Hearts of Smoke and Steam by Andrew P. Mayer Page B

of the East River to free himself from his terror. But he had to know what had happened to the girl…
    It took a few seconds before he could once again draw in a decent lungful of air. As the ability to breathe returned, the terror began to pass, although he could still feel his hands shaking from the surge of adrenaline that had just passed through him.
    “C'mon, Emilio!” Viola grabbed his arm and tried to pull him further down the stairs. “We need to go!”
    Without a word, he tugged his arm free and marched back up. When he reached eye-level with the deck, he could immediately tell that things had gone very poorly for the seven would-be heroes.
    Scattered across the deck were small steel rods that stuck up like shining porcupine quills. Most of them had landed without striking anything more than pitch or wood, but that left plenty to pierce human flesh, and they had done their work with grisly efficiency. Every man who had remained on the deck was dead or dying.
    Before he could stop himself, Emilio scanned around to see if any of the women and children had been killed, but the innocents seemed to have escaped without harm. He felt blessed—if he had witnessed that kind of tragedy, he might not have been able to go on.
    Standing over the bodies of his victims was the grizzled figure who had travelled down the wire. He was dressed in a worn tweed greatcoat, with a battered old kepi cap pulled down tight on his head.
    The most striking thing about him was the machinery he wore: both his arms were encased in metal tubes. The one on his right ended in a menacing steel barb.
    The frame on his left covered the entire limb down to the hand. It ended in a circle of metal that contained a series of holes that appeared to have fired the metal quills. Strapped to his back was a complicated device that provided the power for the machinery. Emilio found himself admiring its design.
    Even though he had always been interested in the Paragons, Emilio had never seen one of New York's legendary villains in the flesh before. In the last few years there had been fairly few actual attacks—until Darby's death. And this particular villain was clearly Bomb Lance, the very man who had killed the Paragons' leader…
    “Not so fast, lad.” The Irish accent was thick, but he clearly had a far better command of English than Emilio ever would. When Emilio looked up, he saw that the villain's gleaming harpoon was aimed straight at him.
    Emilio waved a hand at him and took a step back. “I sorry. I no problem.” For once he was grateful for his poor speech. Perhaps sounding like an idiot would gain him some sympathy.
    “No problem, eh?” the man said, waving the harpoon at him. “Then what's in the bag?”
    “Here?” he said, “Is nothing. Ahhhhh…” he held onto the end of the word as long as he could, trying to use the time to not only come up with a suitable excuse, but to put it into words that the Irishman would understand. “Is my family.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Is Pica-tures.” He sent up a little prayer that his sister wasn't in earshot. If she heard the nonsense he was spouting, surviving might not be worthwhile after all.
    “Why don't you show me yer ‘pica-tures.'”
    “Isa okay then, yes? I go.” As Emilio took another step back, the man's left arm rose up and fired a single metal quill. It landed in the ground a foot in front of Emilio's feet.
    “Not okay, wop. You stay.” The sound that rose up out of the Irishman was the rasp that served him as laughter. Emilio noticed that black smoke was leaking out from the hole that had fired the metal rod. “Now let's see.”
    Emilio dropped the bag to the deck. It let out a metallic clunk. The look on the other man's face turned more serious. “That don't sound like pica-tures to me.”
    He knelt down, wondering how long he'd be able to keep playing the fool before the Irishman decided to simply shoot him and get it over with. “No. Is okay! Is box! I show