The Havoc Machine by Steven Harper

Sofiya’s employer want it so badly? It crossed his mind that the employer might be another clockworker, a rival, but Thad almost as quickly discarded the idea. Clockworkers didn’t work well with others. They became more and more self-centered and narcissistic as the plague progressed, and when they went into a sleepless fugue of inventing, they were singularly unpleasantto be around, which was one reason they built so many automatons—machines were the only beings that could withstand their abuse. The idea that an advanced clockworker might work so closely with normal people like Sofiya or Thad, even at a distance, seemed unlikely in the extreme. In any case, perhaps he should “accidentally” destroy the invention. Secret reasons for wanting it couldn’t be good reasons. On the other hand, he’d given his word and taken the money.
    Thad gave a mental shrug. He could decide later. First, he’d have to kill Havoc.
    As if on cue, a door in the lab below opened and a man emerged. He looked perfectly ordinary—nearing forty or so, a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, the long mustaches favored in this part of the world. His right arm was elaborately mechanical, though, and nearly twice as thick as his left. Steam even puffed from the joints. Thad wondered what surprises it contained. Havoc—Thad assumed the man was Havoc—was trailing a chain, and with it he towed into the laboratory another figure. Thad’s stomach went cold and his hand stole automatically up to his shoulder where it gripped Dante hard. The figure at the other end of the chain was a child, a boy from the look of it. He was wrapped in ragged clothing from head to foot, and a tattered scarf covered his face. Even his hands were wrapped in rags. He was shivering, and his size put him at the same age as David when he had died.
    The gut-wrenching memories threatened to drag Thad back into the past, and he fought to stay in the present as Havoc dragged the boy onto the operating table. A bear made of rage roared to life inside Thad, and he trembled with the effort of holding himself in check.Nothing else mattered now, not the machine, not the money, not Sofiya, not even Vilma and her sister Olga. Havoc would be dead before the sun rose. He looked around for a staircase so he could slip down to the main floor. Havoc bent over the boy on the operating table.
    “Bugger this,” Thad said, and leaped over the edge.

Chapter Four
    T had landed on the foot of the operating table intending to deliver a solid kick to Havoc’s face. Unfortunately, he lost his balance. Fortunately, he fell straight into Mr. Havoc. The two of them went down in a struggling bundle of arms and legs, brass and iron. Too late, Thad remembered the pistols under his coat. His anger had gotten the better of him.
    Havoc’s thick metal arm shoved hard, and Thad skidded halfway across the floor on his back. The clockworker sat up. Dante peered down at him from the operating table with his one good eye.
    “Who the hell are you?”
Havoc boomed in Lithuanian. It would have been more impressive if he hadn’t been sitting on the ground with his legs open.
“Have you come to steal my work?”
    In answer, Thad pulled the pistols from beneath his jacket and took aim.
“Olga,”
he said.
    Havoc blinked at him.
“What?”
    “Olga. She was one of the women you took from thevillage.”
    “Oh. I take a lot of women. Sometimes dogs, too. Dogs are nice. I don’t remember a woman named Olga but I do remember a dog named Sunis, but a dog wouldn’t steal my work like you are trying to do.”
    Thad fired. Havoc’s metal arm moved so fast, it blurred, and the bullet ricocheted away.
“It seems stupid to name a dog
dog,
but he wasn’t mine and he didn’t live very long. It looks like you’re trying to kill me, so it would be prudent to kill you straightaway, though I would like to know why you didn’t fall into my pit so I can fix the problem, and it would have been interesting to save your