AMBYSSUS | Ch. 18 - The End (Patreon)

As the impact shook the building, Joey struggled to keep balance. “Is it an earthquake?” screamed Joey,

“No, I don’t think so. It sounds as if it’s coming from outside.”

They ran toward the exit of the precinct. As they left the building, they heard screams in the streets. The ground kept shaking. People all around them were yelling while pointing East. Following their gaze, they finally saw it. Blocking the sun and standing tall amidst a cloud of dust and debris was a giant metal man-like machine. From here, it seemed to be thirty or forty meters tall. It was hard to say from this distance. Joey rushed back into the precinct.

“Binoculars! Quick! Who has a pair?” he screamed furiously. One of his colleagues, whose desk was closer to the door, threw a pair toward him. Picking it up, he dashed toward the street once again. The commissioner was telling people around him not to panic while keeping an eye on the robot. Seeing the binoculars in Joey's hand, he gave him a thumbs-up.

Joey got a clearer view of the machine. It was made of latticed metal. Inside the skeleton, he recognized several gas balls similar to those aboard the Albatross. He could only tell what they were because he had seen it recently. There were also giant gears and pieces adding to the structure that were kept in motion. The giant machine had to be extremely heavy. He guessed that the gas helped to alleviate some of the colossal weight. How else would something so large and heavy move? The metal giant looked like something patched together from different machines without care for how well it looked.

“What do you see, Joey?” The commissioner ran toward Joey and asked for more information.

“Here, sir. I think we found out what the black merchant wanted to build.”

“Goodness, gracious.”

“Look at the shoulder joints, sir.”

“Cursed be that black merchant!”

In the shoulders of the machine, some pieces of the locotank could be made out if one knew the machines well enough. The compact boilers had been butchered and added to the machine.

“It’s brilliant if you think about it, sir. The only thing that the force had that could even put a dent in that thing was the tanks. By stealing them, he killed two birds with one stone.”

The massive automaton resumed its march. Boom. The city again shook as the metal behemoth took a step. Sounds of things breaking and more screams rang out in response to the stomp.

“Chief, what are we going to do? The only thing that could stop this thing is a bunch of locotanks. And they have all been stolen from us.”

“Joey, grab a horse and chase after that thing. See what it’s up to. I will try to get us some backup. I'll see if the pneumatic tubes that connect the precinct to the airport and the mayor’s office are operating. If they are, I'll deploy the Air Force. We need to bring in everyone, every cop in town, every cannon, every ship, every Zeppelin. I want this thing stopped. I don't know what the black merchant plans to do, but if this metal monster goes on a rampage and starts hurting people, this could be the biggest disaster that the city has ever seen.”

It already is, thought Joey. He didn't voice his thoughts, though. “Okay, chief.” Boom. Boom. The robot was gaining momentum and taking quicker steps. “And what do I do once I catch up with the metal man?” Joey realized that this situation was ridiculous. It all felt like a dream.

“I don’t know, Joey. Just figure out where the thing is going! I trust your judgment. I have to go back in there.” Fabius turned around and ran back to the precinct. The robot seemed to have emerged from the ground. If so, maybe some of the pneumatic tube network running through the city could have been damaged. Hopefully, it would still work.

Joey ran toward the stables of the precinct and grabbed Luna. He also went to the armory and grabbed a rifle. He wasn’t thinking. What could a rifle do against a metal giant? He was just trusting his gut. The tremors of the robot’s step seemed to be getting more distant. Joey began to gallop toward the trail of smoke and the source of the loud noises. Joey saw, with some relief, that it was moving north. His family lived south, so they wouldn’t be in any immediate danger. Where was the thing heading?

After it had traversed hundreds of meters in a few steps, the robot stopped walking. Seeing its tall silhouette through the gaps in the buildings, Joey realized that it had stopped in front of the city hall. Loud crashing noises and more screams could be heard from the distance. As Joey fearlessly galloped toward the robot and in the opposite direction of where everyone was running he finally got a good glimpse of the full body of the giant robot.

