback. "What, the— the gramophone thing?"
"That's the one. It's called a voxophone, by the way, though the distinction is nominal."
"Uh, sure. Take it." He dug into his bag and pulled out the device. It looked battered beyond repair. The brother, though, seemed to disagree; he took it in both hands and began studiously pulling it apart, so Booker returned his attention to the bottle he'd been given. It was full of a sickly yellow liquid that did not shimmer, fuzz, or fade in and out of existence. In fact, besides its decidedly unappealing color, it looked perfectly normal.
He really shouldn't have felt as disappointed by that as he did.
Shrugging, he uncorked the tonic.
Really, he should have expected by then that anything he ingested, no matter its appearance, was not going to be normal. Everything blacked out, and there was the sensation of being slowly squeezed, and when his vision returned there was a strange sheen a quarter-inch above his skin, and the bullet wound was entirely healed. The only indication that he'd been shot at all was a scar across his upper arm, so pale and faded he'd've thought it had been there for years.
"What the Hell was that?" It felt like he'd been asking that question a lot.
The brother looked up from his intent dismantling of the voxophone. "Hm. Surprising."
The sister's response sounded the tiniest bit smug. "Surprising that it worked?"
"Surprising that it didn't kill him."
"A magnetic-repulsion field around one's body can come in handy."
"If it doesn't kill you."
"Would you just," Booker said helplessly, and gave up.
The brother finished threading the shiny black tape into the voxophone and slotted the grooved disc into place.
"Here."
Booker took it dubiously. "Thanks."
"Mm. If I were you, I'd consider carefully before listening to it."
"The word of a disciple can be distressing indeed," the sister agreed. "Particularly when one was acquainted with said disciple before a certain Prophet got his hands on her, in both the metaphorical and the literal sense."
"You'd best be on your way if you don't want him to get his hands on you as well," said the brother, "and I do doubt he'll be as gentle as he was to your dear—"
"Don't," Booker said, and there must have been something in the tone of his voice that brooked no disagreement, because for once the Twins did as he said.
"The point remains," the sister said after a moment. "If you want to get your job done, you'd best be on your way."
"You'll find no argument from me," Booker muttered, shooting her a pointed glance. He stood up stiffly from the barstool and brushed past her, into the back storeroom of the restaurant.
"Good luck," the brother called after him, and perhaps he was going crazy, but there was something decidedly sinister about the cant of those parting words.
They were waiting for him when he left the restaurant.
Booker ducked out of the storeroom and came out onto a docking bay at the very edge of the island. Through the slats beneath his feet, he could see clouds, and, a long, long way below them, a flash of green that disappeared as quickly as it had come. Swallowing his vertigo, he stepped out onto the platform and looked around. There was another island about a hundred yards distant, and this appeared to be the one to which the shipping rails led.
How he was going to get there, however, was another matter entirely. There were no rails connecting the two islands. Booker frowned and scouted along the edge of the dock, hoping for some indication as to what he was supposed to do next.
Much to his surprise, his search was successful. There was an arrow painted on the wall, pointing upwards. Following it with his gaze, Booker saw a curved hook dangling from the end of a scaffold that protruded from the wall. From it hung a white tin sign: 'Skyhook connection point'. Doubtful, he regarded it for a moment, looked down at the hook-and-bracer contraption, and then back up at the freight hook again. It looked fairly sturdy, but it was a good twenty feet in the air. There was no way he was jumping to it; maybe he could climb up onto those crates...
Irritated, he clenched and unclenched his fingers inside the bracer. The hooks whirred to life only briefly, but in the instant that they did so, there was a sharp tug on the device, and Booker found himself drawn towards the freight hook a good foot and a half.
Experimentally, he tightened his hand again. There was a moment's delay; then, as soon as the blades had got up to speed, he was jerked roughly into the air. The force with which he connected to the freight hook threw his hand open and ought to have dislocated his wrist at the very optimistic least, but the padded bracer clamped down on his arm and took a good deal of his weight.
Booker hung for a moment, bewildered, and then tucked his free arm through the iron lacings of the scaffold, braced his legs against the wall, and disengaged the sky-hook from its slot. Gingerly he adjusted his hands until he was sure that he wouldn't get caught if he let go, and looked out, searching for another anchor.
He found one about fifty yards away, floating on a solitary striped balloon halfway between him and his destination. It was a long jump and a further fall, but there was another arrow on the side of the little tower, pointing him in its direction. It was follow it or give up, and though he wasn't looking forward to the former, he certainly wasn't about to do the latter.
What I'll do to see a job done, he thought sourly. Samuels and the other Pinks would be having such a laugh if they could see him now.
