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previous shots had been, but it was still enough to knock him down. The Bomb Lance's last shot had also been the final one for his frame, and the remaining tension wires escaped their bondage, hanging slack from his shoulders and arms.
    Doc Dynamite reached into his coat, but the Irishman grabbed him and yanked him down the road. “At eh ell?”
    “We need to go, you idiot! The Paragons are here!”
    Realization dawned on Doc Dynamite's broken face as he saw a figure coming toward them from the far side of the anchorage with a gun in his right hand. The two of them turned and ran as the bullets whizzed by.
    The man shooting at them was clearly someone who wanted to be seen. His royal-blue jacket and bright red vest were both cut entirely from thick leather. The heavily padded shoulders over his well-developed frame gave him an imposing silhouette. A blue leather mask covered his face down to the bridge of his nose in front, and the rest of his head and neck in back. Securely attached to the top of his head was a red, white, and blue top hat, a steady cloud of steam rising up from it like a chimney.
    In his left hand he held a large steel shield emblazoned with the symbol of a gear, and in his right was a gun that connected to both a bandolier of bullets that circled his forearm and a small brass pipe that ran to a pressure canister on his back. With each shot steam blasted out of the gun, propelling the bullet and loading another one into the chamber simultaneously.
    Reaching into his duster as he ran, the Texan pulled out a short stick of explosive that was colored blue instead of the usual red. He lit it and dropped it onto the road. A second later it exploded into a curtain of smoke that completely hid the two men from their pursuer.
    The masked man stopped running when he reached the Automaton, and fired a few more desperate shots into the smoke cloud. “Where's my daughter?” he yelled at the metal man.
    The Automaton attempted to reply, but something in his throat had been damaged from the abuse he had just received. “The t-t-t-top of the t-t-t-ower.”
    Sticking his gun into its holster, he knelt down and grabbed Tom by the shoulders. “Is she all right?”
    The Automaton nodded yes. “She is o-k-k-k-kay.”
    Standing up, the Industrialist saw a black balloon rising up out of the smoke. The large propellers on either side of the gondola pushed it up and away from the bridge, and it headed deeper into Brooklyn.
    His gloved hand hovered over his gun for a moment and then relaxed. The Automaton rose up behind him. His movements were jerky, and for an instant it seemed as if he would topple back to the ground. Finding his balance, he reached up to his head, and pressed a finger into his throat. “Those men killed…Sir Dennis.”
    “Damn it to hell!” The Industrialist lifted his gun and fired shot after shot at the balloon until it was nothing more than a dot in the sky.

 
    S arah Stanton let out a loud and unladylike grunt as she tugged at the ornate brass handle. There were two of them, each connected to a massive slab of bronze ten feet wide and sixteen feet tall, and no matter how hard she tried, they were as immovable as the granite that surrounded them.
    “Definitely locked,” she said, and let go. Gasping in her corset she took a moment to compose herself, looking up while she caught her breath at the reliefs that had been cast onto the metal. The dim, dirty glow from the cloudy February day illuminated scenes from ancient mythology in the tarnished bronze: illustrations of powerful Greco-Roman deities locked in mortal combat against foul monsters. The swords, shields, and lightning bolts of the gods were arrayed against the fangs, claws, and serpent hair of evil creatures hell-bent on destroying the world.
    The expressions on the gods’ immortal faces were intense and grim. As Sarah stared into their metal world, the images seemed to mock her inability to simply open the door. The message of the