The Falling Machine by Andrew P. Mayer Read Free Book Online

full height. And unlike the classic mythology used on the front doors, these color renderings depicted the actual likenesses of the individual members of the Paragons, portraying them as if they were the gods themselves, looking down into the room from the sky above.
    Sarah had never been shy about letting people know that she thought these images of her father and the other all-too-mortal Paragons shooting bolts of lightning, fire, and steam from their hands were comical, to say the least. Sir Dennis had even admitted to her that he felt a bit ashamed when he saw a perfectly idealized version of himself staring back down at him from so high above. And now that he was dead, the mythical man was the only one who remained.
    Reaching the corner of the building, Sarah turned left and slipped down the slim alley that traveled along the north side. The six-foot-wide corridor was clean, but gloomy, and few people even noticed its existence. It was simply there, one of many hundreds of odd little spaces in the ever-growing metropolis of New York that went ignored. But Sarah had always thought the unnoticed was far more interesting than the ostentatious.
    The side of the hall that faced the alley was a massive wall of featureless stone blocks. Wide metal doors were cut into the side of them at regular intervals, allowing supplies to be loaded into the buildings. If Sarah had ever been intent on breaking into the building by force, it seemed to her that this would be a far more logical place to make an attempt. But perhaps whatever megalomania it was that convinced a man to put on a costume and name himself after an animal or an object would also prohibit him from trying something as subtle as looking for a weaker door.
    To Sarah this simple alley was a romantic place, and she had often gotten “lost” there when her father had brought her to the construction site. No matter how much her father admonished them afterward, the workers were always lenient with her and Nathaniel, allowing the children free rein to explore the unfinished halls while her father was off doing his business of running his railroad or saving the world from another ridiculous villain with delusions of grandeur.
    The time she'd spent running through empty rooms and half-finished hallways had given her knowledge of the building that was beyond most of the Paragons.
    Sarah stepped down into a stairwell that ran parallel to the wall. Ten steps took her down five feet below the ground. The door that stood locked in place at the bottom was a flat sheet of bronze with no handle. The only break in its otherwise featureless surface was a small hole about the size of a nickel where a knob would be on a normal door.
    Sarah snapped open her reticule. The bag was small, and it only took her a moment to find what she was looking for and draw it out. The key was four inches long, and the entire piece was ornately designed so that it appeared to be a stylized letter “P” with a blank stem where the teeth would normally be. Like most things associated with the Hall, the gaudy exterior hid something far more complicated underneath.
    She slipped the key into the door slot and then simply held it there. The door hummed for a moment, followed by a heavy thunk as something hidden beneath the metal sank into place. The key disappeared, and a few moments later the door released, swinging inward just a few inches. Sarah pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped inside, escaping from the cold of the winter day into the relative warmth of the building's interior. She closed the door, cutting off the gray daylight and leaving only a dim gloom broken by the glow of the pilot lights from the gas lamps on the walls. Her key was poking out from the inside, the mechanism inside the door having flipped it over as it passed through. She pulled it out and slipped it back into her purse.
    Grabbing a small brass lever on the wall to the left of the door, she pushed it down until it came to