And the Third Brought Fire Pt. 07

Some time before...

Standing above the cooling body of Mr. Jeremiah, Sister Zimmerman knew, with utter clarity, that she was right. She turned her gaze from him to Miss Young. The Mechanical Turk, clinging her arm to her chest, had fired several shots into the air, but at least one had been planted in Marion Nixon's back. Enterprise, the spirit that was the future of America, had collected Nixon into her arms. Behind her mask, Zimmerman snarled under her breath. She reached out, to speak.

"Wait-"

But then Enterprise was gone, streaking off at a speed no mortal could take, legs pumping.

As she fled, Zimmerman felt her scared flesh whirring and clicking - retracting and enfolding the holy fire of the Lady Trinity in lead jacketing. The weight of her lead lined robes and the weight of her flesh both had worked together to give Zimmerman the musculature it took to carry them, but she knew that they would also slow her down. She had brute strength and quick, snapping speed. Not the marathon sprint ti would take to catch up with Enterprise. And so, she considered her options, discarded some, and found the thread that would take her to where she needed to go.

She turned to Miss Young and started to stride towards her. But despite her broken arm, the Mechanical Turk had reloaded a single round into her revolver.

"That will not stop my-"

Miss Young planted the barrel to the side of her head. Her eyes, fierce behind her glasses, flashed. "Stop right there," she said, flatly.

Zimmerman stopped.

"I have read the dossier on you, Zimmerman," Miss Young said. "You are a pederast and a lesbian-"

"I have never touched a child!" Zimmerman growled.

"-and while you still cling to your faith, you have been stripped of all but your implants and robes. Furthermore..." She drew back the hammer on her revolver. "You have a weakness for pretty ladies. Now. Either, you can let me leave this place and make good on your escape. Or I can shoot myself and leave my corpse pointing directly to you. The police are coming, and every second you spend weighing the decision is another second that the cordon will catch you."

Zimmerman grunted. "For a limey bitch, you are...well, not clever. But bold. I'll give you that."

Under the cold voice and glasses, those eyes were wild and wide. Miss Young was clearly in a great deal of pain. Zimmerman wasn't sure her threat entirely worked on her...but she did weigh the options and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. She grinned behind her mask.

"I will be seeing you later, Miss Young. You and your Turks."

She stepped back, turned, then ran, her robes fluttering heavily around her.

Miss Young lowered her pistol.

And she shot Zimmerman in the back.

Zimmerman staggered, stumbled, then continued to run - darting around the corner before the second bullet pinged off the masonry.

***

Burned York's air-port was situated near it's sea-port, and both were relatively slow, laid back places. Still, Zimmerman waited until the evening had brought its darkness - and the police overhead had quieted and their searchlights had dimmed. They were still seeking her in the city, she was sure of it, but they were looking for a quite distinctive Radwalker, with robes and mask. They wouldn't be searching for a man in dungarees and a broad tunic. She knew that on close inspection her face wouldn't pass for mannish, and she knew she would need to do penance for breaking the Order's minor vows. But, well...it wasn't as if this had been her first time.

She walked towards the smallish warehouse, ducking into the side alleyway and coming upon a set of stairs that went up the building's wall to its second level. There was a door there and a bored man with a cigarette dangling between his lips. He glanced at her, then did a double take. "Wait-" he started, stepping from the door, but Zimmerman had no time to waste. She castigated the unbeliever - knuckles, hardened by years of effort into iron, drove into his belly. Air gushed from his lungs, his sinful cigarette fell to the grating. Then with a sound no louder than a sparrow fluttering under God's eyes, she drove his head into the wall. He did not die...she was fairly sure. But he did lay still as she put her hand on the knob of the door and tried it.

It was not locked.

Good.

Genevieve remained as arrogant as ever.

When she stepped into the offices of the warehouse, the faint sound of workmen shifting crates and calling out to one another was muted by walls. Instead, the nearest sound was a phonograph playing some European music that Zimmerman neither recognized nor cared about. There were two more guards, both of them in far sharper outfits. It indicated to Zimmerman that Genevieve was busy, likely with something important. No matter. She watched the guards from the shadows, considering her options. They lacked heavy weapons - only pistols, revolver - but she lacked her armoring robes. She could use her implants but...hmm...

Then the door opened and a tall, ruddy faced man emerged, his voice gruff and grumbling. "If my product," he said, in a drawling American accent that marked him from the complacent South and, thus, her enemy. "Cannot move through your people, then we have nothing more to discuss."