Well, if he died, he wouldn't have to deal with them anymore; if he didn't, he'd be that much closer to being done and gone. He hauled himself up to the top of the scaffold, crouched there for a moment, and then flicked the sky-hook to life and jumped.
For one terrifying moment, the cold green-and-gray void rushed beneath his feet and he felt certain he was going to fall, but then there was a violent jolt that knocked all the air from him, accompanied by a loud clang, and he swung to a halt, hanging securely from the little floating tower.
He dangled briefly, catching his breath; then he pulled himself up to the top of the scaffold, found the next arrow, and jumped again. This hook was attached to the side of a free-floating two-story building only a few yards from the edge of the island, and beneath it was a dock much like the one from which he had departed.
Booker was about to swing out and jump down onto the main island when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. There were people milling about the alley there, men and a few women in pale blue uniforms. They were calling out to each other as they paced— things like, "He was last seen in this area!" and, "Do you see anything?" and "Goddamned False Shepherd" and "I can't wait until we have his head!" Several had pistols; most carried Hotchkiss M1909s. That was going to be a problem, Booker thought sourly. Before they could catch sight of him, he unhooked himself from the scaffold and dropped lightly down behind the crates stacked around the edge of the little loading dock. Beside him was a heavy iron furnace, stacked round with barrels of coal, and it and several of the crates around it jittered red and grainy at the edges. The furnace vacillated between cold and dark, and full of burning embers, while the crates opened and shut erratically. He hmmed and looked at his hand, which glowed and shuddered in the same way. A peek into one of the unstable crates revealed stacks of jars, and when he reached for one, it righted itself into stability and he picked it up.
The liquid inside was clear, thick, and oily, and Booker nearly dropped it. He was very, very glad he hadn't, but he smiled grimly at the notion. Stepping gingerly up onto one of the crates, he took stock of the patrolling soldiers, glanced back down at the little jar, and threw it as hard as he could.
There was no fire, as there had been with the vigor's previous owner. There was just a soft sort of thwump and a huge billow of oily black smoke. Crates, shrapnel, debris, and bits of soldier erupted everywhere. Immediately there was a round of shouts, and a little boat-like flying machine rose up from the tangle of rooftops, bells ringing. Booker hurled another jar of nitroglycerin and pushed the furnace into reality, and coals sprayed out over the docks, igniting everything in their path. The turret automaton atop the flying machine exploded when the jar hit it, and this time there was fire aplenty as the little flying machine went down, alarum bells ringing frantically, its crew screaming as the flames swept over them.
Booker vaulted down onto the island, ducked down a flight of stairs, and skidded to a halt as another pair of soldiers appeared from under an iron railing. The first lost his head to the skyhook; Booker flung out his open hand and the second got a faceful of hot coals and tumbled backwards, clutching his burning face and shrieking. Booker silenced the man, bent down, and retrieved his fallen Hotchkiss, hefting it appreciatively. He'd never gotten a chance to use such a machine gun, but he'd been pitted against one before, and knew what a formidable weapon it would be. He rooted through the nearby crates for a moment, searching for ammo, and came up with several coiled magazines, a large bottle of vigor salts, and a handful of silver coins.
Satisfied, he piled his spoils into his bag, took one last furtive look around, hopped over a wooden sawhorse painted with the words 'Do Not Cross!', and headed out to explore the new island. The area he was in was predominantly residential and evidently very wealthy, all huge pale townhouses and planters overflowing with roses and hydrangeas. There was nobody around, to his utter lack of surprise; everyone had run inside, shuttered their windows and barred their doors when the docks behind their homes had begun exploding.
His path towards the railway led him to a massive mansion on a hill, its gates emblazoned with a spiked eye. There was no way around, so once again he found himself trespassing in someone else's house. The enormous and reverent statue of John Wilkes Booth in the center of the foyer made him feel significantly less guilty about doing so, as did the large number of hooded men that attacked him as soon as he made it to the upper level. He battered his way cheerfully through the huge house, leaving a trail of blue-robed, smoldering bodies in his wake. He was getting the hang of these vigor things, he thought, though he really needed to make better time: by the time he had reached the other end of the zealot house, he could look out the windows to see the sun falling low in the sky, far off over the edge of the world.
Booker pushed open one last door and then reeled back as hundreds upon hundreds of huge black birds exploded out at him, shrieking and cawing. Then they were gone, vanishing into thin air as quickly as they'd come. The hall fuzzed briefly about the edges as they disappeared. Booker stared blankly at the empty space into which they'd flown for a moment longer, and then returned his attention to the room beyond the door.
