The Doomsday Vault

or drink?”

Gavin’s stomach growled at that moment. “I would. What time is it?”

“After three in the morning,” Alice said, checking a watch in her handbag. “Good heavens, no wonder I’m so hungry. I didn’t even have supper.”

“Madam!” Kemp said. “You mustn’t neglect yourself so. I will return in moments.”

“I don’t know what you’ll find in the kitchen after a year, Kemp,” Alice said doubtfully as Kemp headed toward the stairs with stiff steps.

“Tins keep.” Kemp put his foot on the bottom step. “I regret that it won’t be the best meal, but I daresay it will-code one seventeen omega. Code one seventeen omega.”

“What was that one for?” Gavin demanded.

“Sixty seconds,” boomed Edwina’s voice. “Fifty-nine. Fifty- eight.”

“Oh dear,” Kemp said. “My attempt to leave the laboratory appears to have activated a destruction code.”

Gavin gave Alice a wild look. “I thought the traps in the house were all deactivated.”

“This one must have been separated from the rest. I don’t know everything.”

“Madam,” Kemp said, “we must leave immediately.” Before either Gavin or Alice could respond, Kemp flung Alice over his shoulder and skittered up the stairs. Gavin hurried to follow with Click on his heels. At the last moment, he snatched up his fiddle and Alice’s handbag.

“Put me down, you brass idiot!” Alice shrieked. “I can walk myself.”

“Forty-one. Forty.” Kemp was moving faster than a mechanical man should have been able. “I cannot obey, Madam. My program is quite clear.”

“Twenty-two. Twenty-one.”

They were at the cellar door. The house creaked. Beams groaned like an airship in a gale, and bits of plaster fell to the floor. Terror tightened Gavin’s stomach, and his heart pounded at the back of his throat. It wasn’t enough time to get out. Something snapped with a report louder than a hundred guns, and a section of ceiling crashed to the floor.

The ground rumbled beneath Gavin’s boots as they reached the front door. Kemp smashed it open with a metal fist. Ears back and all his claws out, Click bolted through the opening, the metal making scrabbling noises on the stones.

“Twelve seconds. Eleven. Ten.”

Outdoors, they ran for it, though Kemp refused to pause long enough to put Alice on her feet. She stopped yelling, but her expression said there’d be hell to pay later. Edwina’s voice chased after them like a banshee.

“Four. Three.”

Kemp deposited Alice behind a low stone wall. Gavin dived behind it with Click, skinning his palms on dirt and gravel. They huddled there, plastered against hard rock.

“Zero.”

Gavin expected an explosion. Instead, there was a strange quiet. It rushed over them in a silent wave. This silence went beyond a simple lack of noise. This silence devoured all other sound and left behind an odd purity, as if Gavin’s soul had been scoured with sand and rinsed clean. Air rushed past him, blasting his hair. Gavin and Alice peeked over the wall just in time to see the manor house crumple inward and compress into a wrinkled mass like a schoolboy’s spitball. In less than a second it sucked into itself and vanished, all without the slightest sound.

Gavin clapped his hands and snapped his fingers, but heard no sound. He shouted at Alice, felt the tension in his throat, but heard no sound. Her mouth moved, but he heard nothing. She pointed at one ear and shook her head. For a horrible moment, Gavin was afraid he’d gone deaf. Kemp remained impassive. Then a bird called, and another, and another. A damp breeze rustled leaves in nearby trees. Kemp’s joints creaked. Gavin sighed with relief and heard the sound in his own ears. He offered Alice a hand up.

“What was that?” Gavin asked, never so relieved to hear the sound of his own voice.

But Alice was staring over the wall at the house, or the space it had occupied. The entire building, including the tower, was gone. In its place, a perfect half sphere had been carved into the ground, revealing layers of earth and stone. Gavin edged up to it and peered over the side. The bottom looked to be four or five stories down. It could have swallowed the Juniper with ease.

“Shit,” he whispered.

“Indeed, Mr. Ennock,” Alice said. Her face was pale. “I would rather not remain here. One of the locals mentioned a train station. Shall we go look for it?”

They arrived at the station more than an hour later, grubby, tired, and hungry. Gavin was used to being all three, and the two automatons weren’t bothered by physical needs, but Gavin worried about Alice. Her face grew more and more pale with every passing moment, but she refused both Gavin’s and Kemp’s repeated offers of assistance.

The train station was brightly lit to ward off plague zombies, and the schedule informed them that the next train to London would arrive in only a few minutes. Gavin and Alice sank gratefully to a bench to wait. It was nearly four in the morning, and a fair number of other people, ones with jobs in the city, were also waiting for the train so they could get to work. Kemp vanished and reappeared with their tickets and four bread rolls.

“I am sorry breakfast is so poor, Madam,” he said. “It was the best available.”

Alice handed two of the rolls to Gavin, who wolfed them down without hesitation. “Where did you get the money, Kemp?” she asked.

“Madam-previous Madam-has an account for tickets. I hope Madam will trust me about the rolls.”

Alice’s expression said that Madam didn’t, but Gavin touched her wrist, and she said nothing. The train’s arrival ended further conversation.

Gavin automatically moved toward one of the open-air boxes that made up third class, but Alice called out to him, “Mr. Ennock! Our car is over here!”

Trying to keep the awe off his face, Gavin followed Alice, Kemp, and Click into the first-class car. No other passengers were in evidence, and the two of them took up plush chairs facing each other across a carpeted floor. Gavin sank into the seat, feeling like a grubby imposter next to Alice’s cool grace.

The train jerked forward, and a bit later Kemp reappeared with a food seller wheeling a cart. Kemp folded tables down in front of Gavin and Alice, whisked a selection of bread, meat, and fruit from the cart, and set them on the tables while the dark city rushed past the windows. Alice ate immediately, but Gavin just looked down at his plate, his mouth watering at the smells of fresh bread, sausage, and boiled eggs.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Ennock?” Alice asked. “I can’t imagine you’re not hungry.”

“I’ve got no money,” he said, feeling his face flush.

“The meal is part of your ticket, sir,” Kemp put in.

So Gavin ate gratefully. It must be wonderful to be rich and the daughter of a baron. When he finished, he leaned back in the comfortable chair to close his eyes for just a moment, and then Alice was shaking him awake. The sun had just risen outside, and the train was stopped at a station.

“We’re in the city, Mr. Ennock.”

“Oh.” He yawned and got to his feet. “Uh… thanks. For rescuing me and for the food, I mean. I suppose I should be going.”

“Do you have a destination in mind?”

He shrugged. “Hyde Park, I guess. It looks like a fine day for busking.”

“What if someone tries to kidnap you again?”

“I have to play somewhere. That and flying are all I know, and no one will let me fly.”

Alice seemed to be warring with herself. At last, she said, “Come to my house, Mr. Ennock. You could meet my father.”

Gavin considered refusing. He was a street busker in dirty clothes, not someone who should meet a baron. On the other hand, the baron might reward the young man who had saved his daughter’s life. Besides, the idea of not seeing Alice again caused him a strange amount of pain. Every time he saw her disheveled hair, he wanted to reach out and stroke it back into place. Every time he saw her move, he wanted to follow after her. Every time he heard her voice, he wanted to sing along with it.