"If you really feel that way..." Genevieve's voice was cool and calm. "But I would say that keeping two thirds is better than keeping nothing."

The man half turned, then shook his head. Without even responding, he stormed to the door. One of the two men followed him. One guard was far more approachable. Zimmerman smiled and then moved with the same quiet she had learned in the wilderness of the great, free West. Her shoes were aided by the thick carpeting on the floor and by the guard more intent on watching his alternate leave. She got to him, then slipped past him, closing the door with a quiet click, all before he could glance her way.

Genevieve reminded Zimmerman of an elegant blade: Her cheeks were sharp, her hair cut short and tight around her head, almost man-fashion. Her wrinkles had begun to set in around the corners of her eyes, the edges of her lips. Her neck was long and slender and kissable, and her skin was the milk pale of the truly divine. Her hair had once been black, so the silver shooting through it gave her a gunmetal sheen. Zimmerman remained in the doorway, simply admiring her, as a painter admires the natural world of God.

"Yes, Burke, what-" Genevieve lifted her head. She froze, and those pale brown eyes transfixed Zimmerman. Confusion. Then recognition.

Then fury.

"You," she hissed.

Zimmerman inclined her head. "Miss Chapel," she said.

Genevieve sprang to her feet. "Guards!"

The door opened and a muffled oath came from behind Zimmerman. A gun pressed to her back.

"Miss Chapel, I only came to beg of you a favor," Zimmerman said, her hands raised.

"You?" Genevieve asked. "You came to beg of me a favor, Zimmerman?" Her teeth snarled. "After what you did?"

"God asks us all to carry burdens that-"

"You fucked my daughter!" Genevieve slammed her palms into the desk. "You fucked her! For two years at that damn convent! I sent her there to keep her safe and you dyke bitch, you fucked her!"

Zimmerman whispered. "I did protect her, too."

"Oh my-" Genevieve put her hand over her face, rubbing her palm. "Shoot her now."

"Wait, wait, wait," Zimmerman said, her voice firm. "I know that you may never forgive me - I was led astray by..." She cut off her voice just in time. She was going to explain how things were from her perspective - how Mary Chapel had been such a pure, sweet girl. At eighteen, she had been luminous, angellike. She had struck Zimmerman the instant she had arrived - awakening in her a burning fire as hot as the Trinity tests - and Zimmerman had done all she could. She had prayed, thrown herself into liturgical studies. She had even volunteered for missions beyond the convent, but every time she would come home and...Mary would fascinate her still. She had then promised, after their first time together, that she would not touch her again, only to come back again and again, addicted.

Instead, she focused on the here and now. On what might convince this dangerous woman - a woman that Zimmerman only knew through the shadows she had cast on the convent's maps, on the lips of the Sister Superior, on the face of her own daughter.

"...I was led astray by my base lusts," Zimmerman lied. "Sin and vice weigh heavy on my soul. That is why I went to the Sisterhood. But I don't come to make excuses for myself, Miss Chapel. I come to tell you of something of vital importance."

"Oh?" Genevieve asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"The police search. It was for me."

Genevieve's smile grew slowly sharper. "Was it now."

"And for a spirit," Zimmerman continued.

Genevieve's brow furrowed. That, it seemed, was not where she expected the conversation to go. She leaned forward. "What kind of spirit?"

Zimmerman knew, then, that she and her Holy Land, blessed by the Virgin and Jefferson both, had been Saved. She smiled and leaned back in her seat. Genevieve watched her through hooded eyes, her pointer fingers tapping against one another again and again. Zimmerman did notice that she had long, fashionable fingernails - save for two on her right hand, her pointer and middle finger. Her lips quirked slightly. So, it seemed...hmm..

Later. Later.

Zimmerman began from the beginning. "The Mechanical Turks hired me as an agent - being without funds and a place to stay since my Order cast me out. They needed muscle. I have plenty." She lifted an arm and flexed. Genevieve shifted in her seat, her thighs pressing together under the table. "As your organization wasn't likely to hire me after the...incident...at the Order, well, I did not have many choices. The English do not take kindly to Radwalkers."

"These Mechanical Turks, I've never heard of them," Genevieve said, frowning. "They're not a criminal organization. They're not a gentleman's club are they?" Her voice dripped into a mocking Limey accent, turning gentleman's club into an oath stronger than anything Zimmerman might have used.

