The girl squeezed back. Emily gritted her teeth. What a bloody strong grip!

As they neared their exit, a man appeared ahead of them. Mila froze, pushing Emily behind her. “Stay back.”

Emily stumbled around her. “Wait. I think I… Sam?”

“Em?”

A ragged sob caught in her throat. He had come for her, just as she knew he would. She bolted toward him. His steps quickened, closing the distance between them. She grinned like an idiot. She’d never been so happy to see him.

Sam’s grin faded as he glanced past her. He reached for her. “Get down!” he yelled as he seized her by the arms and thrust her out of the way. Emily spun into the wall, the rough stone scraping her cheek. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something lunge at Sam.

The smell should have alerted her. It was “Victoria” and she wasn’t alone. Several machines closed in on them. Mila was already fighting two. She might have needed to learn how to read, but she certainly didn’t need to learn how to fight.

Sam pulled a large hammer from his back—the kind workmen used to knock through walls. Holding it with both hands, he swung hard and fast. It connected with the Victoria automaton’s head with a sickening clanging-squish sound.

The head rolled to a spot not far from Emily’s feet. There was a little blood, but it was old and the flesh was split, the head completely caved in on one side. Gray matter leaked onto the ground. Emily was not a squeamish person—she’d performed surgeries on people— but that disembodied head lying rotten and open…the smell…

She wretched. Her stomach was empty, and the bitter taste of bile gripped her tongue. She forced herself to move. The Victoria automaton’s body still fought, even though the head was gone, presenting a horrific sight. Sam hammered at it until it fell, and then brought the weapon down hard for one final blow.

“Get out of here,” he growled at Emily, his face splattered with gore. Hoisting the hammer, he approached the oncoming machines.

He didn’t seriously expect her to leave him, did he? To leave Mila? She was made of stronger stuff than that. She had her honor, and she would not turn tail and run like a bloody coward. “I’m not leaving.”

Sam struck another automaton and pulled a small sphere from his pocket. She recognized it immediately.

“Mila!” she cried, running to the girl, who had knocked one of the machines across the cavern and was taunting another. “You have to get out of here.” At least out of the radius of that little metal ball, or her remaining automaton systems would shut down, and Emily didn’t know if that would cause irreparable damage or not.

But it was too late. Sam had already thrown the device into the fray. It beeped three times and then vrrrroosh!

Three of the ten remaining machines instantly shut down, falling limp where they stood.

Mila was not one of them. Emily’s heart gave a sharp thump. Mila was more human than machine now.

And so was that bloody doll-headed spider. A living creature with no conscience and terrible strength. It leaped on Sam with deadly grace. The lad snapped one of the creature’s limbs like a twig. The spider screamed—a high screech that felt like spikes being driven into her ears.

The ground beneath Emily’s feet began to quake. Thud. Thud. Thud. Measure. Rhythmic.

Footsteps.

Slowly, she turned her head to gaze farther down the corridor—into the dark. The footfalls became steadily louder, the ground trembling. The grinding of metal joints, beginning to rust, joined in as a shadow began to emerge from the dark.

It was huge—at least twelve feet high, the top of it just inches lower than the ceiling of the tunnel. It was solid, made of what looked to be sheets and rods of iron carefully crafted and welded together. It had been devised to build train tracks underground, and it was very much like the machine that had killed Sam.

She’d saved him once from one of these monsters; she would not lose him to one now. Emily’s fists clenched as she decided to stay and fight. A flicker of movement caught her attention and she looked down.

The Victoria automaton’s eyes were open. No, they were blinking. Blinking at exactly the same time the small light on the front of the digger flashed.

They were communicating. There were no visible connections so it had to be through the Aether. Why hadn’t the decaying automaton shut down when the sphere went off? Or was it now receiving power from the behemoth? The big machine must have been out of detonation radius—that was the only explanation. Unless…unless Garibaldi had somehow found a way to control his “children” through the Aether. Was he powerful enough to withstand the sphere’s power?

