The Twisted Turbine
Chapter Seven - The Confrontation
Summary: It's the Jazz Age and someone's trying to use an artifact to kill the president. Former GI Pete Lattimer takes the case and soon finds himself caught up in a web of lies, deception and things not being entirely what they seem. Hitting the ground running, Pete, his sometimes-nemesis-sometimes-friend, and young reporter M. Bering are off to save the president.
Notes: 1920s AU set in New York City. In the true spirit of a period piece, the language and the times have to be respected, let's not flame me for use of slang and expressions considered derogatory in the present day. We cool? Cool.
Chapter Notes:
- Pete mentions the Christmas Truce more information here, which was an armistice that took place on Christmas Eve in 1914.
-Huns are a slang term for Germans.
-Cheaters are slang for glasses.
-A bum's rush is a violent ejection from an establishment (usually a bar).
-Jack Dempsy was a famous heavyweight from the 1920s who rarely lost and had a reputation of being a fantastic boxer.
Story talks about PTSD, the effects of it, Trench Warfare, chain smoking, alcoholism, and well, it was the 20s, errybody had issues and it was all glamor and glory and hidden lives. Also lesbian sexual tension abounds.
Beta'ed (and egged on) by spockette, this is all her fault.
Pete's hand shook as he raised his gun level with the man before him. Steam was billowing out from the machine beside them, cloaking them both in a fog that would make getting this shot off very challenging. He wasn't that great a shot with a pistol anyway.
What the man had said, or rather implied stuck with Pete, like a persistent wound that refused to heal. The implication was strange, foreign to him. How could this have been all a set up? It was bull, there was no way that Arthur Weisfelt would steer them directly into the lion's den. He trusted the man more than that, he had to. Arthur Weisfelt had never steered him wrong before now.
"You're MacPherson," He said, eyes never leaving the man's unshaven face and deep sunken eyes. Their lanterns were not enough to illuminate the man further, and the shadows that they cast played across his face and gave him the skull-like look of a man far older and more emaciated than he obviously was.
The man – MacPherson - nodded his agreement. He kept his hands steady, shirt sleeves clasped and rolled back in the manner of a newspaper man, and the protective sleeves coming up to his elbows that were stained with grease and coal and oil. Pete had seen men like this before. Builders and creators, they moved through life quickly, from one project to the next, erecting skyscrapers and monuments that were a testament to their ingenuity.
This machine, however, was not a testament but a horror that demonstrated everything that was bad and wrong with the technology that the war had wrested upon society. Pete could see the steam rising, curling around MacPherson's head. It looked so much like gas that his hand dropped to his belt as he sucked in a long breath of air. He had twenty seconds. Where was his mask? He looked up, terrified, to see MacPherson gazing at him impassively, "And you are the ones who are going to attempt to ruin me." He glanced up at his machine, and then leveled his gaze back on Pete. There was a hard edge to his nonchalant tone, as he reached into his waistcoat for a pocket watch and checked the time before resolutely stating, "The plan must be realized, it cannot stay here."
"What can't?" Pete didn't know where Ms. Bering or HG were, where Claudia had run off to carrying her socket wrench with a determined look on her face. All he could see was the steam and think of the gas and how he had to find a mask because maybe then his hands would stop shaking and he might be able to relax into his role as the man with the gun. He was in control; he was the one who could dictate how this encounter was going to go. MacPherson had made no move for a weapon, Pete wasn't even sure if he had one. "Why kill the president at all?"
That was the crux of the issue. Pete's hands were shaking and he couldn't help himself thinking how this was no better than all those times during the war when the boys across the way didn't know why they were all killing each other mindlessly. He had been there when they'd stopped firing at each other on Christmas that first year, it had been wonderful, meeting the faces of those huns and seeing just how the war had affected each and every one of them.
HG pretended it didn't bother her, pretended that the death and the horrible way her military career had ended didn't bother her, but Pete could see the wound festering. Burning into a deep resentment of her homeland and her father and the major who had dismissed her claims of an ambush in No Man's Land as bull. Pete had been there, gun held ready at HG's head, as a good soldier should do when his best friend is accused of treason. Son, the major had said, I don't care what sort of horse shit excuse you have for losing that package. Hell, you could have even given it to the enemy for all we know. That won't stand here, you've got to go. I've called the MP, they'll collect you in the morning.