"They paid well, that was all that mattered at the time," Zimmerman said. "I soon saw they were decidedly connected to the Empire, but I wasn't sure how. Then they had me and this little stripling of a technician, Marion Nixon-" That got an eyebrow twitch from the other woman "-capture a Spirit. But it was no mere...adding machine or train." She leaned forward on the armrests of her chair. Her voice grew husky. "Have you ever heard the name of Enterprise?"

Genevieve's eyebrows shot up. "The Gray Ghost?" she whispered.

Zimmerman nodded. "There with Sherman, Doolittle, Trinity herself - legends from when God's Kingdom ruled the earth, and not the sinful pagantry that is practiced in the Empire, not this...Anglican mockery that was formed to make divorce not a sin and to spit in the eye of God. They might as well be fucking Catholics!" She shook her head. "But...no. It was Enterprise. I saw it with my own eyes. Her power, she could fly, Genevieve. Fly like the Imperial Guard's own prop planes. She could see things no mortal or spirit could see - radar, Marion Nixon called it. She was like...she was..." Words failed Zimmerman as she recalled the curvaceous form of the spiritess...even calling her a spirit felt close to sacrilege. Were she strong enough to do all that, was she not closer to a Lady true? Zimmerman closed her eyes, then sagged back into her seat.

"Good god," Genevieve whispered. "Good god. Where is she? What did the Turks do-" She came up short. "The shootout in New Trafalgar Park, that was you wasn't it?"

Zimmerman opened her eyes and smirked a bit. "The Spirit moved through me, Miss Chapel. Alas, Enterprise fled - but she did not flee in the arms of our oppressors, thank God."

Genevieve tapped those fingers together again. "This changes everything," she said, softly. "I'll have my men in the Colonial Affairs board start checking on what the Imperials know..." She frowned. "But do you know where Enterprise has gone?"

"I have an inkling," Zimmerman said. "Marion Nixon was being controlled by his niece. Find her, and you find where he will be fleeing."

Genevieve frowned. "And now, I have one question. Why should I not have you shot? You've given me the information - why keep a mad dog bitch like you around?" Her lips curled as she sneered at Zimmerman. "It's not as if anyone would miss you."

Zimmerman sat in stillness. She smiled, warmly, truly. "Then I will die, Miss Chapel, having brought salvation to the Holy Land, America, to a woman most well suited to ensure the victory and freedom of God's Chosen people from the heathen British."

Genevieve snorted. She reached into the desk, then pulled out a small revolver. She aimed it directly at Zimmerman's head. Her thumb played along the revolver's hammer, her finger resting on the trigger. Zimmerman did not move.

"I always wondered...do you actually believe that bullshit you spit out?" the older woman asked. "How could you when you're dyking it up with every teenager you can get your hands on at that convent? Diddling them..." Her tongue slid along her lips slowly. "Are you a hypocrite, or are you a liar?"

"We all exist in a state of sin. Only God knows if we are in Grace - and only through her will might we find it. I can but pray that I die in such a state," Zimmerman said. But she put her hands on the armrests, and slowly stood. "However, if you are going to shoot me dead, I would prefer it be while I stand. I wouldn't wish to seem lazy for such a beautiful, dignified woman."

"The sheer fucking gall of you," Genevieve whispered, the pistol aimed at Zimmerman's chest now, rather than her head. "You're flirting with me?"

Zimmerman chuckled. "Liar and hypocrite? Mmm, maybe. But a sin I know I definitely have in abundance is vainglory. But God has not seen fit to cut me down for it yet - and so..."

Genevieve lowered her pistol, frowning. "She still writes of you, you know?"

Zimmerman managed, through great effort of will, to not smirk.

"Get out of my sight," Genevieve said, the barrel of her pistol resting on the felt green spread of her desk. "If I see you again-"

"You will praise God, for I will be here to bring wrath upon the heads of your enemies, Miss Chapel," Zimmerman said, bowing her head to the other woman. "I am sure you would not be so foolish as to turn aside my righteous fury before setting out on this field of battle."

Silence.

"Sheer fucking gall," Genevieve whispered. Then, louder. "Burke. Put this lunatic in the room farthest from everyone. Near the Trinity shrine." Burke stepped into the room behind Zimmerman, taking her arm with a frown. "She's hot."

"...hot, boss?" Burke asked.