It was a greenhouse, full of twisting, stunted cypress trees hung with gold birdcages. The contents of the cages didn't look like birds, and the pale waxy spindly thing that looked suspiciously like half a hand discouraged him from investigating more closely. In the center of the room was a statue of the Lady, kneeling, her hands clasped, her blank marble eyes turned upwards towards the glass-bubbled sky. Below her, chained in cruciform between two trees, was the remnants of a man. The ugly stabs and lacerations that peppered every inch of his skin seemed a good indication as to what the rush of birds had been doing before Booker had opened the door. One of his eyes was missing; the other hung from its socket by a veiny thread. The air was full of the sound of wings.
He proceeded forwards cautiously, gripping the crank of the Hotchkiss a good deal more tightly than was strictly necessary. The flutterings intensified. A sudden shout made him start, and he spun around in time to fling coals at a vague and shadowy form that had appeared directly behind him.
But the embers sailed straight through the black haze and fizzled out on the damp grass. A moment later, another flock of birds rushed down out of thin air and coalesced into a man, hooded like the others and carrying a plated club. This time Booker was fast enough, and his avian assailant was rewarded with a shower of sticky fire. Shouting obscenities, he exploded into birds again before Booker could take a shot at him.
Never one to be deterred by the impossible, Booker began methodically scattering ash and ember throughout the grass. The next time the flock of birds appeared, the man they congealed into tripped straight into a clump of coals. His clothes ignited; he made no sound as he died, but simply dissolved into crows once more. The birds, though, shrieked with raucous panic as their feathers smoked and crumbled, until they too were nothing but cinders and, sitting on a wrought-iron table at the end of the greenhouse, a vigor, its bronze stopper in the fashion of a crow's head.
Booker picked it up. It tasted of burnt chocolate and was as cold as ice despite the heat of the greenhouse, and it filled the trees with birds. They were huge and jet-black, with pale beaks as sharp and broad as knives: rooks, then, or ravens, too big and vicious to be crows. The vigor hurled a stone into the flock and they rose in a massive cloud, storming and screaming bloody murder. They swirled around Booker in a demonic whirlwind, crowning him in glossy black and filling the air with the sound of their wings.
By the time Booker reached the Monument Island Railway, the sun had all but set, and he was exhausted. He'd fought his way more or less continuously from the House of Zealots all the way to the station, not that this was altogether terrible; he'd joined the army for a reason, and the Pinkertons for the same. But even a willing soldier has last legs, and he was coming close to his. It had been further than it looked to the Railway, nearly two miles— which was not far at all, but felt much farther when everyone he encountered was out to kill him. At one point he'd been forced to once again take refuge in someone's house, only to find its tenants eagerly describing him to a policeman, who was sketching the likeness out at an easel. It was a woefully inaccurate depiction, though closer to his appearance than the bulletins he'd been hearing; but before he could sneak back out the way he'd come, the woman had turned round, spotted him, and screamed. Her husband and the officer had been easy enough to get rid of— Booker was becoming very fond of his new corvid acquaintances— but they had left it up to him to deal with the woman. She had been crouched on all fours behind a table, but she had looked into his face at his approach with wide, tear-filled eyes.
His hand burned. You promised I would be the last, Anna's voice whispered in the back of his mind, sweetly, coldly, but he ignored it. He could feel guilty about the housewife's death when he and the girl were safely on a zeppelin back to New York. Right now, he just had to get there.
The automaton at the helm of the little gondola which sat at the station told him sternly that Monument Island was closed, and he'd have to leave before he was ticketed.
"I know," he grumbled, in the half-hearted hope that it would be capable of answering him, rather than just a dumb machine.
It wasn't, but its recorded message continued despite his interruption. "Workmen should proceed to the tower by means of the sky-line."
Booker looked up at the sweeping steel rails, and remembered the policemen all the way back at the raffle square, using their spinning hooks to sail along them through the air. Well, it was worth a shot. He brought the hooks to life experimentally, and when they pulled him forwards he took a running step and jumped up to the rail.
Instantly he was yanked forwards, the dock receding behind him at a dizzying speed. He tried not to think too hard about what would happen if the device broke, if it let go of his arm and left him hanging on his own three miles above the earth; but trying not to think about something is a notoriously good way to become relentlessly plagued by that thing, so Booker concentrated on the swiftly-nearing statue instead. This also turned out to be inadvisable; there was a round of gunfire below him and he jerked around to see the Tower's docks swarming with men, all firing up at him and shouting. Before he could get to his pistol, though, a ringing voice sounded out above them.
"Stand down!"
Immediately all the soldiers dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, hands clasped and heads bowed. Booker took a wild guess as to who the voice belonged to and groaned. Of course. It had been nothing short of naïve to think that he could actually get to the Tower without running into the Prophet himself, but he'd still hoped...