They'd left under cover of darkness that night and had never looked back. Pete knew a colored boy who worked in the radio office who had managed to nick some discharge papers that Pete had borrowed his neighbor's typewriter to fill out when they'd settled in New York. It was safer then, to just assume that both of them had died during the war. Easier too.
MacPherson's voice jerked him out of the cloud that settled over his mind and Pete shook his head violently to dispel the image of the pair of them sitting in HG's tiny rented room. This wasn't the time; he couldn't experience it again now. The war was three years gone, he had to get over it. He bit his tongue, the pain bringing him back into reality enough to focus on MacPherson and his gaunt cheekbones and his rambling voice.
"Don't you see?" MacPherson said, gesturing up towards the turbine atop the machine. It was spinning as if caught in an invisible wind, sparks of energy flickering around it. Pete had never seen anything like it in his life, and his breath caught just looking at it. It was something out of HG's imagination, that was for sure. "It cannot be here! It belongs in England, this country is still too new to house such a treasure!" MacPherson's hand clenched into a fist and he slammed it against the side of the machine, the hollow sound of bone hitting metal ringing through the room, "I intend to prove it so."
Pete blinked, cupping his right hand with his left to hold his gun steadier than it was. He did not want to betray the fact that his hands were shaking, badly. He couldn't get that to stop, but at least chewing on his tongue like a cow chewed on cud was keeping him grounded in reality.
He had no idea what MacPherson was talking about, and judging from the quick glance that he'd been able to spare towards the work bench, HG looked as confused as he felt. "What?" He demanded, "What sort of baloney are you talking about?"
"The Warehouse!" MacPherson glanced between the pair of them, his face falling from slightly mad to confused, "Did Arthur really tell you nothing?"
"What Warehouse?" This was turning stupid. MacPherson still intended to kill the president, that much was evidenced by his refusal to surrender and the fact that he kept glancing around (as Pete did) probably wondering where Ms. Bering had gotten to. Pete was grateful that she had taken Claudia and that the two of them had hidden somewhere. Confrontations at gunpoint were far more of Pete's thing, anyway.
The worst part of all this was that Pete was pretty sure that he knew what MacPherson was talking about. They'd heard whisperings about it – it was what Ms. Bering had pointed out before they had come down here. That there was something fishy about the whole case thus far. All the pieces had fallen into place so easily that Pete wondered if they weren't being lead to an inevitable conclusion.
At least the man was guilty and that at least was obvious.
He glanced over to HG. In the half-light Pete could see that her eyes were narrowed and her lips were pursed in the way that she did when thinking very hard and very quickly about something. Henrietta…, Pete thought, thinking of their first encounter with Mrs. Frederic, the colored woman who knew far more about things that did more than their intended purpose than she was letting on. She had taken the compact that had driven the poor girl mad and had vanished off into the night with it, saying that it would be stored somewhere.
A warehouse or something like it would fit the bill for something like that.
HG shook her head slightly and Pete could tell that she was lying in the way that she said, rather quickly, "Haven't the faintest…"
MacPherson opened and closed his mouth several times in quick succession. His neck swiveled around violently at every small sound alien to this large chamber. The machine rattled ominously and the sparks that crackled around the turbine seemed to be growing more and more violent with every passing minute. Pete knew they had to disable it, and fast too. He really, really did not want to pump MacPherson full of lead to accomplish that task, however.
There was a quiet gust of wind and the door that they had originally come through rattled on its hinges before MacPherson finally spluttered, "Do you mean to tell me that you are not agents of the new Warehouse?" He threw up his hands, as if in surrender and Pete slowly started to lower his gun. He had cuffs in his pocket, thankfully he'd remembered them (he usually didn't as private dicks like him generally didn't need to be doing the bull's work for them. He'd get a bum's rush if he ever showed up with a criminal down at the local precinct anyway, it wasn't worth the effort.)
MacPherson's hands moved so quickly that in the dim light, Pete could barely track their movement. He pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket, and leveled it at Pete. His eyes were hard and angry when he demanded, "What was Arthur thinking sending civilians after me?"
