The Affinity Bridge

CHAPTER Twenty-Three





"Charles!"

Newbury burst into the office of the Chief Inspector and stumbled over to his desk, still dripping blood from the fresh wounds in his upper arms.

Bainbridge looked him up and down with an expression of dismay on his face. "Good God, man. Shouldn't you be resting? Look at the state of you. You're bleeding all over the place. Didn't the Fixer do his work?" Bainbridge stood, as if he were about to move to Newbury's aid.

Newbury, gasping for breath, staggered across the room and slumped into a Chesterfield beside the fire. "I'm fine, Charles." he wheezed, red-faced from running. "But I think I have the solution."

"What?" Bainbridge came round from behind his desk, pushing his spectacles further up his nose. "Look here, before you start any of that, what's going on with all this blood? Are you hurt?"

Newbury emitted a gasping laugh. "A little. I've just fought off two of those automaton devices in my office."

Bainbridge looked flustered. He repeated himself. "What?"

"It seems we're getting a little too close to the truth. Someone sent two automatons to my office in an attempt to assassinate me. They weren't your typical automatons, either; they had hidden blades in their fingers, and worse, human brains in their brass skulls."

Bainbridge shook his head, lowering himself into the other chair by the fire. He reached over to a small table in the corner and took a decanter and two glasses, pouring them both a large brandy. "I think, Newbury, that you'd better start at the beginning."

Newbury accepted the drink gratefully and took a long draw from the glass. He rested his head against the back of the chair. "What do you know about Pierre Villiers?"

"Only what you've told me. That he's a genius. That he was exiled from his own country for experimenting on waifs and strays. That he created the automatons for Chapman to market. Nothing more than that."

Newbury nodded. "It's that bit about experimenting on waifs and strays that is interesting me at the moment." He took the glass from Bainbridge. "What exactly was he doing? What was so bad that his own countrymen had him banished from Paris, renowned the world over as a place of free thinking and bohemian eccentricity?"

"You've lost me." Bainbridge raised his eyebrows, shaking his head.

"No, Charles. I think this has a bearing on our case. Villiers has a fascination with the inner workings of the mind. He told me he's always wanted to build the perfect automaton. What if the device he showed me in his workshop wasn't it? What if it couldn't do everything he wanted it to? Perhaps it was that drive for perfection, and his experiments on those wastrels back in Paris, which provided him with the necessary knowledge to successfully transplant a human brain into a clockwork housing. Perhaps that is his idea of the perfect automaton device?" Bainbridge looked appalled.

"I saw it with my own eyes, Charles. I cracked open their brass skulls on my office floor and saw the human organs inside. I think that's why we didn't find the pilot in the wreckage of The Lady Armitage. Chapman probably had his man Stokes remove it before anyone else got to the scene. If we'd found it there we would have taken it away for investigation, and would likely have discovered what they were up to."

Bainbridge took a swig of his drink, grimacing at the thought. "But where are they getting the organs from?"

"I can't be certain, but I suspect that's where the link to the glowing policeman murders comes in. It all makes a horrible kind of sense. They employ someone to murder paupers in the Whitechapel slums, using strangulation as the method of despatch so as not to damage the brains. Then they make an arrangement with the mortuary attendant to harvest the brains of the victims, first making sure that those victims aren't robbed, so that the attendant can pocket whatever he finds on the bodies as they come through the morgue. It's a neat arrangement, however despicable it may be."

Bainbridge went red in the face. "I knew that damn mortuary assistant was up to no good!" He glared at Newbury, obviously incensed. "So you think the reason for the airship crash is a malfunction in the bridge between the human brain and the automaton frame? Did the pilot simply lose control?"

Newbury shook his head. "I can't answer that with any certainty, although I suspect Villiers is far too clever for that to be the case. I don't think it was the interface that went wrong. I think it was the brain."

"You mean they had trouble keeping the brain alive outside of the body?"

"Not at all. Think about it, Charles. There's a plague burning its way through the Whitechapel slums. Remember what I told you about the Indian doctor? The revenant virus incubates for up to eight days in the human brain. God knows how many of those harvested organs were already infected when they were wired up to the automatons." He paused. "Judging by the manner in which Christopher Morgan's device went awry, I'd say we are dealing with something far more alarming than a simple malfunction. I think a number of those automatons are carrying the revenant plague."

"My God, they're like ticking bombs." Bainbridge shook his head. "But Newbury, they're all over the city."

"I know, Charles. I know. We'll need to enlist the entire Metropolitan police force to aid us in decommissioning the whole lot. But first we've got to tackle Chapman and Villiers. I say we get over there this morning and try to catch them on the hop. They won't yet be aware that their assassination attempt this morning was a failure."

Bainbridge nodded. "Very well." He eyed Newbury warily. "Are you sure you're fit?"

Newbury smiled. "I'm far from fit. But I'll live."



Bainbridge downed the last of his brandy. "What does Miss Hobbes make of all this?"

Newbury nearly spat his drink across the room. "Oh God, Charles. I hadn't even considered. What if they sent the automatons after her, too?" He jumped to his feet. "We need to get over there now, as fast as we can."

"Right you are." Bainbridge placed his empty glass on the table and made straight for his cane. He grabbed his coat from the stand, not even bothering to put it on as he charged out the door. "Come on. I'll get us a police carriage. We'll be there in no time."

"I pray that's time enough." The two men hurried from the room.