He could now gauge the robot's height more precisely. It was roughly thirty meters tall. The arms and legs seemed to have been made up out of butchered trains. In every joint was a boiler, and gears kept turning non-stop all over the machine. The robot let out a constant stream of steam and smoke that only added to the cloud of dust it was kicking up. Smelling the air, Joey noticed an unpleasant smell. The monster, Joey thought. It ran on forbidden fuels. Cursed be the black merchant.

The robot finally stopped in front of the city hall. The arms of the metal giant had punctured one of the ceilings of the emblematic building. Joey never stopped moving closer with his horse. Thankfully, Luna was well-trained and didn’t shy away from the colossal figure and the loud noises. What was that ungodly machine trying to do? The thing kept putting his hands into the building and searching around. Joey couldn’t help but think of a farmer searching around the hay to find out if the hens had laid eggs already. It finally stopped. It had found what it was looking for.

Today was a Sunday, so there should be hardly anyone inside the City Hall. Only some security guards. If they had already run away for their lives, Joey wouldn’t blame them.

He galloped past the legs of the giant and up the stairs of the city hall. He pulled out his gun and precisely shot the door lock before his horse rammed it. He was inside the building. An ominous dust cloud fogged his view, but he could hear loud mechanical noises inside. Although Joey had walked these corridors many times it was the first time he was riding a horse inside of them. For a few nonsensical moments, he found himself wondering if he was the first ever to do so.

Luna's loud neighs drew out some of the security officers who had hidden away. Seeing Joey’s uniform and shaken out of shock by the courageous figure, they slowly began to trickle after him and toward the source of the noise. Finally, they had made it to where the robot’s arms had stopped. It had broken into the vault of the city hall. It had just ripped the door of the vault off its hinges. The robot’s massive hand was resting on the floor, and people were coming in and out of it carrying bags.

Joey realized what the black merchant’s plan was. He was stealing the city’s gold reserve.

*

The black merchant oversaw the loading of the ingots onto the Colossus. He had found the biggest burliest men in the city, and they carried bag after bag onto the conveyor belts that stretched out of the Colossus’ hand. After that, they were automatically brought up into the robot and transported down to its legs. He had made the men practice run after run, not with gold, but with rocks, of course until they could load the Colossus in fifteen minutes.

The lookout gave him the signal. As he had expected, the sight of his giant creation had intimidated the law enforcement agents momentarily, but after five minutes, not seeing it move anymore, they had mustered up the courage to attack. Although most of the robot was made out of lighter latticed metal, he had gone through the care of giving the forearm armor for precisely this situation.

“Don’t stop loading the gold. I'll delay them.”

Going up to the arm, he pushed a leaver. The steam that was building up in the boilers was exhausted onto the corridor, shielding the arm from view. Then, the black merchant lit some firecrackers and threw them onto the corridor. This was more than enough to keep these monkeys busy.

Once they were robbed of their sight and started hearing explosions, one of the agents fired their gun blindly in response. Then another. Soon, a shoot out between the security officers and an inexistent opponent began.

“Continue. Do as we practiced.” He lit more firecrackers and threw them into the corridor. He kept checking the weight gauges in the robot. Every other minute or so, he threw an actual stun grenade just to make the security see he meant business. So far, it had proven enough.

After ten minutes, it was done. He had stolen over a hundred billion dollars worth of gold.

“We are out of here,” he screamed, lighting up all the firecrackers he had left and throwing two stun grenades. He boarded the hand once again, followed by his platoon of exhausted grunts. Inside the Colossus’ pilot cabin, situated in one of the robot’s hips, he pulled leavers again and made the robot move.

The added weight of the hundreds of tons of gold was too much for it to start moving. He needed to drop some ballast. He pushed a lever to his right, and both arms of the Colossus were discarded, causing a loud crashing noise as it hit the ground. Now armless but lighter, he directed the robot toward the train tracks he had prepared.