Pete had never seen a gun like the one MacPherson was holding them at now. It was topped with a coil of wire not unlike the coils of wire that still dotted parts of the city as part of the fall out of the intellectual war between Tesla and Edison. Pete wondered if it was modeled after Tesla's design principles and where the bullets were kept as he stepped slowly backwards, never lowering his gun. HG, he could see out of the corner of his eye, had drawn her weapon as well and was standing cat-corner to Pete, covering him in case MacPherson chose to shoot at him… with whatever that gun shot.
He hoped it wasn't a ray gun. HG had made those up and the sounded like they hurt.
A woman's voice that did not belong to Claudia or Ms. Bering (and certainly not HG) rang out in the sudden hush that came as the machine quieted to a dull roar. "James." Out of the steam and the shadows stepped the tall and elegantly dressed form of the woman who had so ruined HG's life. Frederic, with her cheaters and her beehive of hair coiled tightly around her skull. She stood in the half light, watching as the standoff continued like something out of a western, and folded her arms across her chest. "This is their trial run," she said, her voice like crack of a very scary whip.
HG spun then, taking her gun away from MacPherson – Pete opened his mouth in protest – and leveled it on the newcomer, "You," she growled, her lip curling upwards. Her face looked almost maniacal in the dim light.
What was more interesting to Pete was the fact that HG's reaction was almost exactly the same as MacPherson's. He glanced from HG to Frederic and back again, the hand on his strange gun with the Tesla coil topping it shaking. "What …" he began, but Frederic cut him off.
He swallowed, trying not to look afraid, trying not to flash back again. He couldn't do it again. It wasn't worth it, he couldn't slip up, not now.
Frederic folded her arms across her chest, "You would do well to stop this, MacPherson. I would hate to have any more innocent blood end up on your hands."
Pete glanced from MacPherson to Frederic and back again, before turning his attention back the machine. The rumbling noises it had been making before had quelled to almost dead silence, and when he squinted in the half light, he could see the red-headed form of Claudia Donovan hanging off of the scaffolding that was still attached to the upper parts of the machine, pulling nuts and bolts out of it as quickly as she could unscrew them.
He smirked, seeing the curly haired form of Ms. Bering couching beside Claudia, taking what she unscrewed and tucking it into the tool bag as quietly as possible.
Pete lunged forward and tackled the man. He couldn't stop it any more, they had to disable the turbine, and HG was obviously distracted. He couldn't leave Ms. Bering and Claudia unguarded when MacPherson was in the possession of a weapon – no matter how futuristic it looked.
They fell to the ground, Pete spinning his body and tossing his gun away as he moved to pin MacPherson to the ground in a move he'd learned wrestling the Irish boys who lived near Mrs. Donovan's home in Brooklyn. He struggled, twisting his body around the flailing MacPherson, shouting for HG to back him up.
HG didn't move, her eyes watching MacPherson as his hand reaching forward, grabbing at Pete's gun, spinning Pete onto his back. The breath was knocked from his chest, and Pete found himself seizing for air, gasping for it as he tried to right himself.
MacPherson leveled the gun at the turbine itself, and Pete could barely make out the body of Ms. Bering perched over it, holding a socket wrench, trying to remove it. He fired, and Ms. Bering fell.
He couldn't breathe, his chest was seizing. He had to get the gun away from MacPherson.
What Pete saw and heard next could only be described as the stuff of nightmares. Claudia lunged forward and grabbed Ms. Bering's arm and pulled her back onto the scaffolding before she could fall to what would surely be a terrible end on the hard packed dirt of this room. MacPherson was struggling back to his feet, shirt torn and stained with the dirt that Pete could feel seeping into his own clothing.
"I won't let you," He hissed over Pete's gasping breaths. He couldn't air into his lungs, he couldn't breathe. He brought the gun level with Frederic, but he never finished his thought. HG was suddenly behind him, her fist connecting with his jaw.
MacPherson fell to the floor and HG was on him as Pete finally managed to roll off of his back, coughing and spluttering, the wind finally back in his lungs. He crawled forward, wrestling the gun out of MacPherson's hand as HG's fist connected with his face once more. She raised her fist to swing once more and Pete was content to let her beat the man to a pulp. He'd shot Ms. Bering after all. Pete could understand HG's anger at an affront like that.
