Broken Hero by Jonathan Wood

tools for Lang and his Nazis.
    “They kept us in a warehouse, packed together, one pressed up against the next. It was a night in December when we broke out. They did not seem to have thought of the possibility. We tore down the walls like they were paper. We tore out of their factories. Only a few of us fell. They were too slow to respond, too caught off guard. And we are hard to kill.
    “But not impossible. Lang’s fury knew no limits. We had defied him. Our maker. He pursued us endlessly. Tank shells rained down upon us. We were twelve hundred. Then eleven. Then just a thousand.
    “Most of Europe had fallen by then. Russia believed us invaders. We could find nowhere on the continent to hide. Only England was free. So we fled here, across France, traveling only at night, Lang still behind us. By the time we reached the coast, Lang had cut down a full third of us. Only eight hundred still lived.
    “He caught us there, as we fled into the water. We fought, finally face-to-face. Another hundred of us fell.
    “So did Lang.”
    Volk cannot wrangle much expressiveness out of his metal face, but it’s impossible not to hear the grim satisfaction in his voice.
    “I took him apart with my bare hands.” To my surprise it’s Hermann who picks up the tale. “He broke so easily in them.”
    Volk nods to Hermann, a sign of deference perhaps. That seems to fit with the tone so far. I am hearing the legends of a people only seventy years old.
    “When we came to England,” Volk picks up after Hermann’s brief, somewhat graphic interjection, “we did not dare reveal ourselves. Only a little over half our original number remained. We simply wanted to hide and not be hunted. We slipped underground. We hid away. We have remained there ever since.”
    He rumbles to a stop, the sound of his voice echoed by the churning gears of his chest. And it’s a good story. A persecuted people. A boo-hiss villain. The rejection of their maker’s philosophy. They come out of it well. But something definitely seems to be missing.
    “So,” I say slowly, “how exactly does this lead to your friend, Nils,” I look over to Hermann, attempt to judge his reaction, “trying to kill us all yesterday?”
    Volk hesitates. I can feel the weight of my pistol hanging just below my armpit. I glance over at Kayla, but there’s no need. I sometimes think it’s more of a struggle for Kayla to sheathe her sword than it is for her to pull it out. A moment later I realize I should have checked Hannah but I forgot.
    “When we came to England,” he says, his accent momentarily thicker, sounding more like Hermann, “our total number was six hundred and seventy-eight. Today we number one hundred and forty-two.”
    He lets the numbers hang there. That sounds a lot like calamity.
    “The hell happened?” Tabitha is the first of us to find words.
    “We are breaking down,” says Volk. “Our gearwork misses its steps. And as it does our sanity slips. We lose our reason and our path. Nils was not the first to be consumed by madness. We have managed to keep so many quiet. Some, it is not as bad as Nils. They turn within themselves. Their madness eats down into their core rather than bursting out. Some we have killed ourselves out of mercy. Others have raged in places devoid of people, their fury gone unnoticed. Some we have managed to restrain and confine where they could do no harm in their final thrashings. And some…” He hesitates, glances at Hermann who shakes his head. But Volk turns back to us and finds words. “Some have left no survivors and we have cleared away the evidence.”
    OK. An army of Nazi clockwork robots, and now they’re all getting an extra-violent version of Alzheimer’s. Fantastic. Just…
    “What exactly do you expect of us?” Felicity makes the collective question audible. Or maybe she’s just trying to cut Tabitha off before she asks how this is her problem.
    “Nothing,” snaps Hermann. “People have never helped us. Never