He let go of the skyhook's clamp, and the wheel clicked to a halt and slipped off the rail, dropping him to his feet in the midst of the soldiers. Not a single one looked up when he landed. They were all staring straight ahead at the cobbled ground, and many were deep in audible prayer. Booker saw one man's eyes flick to his fallen machine gun, but he did not move to pick it up. Their stillness was eerie.
Booker moved through the kneeling crowd towards the huge double doors that marked the entrance to Monument Island. They stood ajar, and he stepped through to find himself in the musty darkness of an elevator shaft. There were walkways every dozen feet or so, circling the shaft and crowded with soldiers, all on their knees and as still as statues. Booker wondered if the Prophet had intended for the effect to be as unnerving as it was.
The lift started moving as soon as he stepped up onto it, with such sudden speed that he nearly fell. There was a huge window high in the shaft, and through this Booker found himself staring into the Prophet's face. At first he thought it a recording, spilling onto canvas from unseen projector, but as he drew even with it, it spoke to him.
"I know why you've come, False Shepherd."
Booker scowled at him. "What do you want?"
Comstock laughed, the sound tinny and distorted, as if produced by something mechanical. "Me?What about you? You've come to take my lamb from me, and for what? To repay a debt?"
Booker liked the man's mocking tone even less than he liked the notion that the Prophet knew far too much about him. He refused to believe the man could actually see the future— somebody must have set him up. Delaney or his attack dog Clancy, or even Samuels, for whatever unfathomable reason.
But then: "I know every sin that blackens your name, Booker." He spat it like a curse. "Wounded Knee, the Pinkertons. The lies, the gambling, the debts. And how could I forget— Anna." This name he said like it was holy, and Booker had wanted to kill plenty of people before, but never so dearly as he did Comstock in that moment.
I'll bet she hated you, he thought, though he would not give the other man the satisfaction of speaking, and he managed to keep his face a mask of cold indifference. If the Prophet was disappointed with this lack of reaction, he gave no sign, or perhaps he merely saw straight through Booker's feeble façade.
As soon as the lift hissed to a halt, Booker was gone, down the hallway and out of the Prophet's painful stare. He did not look back, but that distorted voice shouted from behind him: "You've come to lead my lamb astray, but thy crook is bent and thy path is twisted! Go back to the Sodom from which you came!"
On the last word, the hallway exploded. Half the building tore away beneath him and he was flung free, away from the island and out into the bottomless sky.
For one horrible moment, Booker fell through empty space, with nothing around him to delay his rapidly-approaching reentry into the world below. Then his trajectory brought him past the airship that had been the source of the blast, and somehow he managed to reach out and catch hold of one of the tacking lines that lanced down about the wings. The rope held him for only a moment before snapping, sending him tumbling down onto the outer deck.
Bruised, but thankfully no closer to becoming intimately acquainted with the ground, Booker got to his feet. Aside from the projection of the Prophet still splashed across its balloon, the airship appeared deserted. He didn't think Comstock would be all that pleased if Booker stole his ship out from under him, but at this point anything that made the former the opposite of pleased was a good thing. He still needed a way home, after all, and it was quicker than swimming.
He hurried to the cabin before the soldiers below could retrieve their weapons and begin firing upon the airship, and there he found that it was not deserted after all. A woman in one of the white cassocks stood before a rack of candles, head bowed like all the rest. Booker ignored her in favor of the airship's controls, which were unlike anything he'd ever seen. He'd driven a motorcar before, and if he really stretched his imagination, there was that deal with the train(9), but this was nothing like either of those. He had just figured out which lever he thought was the throttle when a mechanical roar made him look up. The Prophet himself came soaring by on one of the little boat-shaped flying machines, and met Booker's eyes for just a fraction of a second.
"The Lord forgives everything," he said, "but I'm just a prophet— so I don't have to. Amen."
"Amen," said the woman in the white cassock, and set herself on fire.
For those who do not know the process by which an airship such as the one Booker was currently attempting to steal is constructed, let it be known that the average fixed-frame dirigible contains anywhere from one to two hundred million gallons of hydrogen. Let it also be known that hydrogen just so happens to be one of the most flammable natural gases of common occurrence in the world.
The resulting fireball made a few casually-tossed jars of nitroglycerin look like child's play. All the windows in the cabin exploded outwards, and the airship screeched and roared and tilted and began to descend very, very quickly. The wooden hull splintered with a great and terrible shattering sound, and then split apart entirely, its back broken and its body cleaved in two.
A flash of arching metal caught Booker's eye, and without even thinking about it he scrambled to his feet and flung himself from the burning airship.
