I was drowning.
Not in water. In my own fluids.
I lay on the floor of the secret workshop beneath the Tuileries. The air was thick with the smell of grease and ozone, but I couldn't smell it.
I couldn't breathe.
My chest heaved. My diaphragm spasmed, trying to pull air into lungs that were filled with foam.
Gasp. Rattle.
It sounded like a wet sponge being squeezed.
"Administrator!" Fouché's face swam into view. He was shouting, but his voice sounded underwater. "The doctors are here! They have the leeches!"
"No..." I tried to say. The word was a bubble of blood on my lips.
A hand grabbed my arm. A man in a velvet coat. A royal physician. He held a glass jar filled with squirming black worms.
"We must bleed him!" the doctor yelled. "The humors are unbalanced! The blood is too thick!"
Rage spiked in my dying brain. Leeches. Medieval stupidity.
I summoned the last volt of energy in my muscles.
I kicked.
My boot connected with the doctor's knee.
Crack.
The doctor screamed and dropped the jar. It shattered. Leeches scattered across the stone floor, writhing in the dust.
"Get..." I clawed at Fouché's collar, dragging him down to my level. "Get... Lavoisier."
Fouché looked terrified. My face must have been a horror show. Blue lips. Bulging veins. Cyanosis. My brain was starving.
"Lavoisier is in the lab!" Fouché shouted. "Get him! Now!"
The darkness was closing in. A black aperture shrinking the world to a pinhole.
Time Remaining: 0 Days. 0 Hours. CRITICAL FAILURE.
The prompt flashed red behind my eyes.
System Shutdown Imminent.
"Alex!"
A new voice. Antoine Lavoisier. The father of modern chemistry. The man I had saved from the guillotine because I needed his brain.
He knelt beside me. He didn't look at my face. He looked at my chest.
"Pulmonary edema," Lavoisier diagnosed instantly. "He's hypoxic. He needs oxygen. Pure oxygen."
"Can you do it?" Fouché demanded.
"The prototype," I wheezed. I pointed a shaking finger at the workbench.
Lavoisier followed my finger. He saw the sketches I had drawn on a napkin hours ago. A desperate, theoretical design.
"The Pneumatic Respirator," Lavoisier whispered. "It's untested. The pressure..."
"Do it," I gasped.
Lavoisier looked at me. He saw the calculation in my eyes. The risk assessment. Death is certain. The machine is a variable.
"Clear the table!" Lavoisier shouted to his mechanics. "Bring the tanks! The rubber tubing!"
They lifted me. I was dead weight. They slammed me onto the metal workbench.
Tools clattered. Wrenches spinning.
I stared up at the ceiling. The black hole was almost closed. I couldn't feel my fingers. I couldn't feel my legs.
"Strap him down," Lavoisier ordered. "If he thrashes, the seal will break."
Leather straps tightened across my chest, my arms.
"The mask!"
Something cold and rubbery was pressed over my face. It smelled of sulfur and new leather. It covered my nose and mouth tight.
"Connecting the regulator," Lavoisier's voice was calm, scientific.
I heard the clank of a heavy brass tank being bolted to the table frame.
"Warning," Lavoisier said. "Pure oxygen under pressure is explosive. One spark, one open flame, and he becomes a bomb."
I saw Robespierre step out of the shadows. He looked at me strapped to the table like Frankenstein's monster.
"Better a bomb than a corpse," Robespierre said. "Turn the valve."
HISSSSSS.
The sound was sharp, violent.
Cold.
Ice-cold air blasted into my throat. It forced its way past the fluid. It expanded my lungs with brutal force.
My eyes snapped wide open.
The oxygen hit my blood like a drug. The headache shattered. The darkness evaporated.
My heart hammered. Thump-THUMP-THUMP.
Energy surged through my limbs. Artificial. Chemical. Electric.
I arched my back against the straps.
"Stabilizing!" Lavoisier yelled, tweaking a brass knob on the tank. "Pressure at 20 PSI. Mixture is rich."
I breathed.
KHH-HHUUUU.
The sound was mechanical. A rasping intake, a hiss of exhaust.
I wasn't breathing air anymore. I was breathing fuel.
