Page 44 of The Teras Trials

14

LESSON FOURTEEN

There is a scream behind me that makes me spin, and I’m met with the faces of my roommates—all of them, all of them here.

“What the hell are you doing?” I seethe. Leo is at the front of them; I see a crumpled bit of white paper in his hand. Heat and shame assault my face. It’s a little betrayal, a tiny one, but I hate it all the same.

“That’s mine,” I say.

“We heard a gunshot,” Leo says, defensively. The paper crumples in his hand. “And I saw you hiding this the first day. This says library, so we—”

Real anger flashes in me. “Oh, I fucking knew you were too good to be true. You still don’t trust me, do you?”

Leo looks hurt, then furious. “I—”

“Shut up, shut up,” Victoria says. “How have either of you not seen that thing?”

I blink at her. “What thing?”

“Hello,” a voice says. Behind me. None of my roommates speak.

I freeze. Then I catch movement in my periphery.

I jolt into action, spinning with more force than is strictly necessary. With the same fluid movement, coat tails flying out behind me, I whip Thaddeus’ gifted pistol out and point it at the thing’s head.

Scattered shocked noises edge out of the others. A tense, still silence follows them up.

My eyes take a moment to adjust, to take it in. At first I see bronze skin, dark eyes. But where skin can sometimes take on a translucent quality, to reveal veins or blemishes, there is nothing like that here. The material of its flesh is opaque. Solid. My eyes drift to a wound in the creature’s chest; I see layered clockwork in an open cavity, long bronze tendons exposed in a forearm. I blink. I realise I am holding metal to metal: a gun aimed at the head of an automaton.

“Weapons are not permitted in the library,” it says with a jolting, echoing voice.

“Why in God’s name do you have a gun?” Victoria whispers. “Did you steal it from the trial?

“Be thankful that I do,” I tell her, and ignore the rest of her question. I don’t peel my gun away from the automation. I look it over. The automaton’s chest is made up of rib-like strips of bronze for, I assume, a technician’s ease of access. I search for a voice-box: a black, repurposed music box, perhaps? But there is nothing.

“How’s that possible,” Bellamy murmurs, suddenly beside him. It isn’t a question, really. More a statement of uncomprehending.

I don’t know what to say. I am struggling to stay upright. Adrenaline is a constant in my blood today, and I am seeing spots at the edge of my vision. Everything is too bright. Slowly I manage, “Automata aren’t like this.”

“I saw the Silver Swan,” Victoria says. She creeps forward into my view, keeping her distance from the thing ahead of it. Clearly drawn to it, compelled in a fascinated way. Leo comes closer to me, but Silas and Fred are gripping each other with extreme intensity.

Get it together. You’re their leader, you have to keep that position.

I was worried about them slipping out of control. Leo brought them all here, managed to wrangle them together despite being a xenos. Something like jealousy sparks in me. Something like fear follows closely behind.

“Automata are London’s fascination,” I call out. “Machines that are self-operating. Clockwork.”

Victoria supplies the Greek translation with a little flourish. “Acting of one’s own will,” she says. She has a joy about her, a thrill at being in this machine’s presence.

Silas scoffs loudly. “It’s not ‘London’s fascination’. Britain has been long obsessed with the Hellenists, even before their myth bled into this world. But they’re not the only damn source, you know.”

“Well, who’d have thought you had a single opinion in that quiet head?” Bellamy mutters.

Fred steps forward, eyes a warning. “Stop it.”

We lapse into uncomfortable silence and turn back to the automaton. My aim falters momentarily as I consider it. Its face is a mask, fixed permanently with a faint smile that in the right light might be comforting, but now has a terrifying edge to it. Gears turn in the oval openings that serve as its eyes. Fake eyelids jar to a close and spring open once more.

It is a poor approximation of a human and extremely uncanny.

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