As the mechanical beast drew closer, she spied what looked like a large pickle jar in its torso. It was filled with a greenish goo that bubbled and churned. It looked just like the stuff Garibaldi “slept” in inside his tank. “Victoria” had plugged herself into that tank to communicate with the Machinist.

Was her wild suspicion correct? Was Garibaldi controlling these machines?

As if answering her question the thing’s “hands” came up, the large, serrated shovels of each half snapping together like lobster claws. The thing was headed right for Sam, which was proof that the bloody thing was in Garibaldi’s control. He knew about the attack. He knew what the sight of such a machine might do to Sam.

“Get out!” she shouted at Mila. She knew what she had to do, but this was all for nothing if the girl didn’t escape.

Mila looked bewildered. “I can’t leave you!”

“You have to! Go, now!” Emily picked up a large brick and tossed it to her. Mila coshed her opponent with it until the machine clattered to the floor. And then—with only a moment’s hesitation—she ran toward the light, toward the exit. One of the automatons followed her, but it wouldn’t get far if it went topside.

Emily turned her attention back to the digger lumbering toward Sam. Garibaldi was going to kill him; she knew this without a doubt. She didn’t think, she simply acted. It was the kind of behavior she normally chastised Sam and Finley for, but now she understood it. That bone-deep reaction to someone you love being in mortal danger.

Sam turned as she ran toward the machine. The huge spider had four of its legs wrapped around him and was attacking with the others. He was bleeding but still standing. Another machine struck the back of his knees, buckling them, taking Sam to the ground. The digger moved faster, eager to stomp him with its huge feet.

She jumped.

“Emily!” Sam’s cry echoed in the dank darkness. She didn’t even look. She couldn’t be distracted, not now. The sole of her boot came down on the digger’s thigh. She used that momentum to propel herself onto its back. Great arms swung, trying to reach her, but she flattened herself against the metal, warmed by the machine’s engine.

Her feet found the footholds maintenance workers would use to make repairs. She used these for balance as her fingers pried open the panel high in the center of the digger’s back. It was stuck hard, and she had to pull with all her strength.

The panel flew open. Emily dug her heels in and managed to keep hold of the panel door so she didn’t fall off. The digger was almost to Sam, who was trying to struggle to his feet with four automatons battering him.

The digger pivoted as Emily drove her hand into its control center. The stone wall came flying toward her as the machine sped backward. She leaped up, grabbing the digger’s head and just managed to avoid being crushed to death by wrapping her legs around the monstrosity’s head.

“Em!”

She peered around the digger as it jerked sideways toward Sam. He rose to his feet despite the amount of metal trying to drag him back down. “I’m fine!” she yelled. Quickly, she maneuvered her body into position so she could hang upside down, her feet locked around the machine’s neck as she faced its back.

Emily drove her hands into the panel. It didn’t really matter where. She could have attempted to use her abilities just by touching the external shell, but getting inside worked better, and she didn’t want to take any chances with this one since she didn’t even know if this would work.

It would work, or she’d die trying. Sam would not die today—and not any other day that she was alive to prevent it.

Her fingers wrapped around wires, were scraped raw and pinched by gears. The rough edge of the digger’s shovels tried to grab her legs, but succeeded only in ripping her trousers. Pain radiated up her thigh as the skin there tore open.

Do you really believe you can stop me, child?

Emily froze. Garibaldi?

Who else? You could join me, Miss O’Brien. Your talents are wasted with the young duke, and not even you will be able to save him from me. You know that, don’t you? I will crush him just as I’m about to crush young Samuel. I’ll destroy them all, and you can’t stop me. Not even you are strong enough to do that.

She clenched her jaw as she jostled on the thing’s back. Garibaldi was trying to distract her. “You talk too much,” she growled, then reached down inside herself and pushed.

The digger stumbled. She clamped her legs tighter so she didn’t fall off.

