Engines of Obsession: Chapter 33

Chapter 33: Why?

The front of the store looked different, but Turner expected the inside to be about the same. He was mostly right, though some of the shelving had moved around. It was still recognizable, so he felt comfortable shutting the door behind him and turning the latch once more.

"Talk, huh? You sure do want to talk a lot for someone in the middle of a city-wide battle," Penelope replied. The automaton-girl hung up her cloak, showing mechanical craftsmanship of her body more clearly.

While Reginald was obviously a puppet, Penny was more... nuanced. She still didn't look human at all, but her shape was far more like a human, only clad in copper and with obvious joints. Her hair appeared to be thin strands of copper, mimicking red hair, but Turner doubted it was actual wire. He wondered why Anne had made her look like a teenager, but pushed that thought from his mind, unsettled at the possibilities.

Turner breathed in, gathering his courage. The mingled scents of various woods, pine and otherwise, flooded his senses. If not for the situation, it would be a comforting, homey place. But he wasn't here to feel that.

"You killed my parents." He opened bluntly. "Sixteen years ago. And my village."

Penelope climbed up on the counter to sit, allowing her to look Turner in the eye. The counter didn't creak or show any sign of protest, he noticed. She must be lighter than he thought.

The girl's tinny voice answered, "Probably. Sixteen years ago I was being chased by Vale's Sentry. I murdered a lot of villages to keep her attention."

Anger bubbled up within Turner's breast. His jaw clenched, his hand reaching for his revolver... but something in her tone gave him pause. The anger simmered. Still there, but not boiling forth, as his mind caught what the construct had just implied.

"Wait... to keep her attention?" He forced himself to take a long, deep breath. "Is that why you and Reginald were made?"

The girl of copper and brass blinked, shutters clicking over the glowing blue lenses of her eyes. That almost innocent look was deceptive, but it was her utter honesty that made Turner realize that there was much more to this than he'd thought.

Penelope shook her head. "No. We were made as some kind of experiment. We're loyal to the Lady, but she doesn't control us like the others. She's our mother, but I don't think she was trying to make children with us... despite our appearance. I think she was trying to find out why she doesn't feel things."

Her ruined hand, fingers half-melted, pointed out to the street. "You saw what happened earlier. The Lady can sometimes be careless. She also does things we don't understand, but the Hunters kept coming after her. So Reginald and I would bring them to us so the Lady could work."

Turner glanced out the window when Penny pointed, then took another look. Penelope wasn't positioned to be seen from the window, so he had a different perspective, and someone had been in the window across the street. He was sure of it.

He continued to interrogate, though.

"She sent you out to do that?" he asked. "And can you get me a spyglass so I can make sure we're clear?" His eyes darted toward the window again, trusting that Penelope, for all her childlike appearance, was sharp enough to get his meaning.

The construct girl slid off the counter and landed behind it, rummaging while she spoke. "No, we do that sort of thing ourselves. That's why I was in storage, and she only just now woke me up. Ten years ago, I was the one who killed Vale, too. I sabotaged the ship she was on, and the Middletons too. I thought I would take care of the problem for good, so I did."

She rose up and tossed a small brass cylinder to Turner. He caught it while glaring at her, but Penelope had more to say.

"The Lady didn't like that," she continued. "She didn't mind us fighting with the Hunters, but she wanted the Middletons alive. I'm not sure why. So she removed my soul and put me in storage for a decade."

Now that was interesting news to Turner. He forced his anger down, if only because the motivations of these things, and the strange woman who created them, were something even Vale had never managed to find out. Or perhaps had simply never told him.

He looked down at the small brass tube she'd tossed him. It wasn't very long, but it should suffice for looking across the street. He stepped forward, putting a long shelf full of children's toys between himself and the window, so anyone watching wouldn't see him handling the spyglass.

"I heard you just enjoy killing," Turner pointed out. "That you don't even understand it's wrong." He kept an eye on the building, waiting to see if the figure appeared again. It had definitely looked like they were watching, and this part of town should have been evacuated. Though Turner couldn't hear the sounds of battle in here, he was sure it was still ongoing.

Penelope shook her head. "That's true, I do. Something about ending a human's life gives me a tingle. But I understand it's wrong. I don't understand why, but I'm not an idiot."

She tapped her head with her good hand's index finger, making a light metallic rap. "I told you we're incomplete. We're missing parts of what you would consider human."

That gave Turner pause. Reluctantly, he bit his lip and thought about it. His arm throbbed again as he leaned on the shelf, reminding him of how dangerous it was to even be around this thing.

"Are you hoping Blakely will fix you? Is that why you're loyal?" he asked.

The glowing blue lenses stared at him, and Penny tilted her head. "No. The Lady can repair us, so it's in our best interest to keep her safe." The fake eyelids slid partly closed, as if she were narrowing her eyes.

"And no," she replied. "We're not hoping for that. Not at all. Would you permanently like to feel what it is like to be a tree? An insect? A horse? That would change who you are."

Turner glanced back at the girl for a moment, getting a better look at her face, which now looked somehow annoyed. "Uh…"

She continued. "I am incomplete in the sense that I'm not what the Lady wanted me to be. But I am still me. To change what I feel and how I feel, I would be someone else. I know that you consider me a monster, but I don't want to stop being a monster. I wouldn't be me."

Turner was pretty sure that was a bad way of looking at it, but this level of philosophical thinking wasn't what he'd been prepared for from Penelope. He'd heard similar logic from a man back in Sparston, the kind who swore taking medicine would make him someone else. But Penny wasn’t sick. She was made this way – and liked it. He wasn't ready for this debate, so he shoved that aside but for one question.

"You think Blakely is trying to fix herself though?"

As he asked that, he saw movement again. Leaning carefully out enough to raise the spyglass up, he swept it up to the window. Someone was scanning the street. He couldn't make out their features, but it looked like a short, stocky man. He had some kind of heavy box strapped to his front, bulky and strange.

"I don't know," Penelope admitted. "She used to be different, she said. Maybe she's trying to fix herself, or maybe she just wants to know what happened. She really only seems to care about advancing her skills."

Turner held up a hand for the small construct to be quiet, and to his surprised she clicked her mouth shut immediately.

"I'm pretty sure I found one of the people controlling those things," he said. "I need you to head back, very visibly, as a distraction. I'll cut up the street and across, then try to get in and capture them. We can figure out what they're doing."

Penny tilted her head. "You are willing to help me out even after I admitted to killing your parents?"

Turner set the spyglass down and glared at her. "Oh, there will be a reckoning for that. But right now, I'm more interested in stopping this battle that's destroying the city. And if I have to get you and Blakely out of the city to do it, then that's what I'll do."

He unlatched the lock on the door.

"Now get out there and put a target on your back."