HG's fist rose up and suddenly stopped, seemingly frozen in place. Pete turned, seeing Frederic holding what looked like a riding crop tightly between both of her fists. She was twisting it and Pete could see sparks of energy similar to the ones shooting off of the turbine crackling around her fists. "Ms. Wells!" she exclaimed, her tone that of someone scolding a child. "Control your temper."
Pete pocketed his gun and moved to the ladder leaning against the side of the machine. His breath was still coming in shallow pants, but it was easier now. Claudia was already moving towards him, helping Ms. Bering navigate down the ladder towards Pete.
"You alright?" he asked, putting his hand on the small of her back and having it come away wet with blood.
She nodded at him weakly and Pete pulled off his jacket pressing it to the place where the bullet had grazed Ms. Bering's shoulder. He led her over to where HG was still sitting, restrained by whatever magic Frederic had been able to pull from nowhere, and settled Ms. Bering down on the floor there.
His cuffs were out and on MacPherson in a flash and suddenly HG could move once again. Pete watched as she moved to Ms. Bering's side, their foreheads pressing together and their lips moving in quiet assurances that they were, indeed both alright.
"What was that?" Pete demanded pushing MacPherson's bleeding body onto its side so that if he vomited upon recovering from the knock-out punch (it rivaled Jack Dempsey's) HG had leveled on his face, he wouldn't choke.
Frederic just shrugged, the riding crop had already vanished back into the folds of her clothing as she turned her gaze back up to the top of the machine.
Claudia was like an ape, shimmying across the scaffolding, the turbine now successfully removed and the machine itself rattling ominously as Claudia hurried from it. She jumped down from the lowest platform, coveralls hanging loosely around her as she raised the turbine over her head and Pete nodded his agreement that destroying it was probably the best option.
There was a moment then, when all of their eyes were trained on the wind turbine in Claudia's hands as she held it there, preparing to hurl it down to the ground with as much force as she could muster. Pete felt his breath catch as she began to move once again, her body twisting almost inhumanly slowly before a curt comment cut her short, "Do not destroy it."
They turned as one, Claudia pulling the turbine close to her chest then, as Pete blinked at Mrs. Frederic. He wanted to demand to know what she was doing here, what the blazes the Warehouse was, what she had done to HG to make her stop moving like that, but Claudia asked the question first, "What?" She demanded, her eyes hard and questioning. "Why shouldn't we destroy it, it kills people."
From deep within her jacket, Frederic produced a cloth bag. Stepping over MacPherson's prone body, she held it out to Claudia, who hesitantly dropped the turbine into the bag. "We do not destroy objects such as these." Frederic explained, knotting the bag closed, "We lock them away for all time, until the world is ready to handle their existence." She glanced down at MacPherson, her lip curling upwards in contempt. "That is what the Warehouse does."
"But…" Claudia began.
Frederic held up her hand, "No buts, Ms. Donovan." She turned to Pete, "Come now, we must get your friend to a hospital."
x
Her arm ached upon waking, and Myka blinked several times before she finally managed to fully expel the sleep from her eyes. Her entire left side ached, and Myka could feel the bandage wrapped tightly around her upper body, holding her left arm immobile. She had been shot, yes. When she had climbed to the top of James MacPherson's machine and had attempted to unscrew the wind turbine from it. She'd had it mostly done when she'd fallen, white hot pain like a knife slicing through her arm.
Claudia Donovan, Pete's landlady's niece, had caught her and had pulled her back into the scaffolding that was still erected around parts of the machine. It had hurt so much. Myka didn't remember much of what had happened after that.
"Hey Bunny," Myka turned then, eyes fluttering in the bright light of the large window next to her bed. Sam was sitting on a folding chair that had obviously been dragged in from somewhere else in the hospital. Stark white curtains were drawn behind him and Myka smiled up at him sleepily. Her mind was still a bit hazy with the pain, but the dully throb of the wound was bringing her back to reality quickly. "Glad to see you're up and about."
She smiled weakly at him, "I wasn't planning on getting shot in the name of The Star." Her voice sounded hoarse and disused and Myka wondered how long she'd been asleep.
