Page 77 of The Iron Dagger
Gideon
You’ll enjoy this,” said his father over his shoulder. He led Gideon down a long hall that opened into a massive testing chamber. Gideon often accompanied his father on these excursions to the industrial block.
He’d looked forward to them ever since he was a child. The crackle of sparks and the acrid smell of the machinery were a thrilling backdrop to his father’s explanations, and even now they filled him with nostalgia. There were times when his father would be so occupied with travel or work that Gideon would scarcely see him for weeks at a time. But upon his return, he would always make time to take Gideon along on his visits to the testing spaces. On these outings he had his father all to himself, and their shared interest in engineering was almost as warming as an embrace.
In the tall central space of the room, workers rumbled past pushing giant metal crates, researchers consulted their notes, and welders blasted fire from the tips of their fire-spurts on the seams of a gigantic tank. It appeared to be full of deep-green water. His father led him past it towards a long table scattered with equipment and a metal box. When they were several paces away, his father stopped.
“Put these on,” he said, passing Gideon a long coat, gloves, and respirator that a worker produced for them.
“What is all this for?” asked Gideon, donning the protective clothing. They were thick and deceptively heavy, as though the fabric contained a layer of liquid.
“To protect us from that,” said his father, pointing a gloved hand towards the metal box on the table.
They approached, and a researcher who was similarly dressed bowed once before stepping aside. His father lifted the lid on the heavy box and removed what looked like several lumps of glass. He passed one to Gideon, and Gideon gasped as he felt warmth seep through his thick gloves. If he had been holding it against bare skin, he feared it would burn right through his hand.
“Urasmus,” said his father. “A new material discovered in the northeast mines several months ago. The miners who found it were burned on contact, but we observed certain interesting properties with those who survived.”
“Such as?” asked Gideon, almost afraid to hear the answer. He set his piece back into the box, feeling wary.
“Several days after exposure, we observed an illness taking hold of the workers. Vomiting, bleeding, loss of hair. Some even died,” his father said, his voice coming alive. “The only material we have found that shields against it is lead.”
That explained the unusually heavy protective gear. “What do you have planned for this?”
“Come look,” said his father, showing him to a small flask of green water on the table. Distilled from the river, no doubt.
The researcher standing by began to heat a rod of the material over a blue flame, and it began to melt like wax almost instantly. A glob of it fell, sizzling, into the water, forming a shape like a teardrop. The researcher removed it from the water with metal prongs. The rounded bulb and delicate tail shone and winked in the light.
“Let’s take it outside, Willis. Show him what you showed me,” said his father, and they all moved toward the door at the far end of the chamber.
There was a sparse field of sand and rock outside of the facility, with small glassy craters peppering the ground in the distance. Willis took up a hot air lantern, set the teardrop carefully inside the paper basket, then lit the fuel ring inside.
The air was calm, and the lantern slowly drifted off into the middle of the field.
“Now watch,” said his father as he pulled Gideon down to crouch behind a pile of sand bags.
When the lantern was almost a speck in the distance, Willis took up a small gunpowder pistol, and fired one shot. The lantern seemed to take an eternity to fall.
Gideon’s breaths shuddered through the respirator, echoing loudly in his ears, and his hands were clammy within the lead-lined gloves. Some instinct told him that he did not want to see what would happen when the lantern reached the ground.
As soon as the basket jostled against the sand, a silent spark of light cut across the empty field, almost blinding in its intensity.
Gideon crouched behind the sandbags as a wave of heat washed over them for the briefest moment. Then an earth-shattering roar filled his mind and vibrated through his very bones. The lead suit seemed to anchor him to the earth, otherwise he feared he would be lifted and tossed back from the explosion like a rag doll.
The initial roar disappeared, replaced with a deafeningwhoosh,the unmistakable sound of a fireball incinerating the air.
Gideon peered over the edge of the sandbags.
A surging mass of smoke rose into the early summer sky.
Black and billowing, taller than the highest building in Perule, it continued to grow into a monstrous plume. Throughthe fire that still flickered over the sand, Gideon saw another glassy crater had formed on the surface of the plain.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said his father from beside him, though his voice seemed far away. “When treated with the distillation, a simple snap off the tail of the teardrop causes the material to explode with a million times more force than dynamite.”
“It’s extraordinary,” said Gideon, hoping his voice was not shaking as they walked back into the testing facility.
His father and his researchers had always used the water from the river to develop their weapons, but this was unlike anything Gideon had ever seen before. Of all the great and terrible inventions their laboratories had produced, this was the crown jewel.
He gazed up at the enormous tank of green water as they passed it, and his heart sank. The very idea was monstrous, but he knew his father all too well.