What are you doing?

“I reckon I’m believin’ I can stop you after all, you son of a bitch.” She gripped the internal workings all the harder and released that switch deep inside herself that held her power in check. She had no idea how strong she was, or if she could even affect this monster, but it wasn’t a machine on the verge of becoming sentient— it was just a machine being psychically controlled by a bloody madman.

It was like a wave of ice, or perhaps a jet of fire roaring up from her belly. It both froze and burned her chest and arms, erupting out of her hands with such force sparks of light danced before her eyes.

“Emily!” It was Sam. Gorgeous, stubborn Sam. He’d come for her. Emily smiled as darkness flooded her vision. She couldn’t feel anything but the cold burn in her hands. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t speak.

And then she was falling and there was nothing at all.

Mila jerked to a stop at the top of the steps, her mouth dropping open. All around her people bustled about, metallic horse hooves hitting the cobblestones as wheels clattered behind. Motor carriages zipped past puffing steam and adding their own unique sound to the cacophony that was London.

She’d never seen the city before. In fact, she had no memory of anything other than her crate and the space below.

It was beautiful. It smelled of dirt and flesh and food and horse, and there was a whiff of sewer in the air, mixed with coal dust. Even as she wrinkled her nose she breathed more of it in. How had humans managed to build such an amazing place? How did they function with so much distraction around them?

A clicking on the stairs behind her caught her attention, and she turned in time to see a tall, thin automaton coming after her. It looked like a doll with no face or hair, just smooth, tarnished metal, and a ragged slash where a human mouth would be. Gears ground and clicked at her. It was trying to talk, she realized, but hadn’t evolved enough to form words, poor thing. How did it even see her?

“Go back,” she told it. “You don’t belong up here.” It ignored her and continued its awkward ascent. What did it hope to do to her? She was stronger, surely. Sturdier.

And then she saw its hands—its curved, taloned appendages that shone in the lamplight. Those long claws could rip her open like a fish belly. How did she know how easy it was to slice open a fish?

It hardly mattered. She couldn’t just stand there and wait for the thing to take a swipe at her. Mila turned and began to run. “Automaton!” she yelled, voice rough. “There’s an automaton on the loose!”

Around her people stopped and stared. Frightened, excited voices rose up as the metal emerged from the underground. It started down the street after her, running with an odd, hobbled gait. Women screamed. Men swore. It didn’t matter that it was late at night, a crowd gathered regardless. A shrill whistle cut through the night. The police, she thought. That’s what that whistle meant.

She did not want the police, she knew this. They would want to know who she was and where she was from, and those were questions she couldn’t answer truthfully without them either locking her up or giving her to someone for study. No, the coppers couldn’t help her, but she knew someone who could.

All the knowledge she had—even that which she wasn’t aware of having—was part of her programming, both mechanical and organic. She’d been built to have certain skills and abilities, but the human tissue used to construct her flesh, organs and mind—the stuff that had sparked the growth of her soul—imparted her with much of the same knowledge as those who were now a part of her. She understood all of this without any real idea of how, and her still-developing brain couldn’t offer up any reason why except that it was all true.

She ran east and a bit south. Instinctively, she kept to back streets and alleys, those dark places where there were few people and even fewer who cared why a young woman would be running through the night in ill-fitting clothes and no shoes, at a speed that no normal human could ever reach.

It took her approximately ten minutes to reach her destination. The exact address had come to her like a picture in her mind—a memory that originally belonged to someone else—called up by the part of her brain that had once been a logic engine, storing all the information it had ever been given.

The person at this house was part of her. He meant something to one of her female genetic contributors, but he meant something to Mila as well, though he probably had no notion of it.

She jumped from the walk to the top of the steps and grabbed the knocker. The bloody thing came off in her hand, splinters of wood flying. Oops. What was she supposed to do now? Tentatively, she raised her fist and knocked—gently—on the door. It opened a few seconds later.