Sam reached across the distance between them, cigarette hanging from his lips, and squeezed her hand. It was a strange feeling, to take comfort from someone who had, until very recently, been something of a sore subject for Myka. Their split had been amicable, he was her managing editor, after all. She had missed him though, all easy smiles and the ability to make her feel a lot better about the fact that she'd gotten shot in the name of a story that probably would get squashed by Harding's people before it ever saw the light of day, let alone a follow-up piece or two.
"You gave me quite a scare," Sam said, sitting back in the folding chair and taking a long pull from his cigarette. "I need you to dictate that story to a girl or type it yourself as soon as you're outta here. The owner wants to run it for the Friday morning presser."
She was tired, her body hurt, but she understood the opportunity that she was being presented with. Men wrote the Friday pressers, especially the Friday morning ones. To be offered such an opportunity as a woman just five years removed from reporting for her college's newspaper, Myka understood that the story had to be perfect. "We'll dominate the news cycle all weekend."
"The Times won't know what hit 'er," Sam grinned. He stubbed out his cigarette on the ash tray beside Myka's bed and stood. "I can't stay much longer, bunny, but I hope you knock it outta the park."
"Thursday afternoon," Myka promised him as he pulled on his jacket and plucked his hat from the rack by the door. "No later than the five o'clock preps."
He waved his hand at her and vanished from the room.
Myka settled back on the pillows of her bed, turning as best as her bandaged form could muster to adjust them to prop her up as she picked up the copy of The Star that Sam had left on his folding chair. She flipped it open and checked the byline on the masthead. She had been out for a day, it was now Tuesday and she had two days to recover enough to get down to the newsroom and dictate her story. She could do it.
She unfolded the paper and winced, reading the headlines with interest.
"You will not be writing that story." The voice cut through the silence of the room like a knife and Myka gasped as her body flinched involuntary, injured arm jerking back into her body. She could feel her stitches pull and she lowered the paper onto her lap with a fresh surge of pain and found herself face to face with the bespectacled form of what had to be the same woman from the sewers.
"I'm sorry, what?" She did not want to appear rude, but she did not know who this woman was from Adam. She had appeared in the sewers and Helena seemed to know her. She'd done something to Helena, Myka had seen that even as her mind was delirious with pain. It hadn't been hard to miss, and the fact that she'd done it in the first place made Myka angrier than she had felt in a long time.
Frederic moved to stand at the foot of Myka's bed, her hair done up in it's strange style and her face contorted into a knowing smirk that made her look like the devil her people had once been. She bridged her fingers and looked pensive as Myka blinked up at her, trying to glen information from the woman's impassive expression. "You found out about this plot quite on purpose, Ms. Bering. This was a trial run. The Warehouse that Mr. MacPherson mentioned is in need of a few good agents, and you fit the bill nicely."
She… was going to have to process this. Myka folded up the newspaper, taking the time to slowly digest the information that the woman had presented her with. She had thought the whole thing suspicious, the information had come too easily and they'd been able to move from point to point within the investigation with far more ease than Myka was used to in her professional work. She hadn't thought anything of it until MacPherson's machine had just so happened to be conveniently located in a hidden underground room somewhere near Bryant Park.
All the pieces had fallen into place too easily, and given how close a relationship that Pete had with Mr. Weisfelt – who had to be in on this as well, Myka reasoned – it only made sense that they were being checked for a greater purpose.
Disbelief seemed the best face to put on, however, so she screwed up her face in confusion. "What?" she demanded, already deciding that she would write the story regardless of what this woman told her. "Who are you, anyway?"
The woman started, as though she was not aware that she had not been introduced to Myka, before her lip curled upwards into a twisted interpretation of a smile, "My name is Frederic. I am offering you a ticket to endless wonder, Ms. Bering." She pulled an envelope from her suit jacket pocket and handed it to Myka. "Will you take it?" she asked, her tone suddenly light.
Myka felt the thickness of the envelope, traced the Eye of Horus pattern that had been stamped into the paper itself. She bit her lip, wondering what was holding her back from moving on. Writing for the paper would get her nowhere in the long run, but she did want to do more with it. Frederic seemed expectant, and Myka knew she did not have much time to debate this now. "I-" she began, swallowing and wincing as her arm burned in pain. Sam would understand if she bowed out now, let getting shot 'defeat' her. Berings never gave up, her father told her, but this was different. This was moving on to something better. Something exciting and probably for more reasonable than the pennies she made on the dollar at the paper. "I think I will." She said, a finality in her tone that she was not expecting. "I want equal pay."