The force with which he connected to the skyline knocked all the air from his lungs, and even with the padded bracer taking the brunt of the blow, there was an excruciating crack that couldn't have been anything but his wrist breaking. But he was alive, and when he dropped, burned, bloody, and shaking, to the ground, he found himself standing at last before the great bronze angel of Monument Island.
She was so huge she blotted out the setting sun and a good three-quarters of the sky, and her base was swathed in floodlights and warning signs. Two huge padlocked gates stood between him and the entrance, but if Booker hadn't been able to get past a padlock, he would not have made it very far as a detective at all. Doing so with a broken wrist, though, was another story entirely, and he ended up using the last of his salts to melt the locks away rather than try and break or pick them. He'd stashed the skyhook and wrapped the joint tightly with a strip of linen, but it ached fiercely nonetheless, and was already turning a mottled yellow-purple.
For all the trouble he'd gone through to get here, this girl was going to have to really be something.
From all the trouble he'd gone through to get here, it seriously looked like she might.
The doors set into the base of the angel were made of heavy black iron, barred with a block of ancient wood. Rust and rot had warped the bar, and Booker had to ram it upwards with his shoulder to get it free; but the doors themselves swung inwards without a sound, and then he was inside.
The foyer of the Tower was entirely deserted and totally silent. In the center of the room was a miniature replica of the tower in gaily painted plaster, but it had been cordoned off by sawhorses painted with yellow-and-black warnings. Many of the lockers that lined the walls hung open, abandoned; most of the others had been rusted shut. Dust danced in the beams of dim sunlight and coated every surface in a thin but unbroken layer. Even the overturned chairs and the door that hung open from one hinge at the opposite end of the foyer had not been disturbed for a very long time. A faded sign in front of the angel informed Booker that there was a '56 Hour Quarantine Beyond this Point, By Order of the Prophet.' A gas mask stared sullenly up at him from the floor with shattered eye sockets, and he kicked it over as he passed, sending up a puff of dust. The silence was absolute and unsettling. He pushed past the unhinged door, and then another, this one intact, which stood closed but unlocked at the end of a short hallway.
The room into which he emerged was huge, easily five stories tall, and it was entirely filled by some sort of machine. The thing was fluted, shaped like some obscene flower: wide and petalled at the base, with bulbous stamens of blown glass, the central stalk tapering up into a rounded copper-and-glass spire that stretched forty feet into the air. Lines of lightning spread out from a copper sphere at the top of the spire to strike long metal strips embedded in the walls, and with each round of energy the entire room vibrated. Set between the conductors and into the petals of the machine were massive trumpet speakers, and through these came the sound of someone singing. Each note caused the machine to spit lightning more energetically, and sparks showered down to peter out upon the flagstones. A blackboard mounted before the device charted 'Specimen Power Level' before cutting off abruptly with a hasty 'Facility Unsafe!' that had been scrawled across the numbers in bright red chalk, and a sawhorse at the head of the chamber warned Booker, '72 Hour Quarantine Beyond This Point. Do NOT Approach the Siphon While Specimen is Being Drained.'
He had a feeling he knew who the 'Specimen' was.
"'Drained'," he repeated slowly, with a cold sort of horror. This was the Prophet's kid. What the Hell was the man doing to her? Taking the girl away from him was starting to seem a whole lot like a mercy.
He'd better get to her quickly, then. Very cautiously, Booker sidestepped around the huge machine, half-expecting to be struck by the lancing energy as soon as he drew near. But he made it unharmed to the other side, where a little round sidechamber opened out into three larger rooms. One looked like an operating chamber, with a chair in the center and sinister steel tools scattered about on the counters. There were iron restraints on the wrists and ankles of the chair. Booker left that room as quickly as he could.
The next was a darkroom, full of photographs hung out to dry. One he recognized as a larger print of the blurry picture of Elizabeth that he'd been given before he set out. The second showed her crouched in front of a door with two heavy locks: the first painted with a bird, the second with an empty cage. She was painting in another, though the easel was facing away and he could not see the subject. In the next, her bare back was to the camera as she stepped into a petticoat. Booker stared angrily up at the photographs. Not only were they watching her, which was questionable enough, but they were watching her all the time. That was a good deal too unsavory for his taste, so once again, he moved on.
The last room had only a lift and another wooden caution sign. '128 Hour Quarantine Beyond this Point. Do NOT Speak to the Specimen. By Order of Chief Scientist Lutece.'
"'Chief scientist'—?" Well, that explained how the Prophet had known he was coming, at least. Those— those goddamned ginger traitors! Of course it had been them.
Worry about that later, Booker told himself. You're almost done.
The lift took a very long time to reach its destination. It was not particularly slow— it was electrical rather than steam, the same sort they used to get to the aerodrome at the top of the Empire State Building— but nonetheless it took several minutes to come to a stop. He must be in the very top of the Tower, he thought.