The mechanical noise of the robot deafened him to everything around him. He couldn’t hear the children scream, the houses collapsing, or see the tremors he was causing in the city. It wouldn’t take long for him to make it back safely into the sewers and save his daughter. A gauge to his left spiked. He clicked his tongue in annoyance. They had figured it out. Another gauge again spiked. He had to hurry. They were targeting the helium balloons inside of the metal skeleton to make the robot become heavier and be forced to a halt.

The robot was being showered by bullets from marksmen stationed on the roofs and in hot air balloons and zeppelins that now hovered in the vicinity of the Colossus. Ever slower, the merchant finally brought the robot to the train tracks he had prepared. This was a twin set of tracks. Not needing more of the boilers to move the robot, he pulled a lever to his left and exhausted the steam of one of them. This would provide him with the smokescreen he needed for his next trick.

He carefully aligned the robot’s right leg with the tracks. He had made both the tracks and the foot’s coupling wheels out of magnetic materials so that he could dock to it even in these difficult conditions. Nevertheless, anyone else would have failed in performing the alignment. Once the foot was properly docked, he pushed the red button in front of him. He had won.

The robot came apart, and the right leg collapsed onto the tracks. The robot’s right leg, which was carrying the gold, had turned into a train. It started moving away from the smokescreen, picking up speed. Aboard the cabin, the black merchant put on a terrified look as he tried to look like a person fleeing in panic from the disaster.

He amusedly observed as some law enforcement agents looked intrigued at the train, thinking of how it could have come out unscathed from being trampled on by the giant robot. Behind him, the authorities had found the wreckage of the Colossus, and it would take hours before they realized what he had done. By then, he would be long gone.

He had previously manned the switch stations with his men, who directed his train toward the service track of a warehouse he had bought three days earlier. He had pulled off the biggest heist in history. He had spent all of his fortune of fifty billion, bribing, buying, and paying every criminal in the city. He had used all of his connections and all of his expertise, but he had managed to win in the end.

All the grunts, thieves, and pirates waiting in the warehouse clapped their hands, rejoicing. They were all rich.

He called the triplets. They were three pirate lords that most people assumed were just one person. They were a hassle because they demanded three times as much as every other pirate lord, claiming they were three pirate lords and not just one. They were worth the price, though. Their connections ran deep, and everyone respected them.

“Hey. I want the gold on those trains by nightfall.”

“Yes, boss.”

He went to the room where he'd left his daughter. He didn’t worry that anyone would try to steal them. All the criminals had been forced to drink a potion he had prepared with the help of his poison master. They would all die by the end of the day if he didn’t give them the antidote. No one but him knew where it was. Anyone who tried to rip him off would be dead before they knew it.

Making it to the room in the warehouse where he had left his daughter, he found, as he expected, that they weren’t alone in the room. A tall man with blonde curly hair and business attire stood beside his daughter. A silver pocket watch hung from a chain on his jacket. Golden G letters were embroidered into his clothes. His eyes were closed, however, and the man seemed to be sleeping.

“Right on time. We meet again, Arssuriuss, or Finley. Whichever you prefer.”

“So this is your… puppet. I knew this man was becoming richer and richer without the help of anyone in the underworld, but I never suspected that you were sponsoring him.”

“He’sss been ussseful. He’s a man of many talentsss.”

“My win, monster. Now, heal my daughter!”

“I’m afraid you haven’t won, Arssuriusss,” saying that, the sleeping man pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and showed it to the black merchant. It was a bank statement. The balance was a hundred and three billion dollars.”

How had this monster pulled it off? Arthurius had used decades of connections and had a head start, and still, this so-called ‘new player’ had amassed this type of fortune in weeks.

“No. I won! I have a train full of gold in this warehouse! I'm the winner! You have to heal my daughter.”

“In all my yearsss of playing gamesss, thisss wasss the firssst time I tie with my opponent.”

“A tie? What do you mean by a tie?”

“I just got here. At almossst the ssame time as you, Arsssurius.”

Arthurius tried to make sense of what that meant.

“But we didn’t agree on the terms if we tied.” He didn’t like where this was going.

“True. Let’sss play another game then. First to five hundred billion winsss. I will give you a year’s headstart. Same terms as before. I will also heal your daughter. Additionally, you already know my puppet. You have an advantage.”

