"There’s only one monster here," said Mr. Stab. "And for once it isn’t me. Is there, by any chance, a cell here with my name on it?"
"Not as long as you support the cause," said Truman, and he actually dropped Mr. Stab a roguish wink.
"I know this woman," said Molly, still staring through the cold iron bars at Subway Sue. "She’s my friend."
"She’s a leech," Truman said briskly. "Stealing good fortune from innocent men and women, and selling it to those who don’t deserve it. Just another magical parasite on the human race."
Molly spun around and glared at him. "She’s my friend!"
Truman wagged a finger at her like she was a recalcitrant child. "Don’t look at me like that, little witch. Remember your place. We allow you to use your unnatural gifts on our behalf, and in return you get to be part of the only organisation with a real chance of bringing down the Droods you hate so much. Obey me, and you will be well rewarded in the world that’s coming. There will be room for you and your kind in the new order, but only as long as you remember your place."
"That’s the problem with tunnel vision," said Molly. "All I could see was the destruction of the Droods you promised. So when I listened to your recruitment speech, all I heard was what I wanted to hear. But you’ve opened my eyes at last, Truman." She turned back to the cell.
"Sue; it’s me, Molly. What do you suppose are the chances of all the locks on all these cells falling open, all at once?"
"Not good," said Sue through cracked and swollen lips. "As long as these cold iron bars hold my magic in check."
Molly looked at me. I grabbed the steel bars with one golden hand and ripped them right out of their concrete setting. Molly gestured once, and Sue’s shackles fell away from her. Sue stood up, stretched painfully, and pulled away her blindfold.
"Bingo," she said softly. And every lock on every cell fell open, all at once.
Truman looked at me, gaping blankly, as I crumpled the steel bars into a ball, and then dropped it heavily on the ground before him.
"You’ll never replace my family," I said. "You think too small. And too nasty."
He turned and ran, yelling for Solomon Krieg to hold us back while he went for reinforcements. The Golem with the Atomic Brain moved quickly to block the way while his master scrambled up the steps to the walkway. All around us creatures were lurching and spilling out of their pens, free at last. Sirens were blaring in the distance. Molly and Girl Flower helped Subway Sue stumble out of her cell, while Mr. Stab and I faced up to Solomon Krieg.
The artificial creature smiled for the first time, and there was no humour in it, only a terrible satisfaction that at last he would get to do what he was made to do. He raised one hand, and a gun muzzle poked out of a slit in his wrist. He sprayed Mr. Stab and then me with machine gun fire but couldn’t hurt either of us. Bullets ricocheted harmlessly off my armoured chest and seemed to pass through Mr. Stab as though he was nothing but smoke. Krieg turned his aim on the three women, but I moved quickly to shield them. Krieg raised his other hand, and a hidden flamethrower in his other arm bathed my armour in liquid fire. The heat was so terrible that even Mr. Stab flinched back, but I felt nothing.
Solomon Krieg shut off his flames and frowned deeply, as though concentrating on some difficult problem. Fat sparks of static electricity appeared spontaneously around his head, like a halo of electric flies. They spat and crackled, growing fiercer and more powerful, and then struck out at Mr. Stab like a hammer blow of unleashed energies. The blast picked him up and threw him twenty feet or more before slamming him into a concrete wall with devastating force. The whole wall crumbled into ruin under the impact, burying Mr. Stab under a pile of rubble. Solomon Krieg, the Golem with the Atomic Brain. He turned to me and I braced myself. Once I would have trusted my armour to protect me even from such an attack as this, but after the incident with the elf lord’s arrow, I wasn’t as confident as I once was. I still stood my ground. I was all that stood between the three women and Krieg’s atomic blast.
And that was when the escaped prisoners fell upon Krieg like a pack of howling wolves. Humans and inhumans, demons and creatures of the night, they fell upon their common foe and sought to drag him down through sheer weight of numbers. Claws and fangs tore his colourless flesh, but no blood flowed. Krieg swayed under their attack but did not fall. He lashed out with his machine-driven arms, throwing dead and broken bodies this way and that with appalling strength, not yielding an inch. More prisoners came running from every direction, desperate for a chance to drag down their hated jailer and executioner.
While Krieg was safely preoccupied, I hurried over to search the rubble for Mr. Stab, but he was already rising to his feet, entirely unhurt, fussily brushing dust from his coat and opera cloak. He stooped down to retrieve his top hat and placed it on his head at a jaunty angle. He might be the worst serial killer in history, but the man had style. He looked around him at the block of concrete pens and shook his head firmly.
"No. I will not stand for this. I am no stranger to the joys of suffering and slaughter, Edwin, but this…There are some things a gentleman just doesn’t do."
And he went with me among the cells, helping release those who couldn’t free themselves. The werewolves and the vampires and the like. It went against the grain for me to free such vicious and deadly creatures, after years of hunting them down and killing them, but I couldn’t leave them here. For the ovens. As Mr. Stab said: some things are just beyond the pale.
We left the demon half-breed where he was, of course. We weren’t stupid.
We came back from the concrete pens to find Solomon Krieg still standing, surrounded by the bodies of the dead and the fallen. Girl Flower threw herself at him, screaming something obscene in old Welsh. Atomic forces erupted from the golem’s scarred forehead, hitting Girl Flower and blowing her apart into a shower of rose petals. They churned and circled in midair, and then transformed, becoming a razor storm of a thousand cutting owls’ claws. They hit Solomon Krieg like a deadly hailstorm, ripping and tearing at his pale flesh, but still he stood his ground and would not fall. I might have admired him, if I hadn’t hated him so much. (The ovens never grew cold…) The razor storm finally collapsed, exhausted, and I went forward to do battle with the Golem with the Atomic Brain. I needed to punish someone for what had been done here, and he would do. I try hard, but sometimes I’m not a very nice person.
The creatures of the night fell back as I strode through their midst. They recognised the golden armour. Solomon saw me coming and smiled again. His face was hanging in tatters from scratched and scored bone after Girl Flower’s attack, and one eye was just an empty red socket, but still he smiled. He didn’t bother with his built-in gun or flamethrower. Just stepped forward and threw a punch with all his mechanised strength behind it. I heard the bones in his hand break as his fist glanced harmlessly from my golden mask. I grabbed his arm with both hands before he could draw it back and broke it over my knee like a piece of kindling. Bits of shattered tech flew out of the gaping wound. Solomon Krieg grunted once, but that was all. I let go of his arm and grabbed his head, pulling it down and forward. He fought me with all his legendary strength, but it wasn’t enough. Atomic forces sputtered and shimmered on the air as he struggled to put an attack together. I ripped the top of his head right off, tearing along the old scarred fault line on his forehead, and then reached into his head with my other hand and tore his atomic brain out.