The elevator let out into a little brass-lined room with a floor-to-ceiling panel in the opposite wall. There was a lever beside the panel, and a chair, and an old silvertype camera; painted onto the metal in yellow capitals were the words 'OBSERVATION ROOM A', and set into the wall to its left was a heavy valve door.
Curious, Booker pulled the lever. The panel groaned and accordioned sideways to reveal what had to be a two-way mirror, because behind it, apparently completely unaware that she was being observed, was—
Was—
No. Don't be an idiot, DeWitt, she's not her mother.
He stared straight into the young woman's face as she braided her hair in what she clearly did not know was a window into her bedroom. She looked younger than her seventeen years, but she carried herself with a grace that was distantly, achingly familiar. She was humming to herself, smiling slightly, and the longer he looked, the less she resembled the Lady who'd borne her. Even so, she had the same long, curly chocolate-black hair that spilled over her shoulders in glossy ringlets, the same pale blue eyes, same narrow shoulders, same nose— But her face was softer, rounder, her expression kinder. Her nose and cheeks were spattered with freckles. Her mother'd never had freckles...
Booker had to stop himself from slamming a fist against the glass. Don't do this to yourself, DeWitt. This is Samuels's revenge, don't give him the satisfaction, don't do it...!
Elizabeth finished tying off her plait with a blue silk ribbon and turned abruptly, darting out of the room and vanishing through an archway that led to somewhere Booker could not see. A small chime brought his attention back to reality, and to the valve door; a light had lit up on a sign beside it, which was labeled 'Specimen Location' and told him that she had just entered the parlor. He spun the wheel of the door and it hissed open, revealing a railed walkway, tucked beneath the curving brass plates of the angel itself.
The walk swept upwards and around to another valve door, which he opened to find Elizabeth standing at her easel. It had been turned since the time of its photographing, and he could see that she had rendered Paris with loving care, the Eiffel Tower outlined in bright yellow paint. She was staring at the canvas thoughtfully, and at first he assumed she was not finished with it; then the painting rippled with that static-gray fuzz he'd come to associate with the vigors.
Elizabeth did not use a vigor. She reached out and hooked her fingers into the center of the distortion, and she pulled. The ripple flung itself open, and there, in her parlor at the top of the statue of the angel, was Paris. It shone with a thousand lights of evening, brighter than New York, as lovely as Columbia, and he could hear muffled music playing through the glass. Then there was a klaxon horn and some sort of automobile— not a car, it was far too large, and garish red— came barreling down the boulevard towards them. Elizabeth cried out in alarm and yanked at the edges of the hole in the air. For a moment nothing happened, and Booker feared she would be run down, but then there was a heavy shockwave and the rip slammed shut. The girl was thrown back against the mirror, and papers and scraps of canvas blew in a whirlwind around her. The painting was gone.
Looking severely disappointed, the girl turned and again left Booker's field of view, rubbing her shoulder where it had struck the glass. The chime indicated that she had moved on to the library; he followed the walkway around to the next door, but when he spun the wheel open, he found that it led not to another observation room, but to the exterior of the statue.
If the air had been cold in Columbia, it was frigid up here, a thousand feet higher, and the wind tore at him like to snatch him up and throw him out into the void. He stood on the angel's shoulder and looked out over the edge of the world.
"Oh, shit— okay," he told himself, and his voice was lost to the roar of the wind. "You can do this." He wasn't sure he believed himself.
The walkway led up, across the angel's shoulder to a door in the side of her face. It stood open, and he made himself move achingly slowly for fear of slipping on the smooth bronze. Inside, he felt a whole lot safer, especially after he'd spun the door shut behind him. There was no observation room beyond; merely a hanging circular platform that took up what had to be nearly the entirety of the width of the angel's face, and on the other side of the platform, directly across from him, an elevator. Booker headed for it, but halfway across, the chains supporting the surface creaked and cracked, and then the floor fell out from under him, sending him tumbling down into the room below.
Elizabeth was standing on a raised stage, staring wistfully out of a window that looked as if it had been set into one of the angel's eyes, but the commotion caused by Booker's sudden entrance into her quarters made her start and whirl around. Booker bounced off the edge of the stage, grabbed for it with his uninjured hand, and managed to halt his fall; then he hauled himself up and hooked his elbows over the lip of the stage, so that he was staring straight upwards into the young lady's face.
She stared right back at him with an expression of complete shock, frozen with a leather-bound copy of the Odyssey held before her like a shield.
"Uhm," Booker said, realizing how he must look, all bruised and filthy with bloodstained clothes. "Hi."