Hearing that his daughter could still be healed, the black merchant accepted without hesitation.

“Deal.”

“But jussst to keep you motivated… if you lossse, I will,” the voice paused, trying to think of the right word for what he wanted to do, “Unheal her again.” As the sleeping man spoke, he started snoring. The black merchant clicked his tongue. This monster had no respect for him. Whatever. If he had tied once, he could tie again. Perhaps he could even win next time.

"Very well."

Geoffrey stood up and sleepwalked away. The black merchant waited for something to happen. His daughter slowly opened her eyes. Looking up, she saw her father.

“Daddy? Is that you? Why do you look so old?”

The black merchant fell to his knees and held on to his daughter, crying like a baby. He realized he was just entertainment for whatever this vile thing was, but he didn’t mind. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for his daughter. From the moment he'd poisoned his benefactor to start his fortune, there was nothing he wouldn't do. For the sake of healing his daughter, anything was worth it.

*

The city had been turned upside down after the giant metal man incident. Cities and houses had been destroyed, and cranes and construction crews busily worked to restore the city to its former glory. It had been several days since the incident. Joey rode past the forest that separated the gate from his father's old manor. The manor had been painted just like he'd asked. Things weren't quiet, unlike the last time he'd been here. Men in lab coats carrying gear and equipment moved to and fro.

The arrival of the Science Academy emissaries had brought the Silverlake Ranch back to life. He hadn't seen Esther in a few days. Getting closer, he spotted her at the pier. As soon as she spotted him, she excused herself and ran to meet him.

“I believe congratulations are in order,” she greeted.

“Esther, good to see you.”

“Hello, constable. Or should I say, commissioner?” Fabius had resigned after the metal man incident. He said that someone had to be blamed for the disaster and that it should be him. The mayor hadn’t hesitated to accept Fabius’ resignation. But more payment had been demanded from the populace and the world governments that had seen their gold stolen from the reserve. Although Mayor Mayer tried to fight it, he was forced to step down in the end, too.

Early elections were called for, and surprisingly, Geoffrey was one of the favorite runners for the mayorship of the city hall.

“No. Please. Just call me Joey. I don’t know how to feel about the new position yet. I have to say, it isn’t something I wanted.”

“It shows Commissioner Fabius’ faith in you.” That remark made Joey smile.

“How is the research going?"

"It's very promising. We've learned a lot over the past few days. The life cycle of this creature is incredible, and its pharmaceutical properties are miraculous. We could be looking at a real blessing here. Something good enough to make it up to the city.

“That’s wonderful." In the end, they never found what had caused the lake to flood, but if there was a creature that could cure diseases, it all had to have been worth it. Right?

"Marie has asked me to invite you for dinner.”

“Are you still going to get that vacation after all?”

“Yes. I told the mayor I wouldn't accept the job if I didn't have holidays. Besides, there are no leads on the gold stolen from the reserve. It disappeared into thin air.”

“If there’s anyone who can find it, it’s you, Joey.”

“Thank you.”

“Want to come in for some tea before you leave?”

Joey looked at the house and started sweating. Just as he was about to spiral, the professor put her arm around his. “Come on. I’ll brew it for you.”

“Alright. Thank you.”

*

A few weeks later, after things calmed down, the city returned to its routine. Esther was having the breakfast she had meticulously prepared for herself, and she thought of Joey and his family. She wondered how their holiday was going. She was sure that little Molly was having the time of her life aboard the Albatross.

"Professor! Professor!" She heard someone scream. Ivan, one of her assistants, ran into her room without knocking.

"Ivan? Can’t you knock? What is the matter with you?" Her assistant looked distraught and pale. "Professor, you've got to see this."

"What?" The assistant dragged Esther out of the house and pointed toward the west. "You're hurting me. What's the matter?" As her eyes saw the horizon, she fell to her knees. "No... impossible."

A mountain range had appeared on the horizon of Lake Grassum overnight.

Ch. 17 - The Beetle

INDEX

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THE END

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