"Radioactive," Genevieve spelled it out. Burke released Zimmerman immediately and shuffled away.

***

Zimmerman knelt in her room, head bowed, and prayed. Despite the words bandied about downstairs, she did not pray halfheartedly, nor mock God in her mind. God had brought forth Trinity by showing the divine visions to the Prophet Oppenheimer. He had spoken the holy words and his apostles had seen them made. Sainted Kenneth Bainbridge had said the words: Now, we're all sons of bitches.

And those words rang true, deep in Zimmerman's chest.

She was sinful. She was vile. She was tempted by feminine flesh. She betrayed her oaths to keep pure those under her charge. She killed. She hurt. And she still bore the blessing of Trinity - but why? Why had Christ given her this power and this burden? She didn't know.

And so, she prayed.

And like it so often did, her prayers - once finished - shifted. In her mind's eye, she could see the barrel of that revolver aimed right at her head, held by the gloriously beautiful Genevieve. She could hear her speaking: So, you fucked my daughter, hmm?

And oh...oh...oh...

Oh Zimmerman could remember the taste of Mary Chapel. She had tempted Zimmerman from the moment her autocarriage had arrived at the Convent and she had been put through her baptism and rebirth, casting aside her ties to the outer world. It was only a temporary oath, just until the danger looming over her head had passed as the daughter of the head of the American Mafia. But she took her duties seriously and been so warm. She had seen Zimmerman's scars during the communal bathing and asked her of them. She had wanted to see her implants. Zimmerman could remember those dainty, unblemished fingers, tracing the wires and circuitry of her body.

In her mind's eyes, she could see the echoes of mother and daughter - and the revolver barrel pressed to her lips. She parted them, licking the barrel.

I can blow your brains out right now...

Zimmerman groaned aloud. Her hands tightened against her thighs. The urge to reach between her legs, to find the blazing furnace of her lust and stoke it, stoke it, stoke it - she shook her head, opening her eyes. The vision scattered and she whispered. "Amen, my Lord God."

She went to bed, then laid down upon it. She could only sleep on her back, as her arm implants worried at her fiercely. She had once loved sleeping on her side. Now, she closed her eyes, clasped her palms over her belly, and closed her eyes. She breathed, slowly...and wondered: Who was Genevieve calling? She had to be using her telephones and her suborned spirits to reach out to other people. Even now, she could imagine the patchwork alliance of Americans that were made criminals in their own homes were now rushing hither and thon, preparing to-

The door opened.

Zimmerman did not rouse. She opened a single eye, to a thin slit.

A slender, willowy figure stood in the doorway, watching her. She was silhouetted by the electric light outside, though the bar of illumination fell only on Zimmerman's ankles. She reached up and the light clicked off, plunging room and doorway into shadow. Slowly, Zimmerman's eyes adapted to what thin moonlight and starlight crept in through the equally small window of the cheap, crappy room. The willowy figure was surely Genevieve. She had no pistol, at least. No knife to slit Zimmerman's throat.

Then, quietly.

"Do you know what unholy Hell you've unleashed on us all?"

Zimmerman sat up. "What is it?"

The door shut and Genevieve walked over to the bed. She thrust something crinkling into Zimmerman's chest, then yanked on the bare electric bulb the room had for light. Zimmerman winced, then read the paper she had been given. It was a short missive, sent by telegram, and had the perfect shape of a Spirit written word.

CONFIRMED DESTINATION, LONDON STOP

SIGNAL SENT ON CABLE 1 END

"Cable 1," Zimmerman said.

"That's the cable that runs to Colossus directly!" Genevieve hissed, furiously. "You stupid cow-bitch!" She grabbed onto Zimmerman's arm, shaking her. "The Mechanical Turks work for the Lady Colossus herself! They have the power of a goddamn Goddess on their side! You're lucky if we can keep our heads down!"

Zimmerman grabbed her wrist, sitting up more, glaring into those fearful, beautiful eyes. Her wrist was slender under her rough palm. Genevieve worked her will through men and machines - not with her arm. Zimmerman demonstrated. She stood and pushed Genevieve away from her, the bulb swaying overhead. Her back pressed to the wall and her arm pinned over her head - her eyes widening in shock. Zimmerman grunted. "It's been a while since you've been under a threat that can touch you, huh?" She asked.

"You idiot," Genevieve breathed. "I have two guards outside with tommy guns."