Elizabeth shrieked and hurled Homer's opus at him.
She had very good aim. Booker tumbled backwards off the stage to land on his back on the glossy hardwood floor, winded. There was a loud thump as Principles of Theoretical Physics bounced past his head, followed by a collection of Poe; Austen's Emma collided with his stomach, knocking the remaining breath out of him with a whoof!
"Would you—" He raised his arm in time to deflect Another Ark for Another Time, its cover stamped with a colored lithograph of a half-constructed Monument Tower. "Would you stop that!"
Elizabeth froze, another book at the ready. Booker stretched a hand out to her, and she flinched. "Hey. I'm not gonna hurt you."
Her eyebrows crinkled down and she glowered at him suspiciously. "Don't come any closer." Booker held up his hands, palms out in a gesture of surrender, and did his best to look reassuring. Elizabeth's eyes narrowed further. "Who are you?"
"The name's DeWitt. I'm a friend. I've come to get you out of here."
Her eyes widened and her face went slack with delight at that. Cautiously, she lowered her book. Booker glanced at it surreptitiously: H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man. Not as efficacious a weapon as the Odyssey, perhaps, but he had to approve of her choice of literature.
"Are you real?" Elizabeth said, barely more than a whisper. Booker smiled at her, feeling oddly sad. How many people did the poor kid see on a day-to-day basis, he wondered?
"Real enough," he told her, and her smile widened. She reached out tentatively, and when he didn't move, she prodded his chest with the tips of her fingers as if verifying that he was, in fact, solid. This having been confirmed, she laughed breathlessly and let her book flutter to the floor. "I'm—"
She was cut off by a jaunty whistled tune, like something played on a penny organ. Booker looked around for the source, startled, but stopped when he saw the look on Elizabeth's face. "You— you've got to go," she said, sounding terrified.
"What? Why?"
"He's coming, you don't want to be here when he gets here! Go!" Elizabeth pushed at him hurriedly. From above came another whistling sound, but this was higher-pitched, mechanical, shrill and grating and harsh. Elizabeth turned and shouted up through the hole in her ceiling. "Just a minute, I'm getting dressed!"
"Look," Booker said, "just— I can get you out of here. Isn't that what you wanted?"
She turned to him, looking desperate and panicked. "There's no way out, trust me, I've looked—"
The noise came again, more insistently. Elizabeth glared back up at the ceiling and stamped her foot petulantly, and Booker had to stifle a snort. "Stop it! You're too impatient, that's enough!"
The answering whistle was milder, but still sounded irritated. Booker dug into his rucksack and pulled out the thaumatrope key, with the bird on one side and the cage on the other.
"What about this?"
"W-what about it?" Elizabeth wasn't looking at him; she was still staring up at the ceiling and shoving Booker backwards towards the wall. The shrilling sound had resumed and was growing louder, more rapid.
"This is the way out, isn't it?"
Now Elizabeth whirled to face him, saw the key in his hand, and snatched it away from him. "Wh— give it to me!" She twirled it around, watching the bird blur in and out of the cage. Then she held it up to a heavy door between two bookcases at the far end of the room. It was the same one she had been photographed investigating, the bird and the cage painted on its surface perfect matches to the thaumatrope key. Elizabeth ran to it, pushed the enameled bird aside, and fitted the key into the lock beneath. It turned; she did the same with the cage lock, and the door swung open just as the half-hanging disc in the ceiling fell free with a massive crash. There was another loud, prolonged shriek, and the ceiling started to crumble.
Elizabeth moaned. "Come on, we have to get out of here!" She shoved through the crack in the door, and Booker hurriedly followed, glancing behind in time to see one huge orange eye staring at him through a massive gash that had been torn through the wall.
"Down, go down," he shouted after the girl, squeezing past the heavy door as well. She didn't acknowledge him, but she ran down the walkway, back in the direction of the lift. Booker raced after her, drawing his pistol with his good hand, but before he could catch up with her the wall of the statue exploded. Huge brass claws raked the air, grabbing for him, and he stumbled backwards, cursing.
"The Hell is that thing?"
"It's his job to keep me locked up in here!" Elizabeth shouted. She had reached the valve door and was hauling ineffectually at the wheel, but she could barely get it to budge. Booker rolled under the groping claws, darted down the hall, and shouldered her aside.
"Hey!"
"Let me," he snapped, and, after a moment, "...Sorry." He got the door open and they darted into the observation room. Booker ran ahead and slammed a hand against the call button. Elizabeth was halfway to him before she noticed the two-way mirror and froze.
"That's my bedroom," she said in horror. "They were watching me?"
"Yeah," he said darkly.
