Free Hearts of Smoke and Steam by Andrew P. Mayer

wide and dark, sitting above small nose and an almost lipless red slash that acted as a mouth. Taken all together, it appeared to Alexander as if they were being addressed by an enormous baby, and from the look on his face, Alexander wouldn't have been at all surprised if the man were about to cry.
    Instead, he finally managed to speak. “I'm offended by your accusation, sir.”
    “Are you trying to tell me that you're not drunk, or that you aren't a buffoon?”
    The man stumbled with the false choice for a moment until Alexander decided to help him. “Or maybe the word you're struggling to find is idiot? Either way, you're clearly not cut out to be one of us.”
    As crimson as Clements's face already was, Stanton could see the red growing even deeper as the man slowly absorbed the meaning of his insult. Staring at his face, he wondered what it must be like to go through life with a range of expression so limited that it had become necessary to use the exact same look for both anger and embarrassment.
    The reply came out in a manner that could only be described as sputtering. “I, I, I am a gentleman. I will not be treated this way!”
    Stanton drummed his fingers across the table. He felt a moment of doubt pass through his chest, but the momentum of the anger was pulling him forward now, and there were times when it was necessary to let the inexorable happen without trying to step in its way. “When you're ready for it to stop, the door is over there.” He pointed at the exit.
    “There's no need to be that insulting,” Nathaniel chimed in, stating the obvious in his own obtuse way. Of course there was no need for it. The boy still had far more heart than sense, especially considering everything he had been through recently.
    “My point exactly, Turbine. And the moment Mr. Clements vacates this room, we can stop being insulted.” He was still the president, and sometimes power was there to be exercised.
    “I demand satisfaction!” Clements shouted, throwing his mask to the ground in an attempt to add weight to his pronouncement. The cloth landed in a limp pile.
    “Of course you do,” Alexander replied. If the man wanted a fight, then they were in perfect agreement.
    Hughes rose forward and up, the legs of his frame giving him impressive height. “Now Clements, there's no need for that! I'm sure that the Industrialist only means to test you.”
    “Hughes, I remember when you used to be a man whom I could rely on to fight the enemies of justice.” The words were just tumbling out of his mouth now. There was something refreshing about being honest, no matter what the consequences turned out to be. “I was hoping that maybe we'd see some of that man come back to life, but instead you're making excuses for villains.” Often when his anger began to spin out of control, the visage of his dead wife would appear before him, still the powerful woman that she had been the day she died. This imaginary woman would give him the stern look she had always used with him when his temper threatened to get the better of him.
    And although Amelia Stanton had never been willing to back down from a fight, she had always been a woman of peace. She had died before Alexander had ever been given a chance to properly reconcile his secret life as the Industrialist with her pacifist views.
    But this time, oddly, it was not his wife's face that appeared in front of him, but Sarah's. And in his mind's eye she was wearing the Sleuth's mask, just as she had on that last night that he'd seen her, except that the leather veil had been torn away, revealing tears streaming down her face. Her lips were pressed together in angry line of recrimination.
    Was it his anger that had driven his daughter away? It had been terrifying to see his own dark side reflected back at him through her face that night. All he had ever wanted for her was the best, and somehow in trying to ensure that she had it, he had managed to lose her altogether.
    “No,” he