Chapter Twenty

“Purest Bedlam”

1.

It didn’t take Annabelle long to lose Dolan in the crowd. The scene that greeted them as they fled the quartermaster was purest bedlam. Men were running about, screaming, shouting. An older, balding gent, stood in the centre of a teeming mass, reading a Bible in an outstretched hand. The acrid scent of smoke and burning gases hung in the air.

“The greenhouses!” Annabelle shouted, and Dolan bolted away before she could say more.

A fire brigade of sorts had started at Dolan’s fountain and was stretching around a corner. Where they were headed, Annabelle could only guess. If it was the green houses, as she had surmised, they were located on the uppermost part of the station, in domes above Heaven.

Dolan was gone, but soon Salt appeared at her side. He was sweating profusely, and there was soot staining his coverall. “They’ve struck again!” he cried. “It’s panic for sure, now!”

“We know for sure?” Annabelle asked. “It wasn’t something to do with the vortex?”

Salt shook his head. “The glass of Greenhouse Two has been blown out. We’ve lost all of the atmosphere there, but there’s fire and smoke pouring down out of the ducts. Something is still on fire.”

Men were pouring en masse toward the lifts that would take them down into Hell. Someone nearby was yelling for all hands to abandon ship.

“Has Mister Hague given such an order?” she asked Salt, who shook his head.

“None. We’ll get this under control soon enough, but I had better help stop this madness before it gets someone killed.” He raced off toward the lifts, shouting at the men to stand down.

2.

Annabelle returned to the air duct in the quartermaster. There would never be a better moment, she decided. The bomber had to have a lair, somewhere he could hide if searched for. She wasn’t sure how well she could traverse these passages with an injured arm, but she had to try. And if she happened to run across the bomber himself, she was prepared. She patted her pocket. Her derringer rested there. If the blackguard wanted to use a knife, she thought, she would use a firearm.

She grabbed the pry-bar she had used earlier and pulled the grate from the wall. It fell to the floor with a clank.

In a nearby crate she found a bulls-eye lantern, packed in straw. She pulled it free, cleaned it off, and filled it with oil. A box of lucifers was on Griggs’ desk, near the exit. Like many of the men, he smoked an illicit pipe of tobacco when no one was around, something clearly against station clean air regulations. She’d smelled the sweet scent when she’d arrived to work earlier.

Back at the air duct, she set the lantern inside and pushed it forward. She knelt and crawled back inside, same as before. She slid forward until she was near the lantern, used her bandaged arm to nudge it forward, and followed it. It would be slow going, but she would eventually find her way. She paused a moment and removed her father’s watch from a pocket by her breast. Barely visible in the gloom, she nevertheless felt the comfort in having it with her. She wound it tight and gave it a gentle kiss.

“You’re always with me, Father, no matter what,” she whispered.

The words were like a proof against the dark, just as it always had been. She replaced the watch in her pocket and started forward, feeling like nothing could stop her.