Frederic nodded, "I would expect no less." She stood to leave and paused, her hand resting on the door handle. "We will collect you in due time. Write your story if you must, but keep the details hazy. The public does not need to know what exactly was causing the disturbance. I will send Ms. Wells in now."
Helena. Myka sighed and set the envelope on the edge of her bed and tried to look a little bit less like she'd gotten shot by a madman.
"I heard that you'd woken up," from the doorway, Myka could see Helena standing stock still, sporting a black eye and wearing a loose sundress that did not match the normal, more masculine and tailored attire that Myka was accustomed to see her. "And I see that she's gotten to you too."
"Did she ask you?" Myka asked, her brow furrowing in confusion as Helena crossed the room and perched on the edge of her hospital bed. "I… I said yes."
"I heard," Helena whispered. She was staring off into space, not looking at Myka, her never wavering from the blank face of the curtains that were to divide the room. "This is the second time she's asked me."
"How do you figure?" Myka asked, reaching out with her good arm and pulling on the sleeve of Helena's dress, trying to get her to turn and look at her.
"When Henrietta -" Helena began, her eyes squeezing shut. "When she went mad. There was a moment when Mrs. Frederic offered me a chance to let this never happen to any other couple ever again. I – I was too upset; I couldn't stomach the idea of helping others to find their happiness when I myself had lost my own. I told her to get lost."
Myka chucked, it hurt to move so much, "I'm sure she really appreciated that."
"She thought it was brilliant," Helena rolled her eyes and starred up at the ceiling. "I should have known I wasn't done with her then."
"Do you want to be?" Myka asked quietly. "Because I… I want to see what it is she's offering me."
Helena turned and smiled at Myka. Her fingers trailed along Myka's cheek and she leaned forward, pressing her lips against Myka's temple. "With you, darling, I could do anything."
They stayed like that, their foreheads pressed together, Helena cradling Myka's injured arm for as long as the hospital staff would allow Helena to stay. She wasn't family, they explained, and Myka's father was going to be getting a car to come around and pick Myka up later that evening. Helena had to leave.
"Endless wonder," Myka promised as Helena helped her into a clean shirt and skirt.
Pete Lattimer met them at the door and had grinned at the pair of them, hands plunged deep into his pockets as he held his cigarette between his teeth. "I heard you got a ticket to endless wonder."
"What of it, Lattimer?" HG asked, a wry smile crossing her face. "Did you want to come too?"
Pete shrugged. "I'd just love some adventure in my life." He looked down, running a hand through his hair. "It helped, with things."
Myka had known that he was shell shocked, as many of the GIs who had returned from the war were. She had seen it in how he moved through the world like he was still on the battlefield, how returning to France had made him suck down cigarettes like the worst sort of smoke eater. She had seen him freeze, lost in his own memories in the sewers. If being busy and investigating strange occurrences and evil wind turbines helped him to feel less like he was going mad from all of his past trauma. Myka wanted him by her side.
Maybe he'd someday stop calling her Ms. Bering.
"Partners?" Pete had said, sticking out his hand. Myka took it with her good one and shook it. HG laid her hand on top of theirs and smiled at the pair of them.
From now on, their lives were going to be a lot more interesting. Endless wonder, Mrs. Frederic had promised them, Myka just hoped she delivered on that promise.
x
Years later, Myka Bering leans over the ruined streets of Dresden, staring out into the black night. The city below her is in shambles, burnt out and dilapidated. The firebombing made short work of this city, but it made for the creation of many artifacts that she's been dispatched to retrieve. Peter and Helena did not want to come. This place held too many memories for them, of the first time around.
Myka bends, pulling the jacket that her host has loaned her, closer to her body. It's black and white, stained with blood and sick and she doesn't care to know what else. It is warm though, and that's what she wants out of it. Nothing more. She doesn't know why her host kept it, the memories of it are clearly not worthy of reliving. There's a pink triangle emblazoned on the lapel, and that is the only reason he experienced what he did.
He is carrying on, and she is grateful for his assistance in this endeavor. They're all healing, slowly, surely. The world would surely return to normal.
END
