“Or can confuse her with false memories.” Lucrezia clapped her hands. “That is what I would do! Little Zola may not find my memories as useful as she thinks they will be.”
This cheered her up considerably and she began humming as she cleared debris away from the tubes. Tarvek hammered at the door, which didn’t even rattle. Earlier, he had seen Lucrezia place his comrades Gilgamesh and Violetta in the adjacent tubes and they were still there, slumped and unconscious.
“This may work out nicely after all,” Lucrezia mused as she worked. She patted the glass on Tarvek’s tube as she passed. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you, that wouldn’t be fun at all.”
She sashayed over to a control box and flipped a switch. Lights slowly glimmered into existence. “Now these old mind-control devices of mine were an early effort. My beautiful wasps are ever so much easier to administer, but since you’re already there, they’ll do quite nicely.” She gazed at the row of tubes and unconsciously licked her lips. “To have Baron Wulfenbach’s son Gilgamesh and you, the nascent Storm King under my control—” she gazed down at herself and smiled “—the possibilities make me quite giddy.” Lucrezia began to chuckle, which turned into an angry squeal of surprise as she was yanked to the ground.
Lucrezia struggled, but found her ankle trapped in a grip of iron. The battered face of the vicious construct Von Pinn glared at her with furious eyes. “What the deuce are you doing?” Lucrezia screamed. “You’re supposed to be dead!”
Von Pinn grinned, a wide nasty grin full of sharp teeth. She slowly began to drag her broken body forward across Lucrezia’s legs. “Not quite,” she whispered.
“Release me this instant,” Lucrezia said imperiously. “That’s an order!”
Von Pinn hissed in amusement. The leather encasing her body creaked as she advanced. “That will no longer work, you filthy thief of souls. It was not easy, but I have found ways to break your hold on me.”
Lucrezia’s efforts to escape took on a new urgency. “Ridiculous! You cannot resist me! I made sure of that when I built you! Stop, I say!”
Von Pinn’s metal claws hooked into Lucrezia’s belt and the construct pulled herself higher. “Ah, you built this cage, but you did not build me. Have you forgotten your ‘greatest triumph’? Even trapped in this miserable flesh, I am Otilia—the Muse of Protection.” Lucrezia opened her mouth and a hand of steel and leather closed on her throat. Her eyes bulged in terror.
“No . . . ” Lucrezia choked out. “Can’t die. Too . . . important . . . ”
Von Pinn’s face drew close. She glared into Lucrezia’s eyes. Her terrible jaws snapped together in a fearsome grimace. “Then run,” she snarled.
Lucrezia shuddered once, her eyes began to lose focus and close. “Curse you,” she whispered. “I’ll be back . . . ”
She retreated.
Agatha opened her eyes and gave a strangled choke of surprise. “What? Von Pinn! Stop!”
With a smirk, Von Pinn released her grip and collapsed fully atop Agatha.
“What was that all about?” Agatha asked, as she struggled to extricate herself.
“Your mother was always a coward,” Von Pinn said dreamily. “She could never tolerate pain. You should remember that.” Her voice trailed off as she slipped into unconsciousness.
Moloch von Zinzer sat brooding. Ordinarily, he would be assisting the sparks in refurbishing the great cat-like security clank that lay stretched out on the floor. Today, however, with four different sparks crowding around the clank—arguing, jostling, and attempting to work on it all at the same time—he merely watched from a safe distance, perched on a crate that had been pushed to one side of the room.
Beside him sat Fräulein Hexalina Snaug, Doctor Mittelmind’s minion. They were sharing a small sack of raisins. Snaug was observing Moloch closely. The little mechanic had undergone a radical transformation in the last day or so.
Ever since he had been sentenced to work in Castle Heterodyne, Moloch had earned a reputation as a clueless screw-up. The general consensus was that the only reason he was still alive was because no newer prisoners had arrived to take his place in the Castle kitchens.
But that had changed ever since the Heterodyne had appeared. Something about her presence had shaken him so badly that he had undergone a startling transformation. He started handling other minions, sparks, and the Castle itself with an artless efficiently that was the envy of the other minions, and had even been noted by some of the other sparks.
Thus it was with some surprise, and no little embarrassment, that Hexalina found herself entertaining certain fantasies that had her blushing. Moloch heard a faint sigh and glanced over at her. A touch of concern appeared on his face as the girl beside him appeared slightly flushed. “You okay?”
Snaug nodded. “Just worried about . . . ” she waved her hand to encompass everything in sight. Moloch nodded. “What are you thinking so deeply about?”
“The Castle. Didn’t I once hear Professor Tiktoffen say that it was alive?”
Snaug nodded. “It’s a point of some contention amongst those sparks who dabble in artificial intelligence, but Tiktoffen said the Castle—that is, not the walls, exactly, but the part that’s, well, dead now, I guess—” she threw out her chest and waved her arms about “—exhibits many of the prerequisites that would allow us to classify it as an intelligent entity.”
Moloch snorted at the accuracy of the imitation.6 “No, I don’t mean smart. That’s obvious. I mean . . . alive. Like you or a . . . a construct.”
Hexalina paused. “Oh. I see. Well, that’s what Tiktoffen believes. He claimed it was an entirely new form of life. Why?”
Moloch slapped a stone. It shifted slightly. “Because when you kill something, it usually starts to rot.”
The two of them absorbed the implications of this, then hurried to the sparks to offer assistance.
Unfortunately, not a lot of constructive work was getting done around the mechanical cat. One of the sparks, Theopholous DuMedd, happened to glance down in time to see a small clank dragging off the micrometer he’d been using. His yell caused a modest swarm of similar small clanks to flee, all clutching tools and equipment. Theo chased them until they disappeared into a large crack in the wall, dragging their spoils behind them. With an oath, he flung his work gloves to the ground. His fury doubled when another tiny clank popped out, grabbed the gloves, and dragged them out of sight as well.
“This is not going well at all,” he snarled. “Those confounded little clanks of Agatha’s have gone out of control! They steal parts! Tools! When we repair something on this beast, they nip in and rip out something else!” He gave the clank a kick. “We’ll never get this thing moving at this rate!”
Moloch nodded and began checking the hoist controls on the makeshift lift. He stared down into the hole Agatha had blasted in the floor of the Castle and gave a resigned sigh. “Guess I’d better go get spooky girl and Wulfenbach and let them—”
“NO!” Professor Caractacus Mezzasalma drew himself up on his mechanical legs and glared. “We do not need to run to a Wulfenbach every time we have a problem! We are sparks! We can solve this!” The others nodded in agreement. “It may take years! Endless toil! The blood of thousands of minions! But our science will triumph!”