She rounded on him. "Why? What do they want from me? What do they—"
With a massive, terrible screeching, the elevator shaft was torn away. A wicked, curved metal beak stabbed into the gap, retreated, was replaced by a glowing red eye. That retreated too, only to be followed by another slash of those terrible claws, but the beast could not fit into the hole it had torn.
"That way! Go! Go!" Booker shoved Elizabeth out of the way, ducked around the claws, grabbed her shoulder, and hauled her back onto the walkway.
"Where are we going?"
"Up," he panted as they ran. He didn't have much of a plan, but at least they'd be able to see their assailant from the top of the tower. The thing appeared to be able to fly; if it was hydrogen-driven, perhaps it would be vulnerable to the fiery Devil's Kiss vigor.
"What do they want from me?" Elizabeth repeated, almost a sob. "What am I?" When Booker didn't respond, she shouted again, desperately— "What am I?"
Booker didn't know. "You're the girl who's getting out of this tower," he told her, and meant it.
They ran. The metal bird-creature followed them, stabbing through the walls, ripping up the walkways, shrieking furiously, beating huge canvas wings against the sides of the statue as it tried to get to them. The tower rocked, and Elizabeth staggered and fell backwards. Booker caught her, propped her back on her feet, shoved her forwards again.
"He's tearing this place apart," she cried, stumbling as she craned her neck to stare at the beast.
"Be careful, Elizabeth!"
She rounded on him, expression unreadable. "How do you know my name?"
"This is really— not the best time—!" he gasped, leaping aside as a bronze support beam came crashing down in front of them, shearing the walkway in half. "Jump!"
Elizabeth jumped, and Booker jumped after her, and then they were running up stairs, the girl's mechanical warden still hard on their tail.
The staircase spiraled upwards to let out on the very top of the statue. There was no railing, no platform, no walkway: only the smooth, tarnished bronze, and all around them empty sky.
There was another earsplitting shriek. Booker caught a glance of the thing as it swooped around them. It was huge, the size of a small building, part bird, part bat, all metal and canvas and tubing. It came straight for them, and Booker knew he wouldn't be able to fight it. He stuck his right hand into the bracer of the skyhook, wrapped his free arm around Elizabeth's waist, and, ignoring her increasingly-panicked cries of protest, hurled them both over the edge of the statue.
The nearest skyline was nearly two hundred feet below them, and they hit it hard, sending up a shower of sparks and a massive, bone-jarring clang. Booker thought his shoulder was going to dislocate, or that the hook would give and send them falling down to the world below, but somehow it managed to support the extra weight, and then they were flying.
Elizabeth clung to him, face buried in his shirt, making muffled whimpering sounds. "We're going to die, we're going to die, we're going to die!"
"We're not gonna die, just hold on!" Booker tried to sound reassuring and failed miserably. That terrible whistling screech came again, and Elizabeth's warden reared in front of them, shearing through the skyline with the earsplitting shriek of tortured metal.
There was nothing else to grab onto; the skyline disappeared upwards before Booker could register what was happening. The rail ran out and the hook spun free, the world whirling beneath them, and Elizabeth's hand tore from his. There was water below, closer than the earth, but still too, too far, and all around them was roaring, empty air; they grabbed for each other, missed, and then plunged helplessly towards the darkness below.
1. That was absolutely awful. And he accuses us of having terrible minds(2)?
2. If he's going to start making puns on a regular basis, I think I'm going to have to agree with you, sister: this was a bad idea(3).
3. I suppose you could say it was punfortunate that you didn't realize this sooner(4).
4. That's it— I'm disowning you(5).
5. I thought you'd be proud(6).
6. No, not really.
7. This is a dreadful life philosophy that we heartily recommend against. While naming no names, we further recommend against any musicians who may or may not encourage you to behave along such lines.
8. There are several universes in which he does. It's just as amusing each time. In fact, we suggest you try it; we've been in pressing need of a laugh lately, and my sister, as you can see, has not been much help in the matter.
9. Which can't really be called 'driving' in any sense of the term, no matter how valiant the effort of imagination(10).
10. You might say the entire operation was something of a train wreck(11).
11. So help me, if I have to stop this airship...!
...
AN: Thanks for reading! As always, I live for your feedback! Let me know what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong, what you'd like to see changed, or anything else! I won't be insulted, I promise! I want to become a better writer, after all!
If you're interested, you can read about the Hotchkiss M1909 (which is the machine gun Booker would realistically have carried, and is a 30-pound monstrosity of a machine) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotchkiss_M1909
Coming up next: A Short Drop and a Sudden Stop (also known as, HOW MUCH FLUFFY SHIP TEASING CAN I PUT INTO ONE CHAPTER WHILE STILL KILLING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE). Stay tuned!