"Unstrap him," I commanded.
My voice boomed inside the mask. It was deep, distorted by the rubber and brass. It didn't sound like Alex Miller. It sounded like a machine.
Fouché hesitated. Then he undid the buckles.
I sat up.
I swung my legs off the table. I stood.
The room spun for a second, then steadied.
I walked to the mirror hanging on the tool rack.
I looked at the reflection.
A man in a torn silk shirt. But his face was gone. Covered by a black rubber mask with brass fittings and glass eyepieces. A corrugated hose ran from my chin, over my shoulder, to the heavy tank strapped to my back like a chaotic hiking pack.
I looked like a diver who had walked out of the sea to claim the land.
"The Accountant is dead," I thought.
I touched the cold glass over my eye.
"Only the Administrator remains."
The door to the workshop banged open.
A courier ran in. He was covered in mud. He stopped when he saw me. He gaped at the monster standing by the mirror.
"Report," I said. The voice rasped like a file on steel.
The courier swallowed hard. He looked at Fouché, unsure if he should speak to the thing in the mask.
"Report to him!" Fouché snapped.
"Sir," the courier stammered. "Urgent dispatch from the coast. Calais semaphore station."
"Read it."
"British fleet sighted. Two hundred sail. Ships of the line."
He paused.
"And... fire, Sir. They attacked the coastal forts. Not with cannon. With rockets."
"Rockets?" Robespierre asked.
"They scream, Sir. And when they hit... green fire. It melts stone. It burns on water. The garrison panicked. They surrendered without firing a shot."
"Congreve rockets," I said. The name tasted metallic in my mouth. "With Cagliostro's payload."
I walked to the map table. The heavy tank clanked against my spine. I didn't feel the weight. The oxygen made me feel light, powerful, dangerous.
I looked at the board.
Two hundred ships. That was an invasion force. That was D-Day, 150 years early.
And in the South... the Mafia war. The Pope.
"A pincer movement," Fouché said. "They want to split our forces. If we send the Army of the North to Calais, the South revolts. If we defend the South, the British march on Paris."
I looked at the pieces on the board.
Napoleon was in Italy. Masséna was in Lyon. The bulk of my army was chasing ghosts in the Mediterranean.
"We don't defend," I said.
My gloved hand swept across the map, knocking over the markers for Italy.
"Recall Napoleon," I ordered.
"Recall him?" Robespierre gasped. "He is about to take Milan! If he leaves, we lose Italy."
"Let Italy burn," I said. "Send the telegraph. General Recall. Forced march. He is to abandon the campaign and race North."
"He won't make it in time," Fouché argued. "Calais is days away. The British will be in Paris before Napoleon crosses the Alps."
"Napoleon moves faster than any army in history," I said. "And he won't be alone."
I grabbed a piece of chalk. I drew a line from Paris to the coast.
"Mobilize the National Guard," I said. "And the workers. The factory shifts. Give them muskets. Give them pikes."
"You want to send factory workers against British regulars?" Robespierre asked. "It will be a slaughter."
"It's a delaying action," I said. "I just need to hold the line until the Boy King arrives."
"The Boy King?" Fouché frowned. "The invader?"
"My son," I said.
I grabbed my heavy coat from the rack. I threw it over my shoulders. It covered the tank, but the hump was visible. The hose snake out of the collar like a techno-organic vein.
"Prepare my carriage," I rumbled.
"You?" Fouché stepped in front of me. "You can't go to the front. You are on life support! If that tank ruptures..."
"If I stay here, I die in a chair," I said. "I prefer to die standing."
I pushed past him.
"Where are you going?" Robespierre asked.
I stopped at the door. I turned. The glass lenses of my mask reflected the gaslight, glowing like the eyes of an insect.
"I'm going to the coast," I said.
"My son is coming to kill me. He brought an army. He brought rockets."
I adjusted the valve on my chest. Hiss. The oxygen flooded my brain with cold clarity.
"It would be rude not to meet him."
I walked out into the corridor. The guards shrank back against the walls as the breathing machine passed.
Khh-hhuuu.
Khh-hhuuu.
I was coming for you, Charles.
And I hoped you did your math right. Because the final exam was about to begin.