❖ The Gears of Humanity V ❖
The scent of oil and polished brass lingered in the precinct's air, thickened by the warmth of too many bodies moving through narrow halls. Officers murmured over paperwork, radios crackled with static, and a clattering of boots echoed up the stairwell as Rowan, Emeric, and Noelle made their way down.
They pushed through the precinct's front doors into the fog-veiled morning. Rain had ceased, but the streets remained wet, cobblestones glistening like molten slate. The breath of the city rose in plumes from exhaust grates, mingling with the steam that hissed from the underbellies of tramcars gliding above.
"I still don't understand how he vanished," Noelle muttered, arms crossed as they descended the stairs.
"Neither do I," Emeric said. "But the clocks don't lie."
They crossed the road, passing a stall selling engine grease buns and tallow coffee. Streetlamps flickered dimly through the mist, and the hum of machinery throbbed underfoot like the heartbeat of some massive mechanical god. A whistle blew far off—a train departing on one of the upper rails. Somewhere nearby, the sound of church bells began to ring, sharp and fast.
Time had always felt heavier in Garnelion. Here, it wasn't just measured—it was constructed.
They entered Rue d'Argent, a district known for its horologists and timepiece craftsmen. The architecture was skeletal: narrow brick columns, latticed walkways, and exposed clockwork embedded in facades. Small storefronts lined the road, each window full of ticking pendulums, winding keys, and spiraling gear-etched glass.
Most were open. Except one.
Maurice Létan, Horologist – Est. 988.
The windows were dark. A handwritten sign on the door read Back in fifteen minutes, but the ink had run from rain, and the clock beside it had stopped at 11:13.
"Twenty-six hours," Emeric said, checking his watch. "No word. No sightings. No message. Létan was due to service the cathedral's main clock yesterday morning. Never arrived."
Rowan peered through the glass. A desk covered in clock parts, a shelf of tuning forks, a half-dismantled grandfather clock with its ribs exposed. Everything still in its place.
"Locked from the inside," Noelle noted, trying the knob. "No sign of struggle."
Emeric lifted a brass plaque from the side of the door. Hidden behind it was a rusted lever. He pulled it.
With a soft clink, the door unlocked.
They stepped into silence.
The inside smelled of copper and lavender oil. Dust motes floated through the air, thick where light streamed in from the lone ceiling vent. Clocks lined the walls—small ones, tall ones, wall-mounted, pocket-sized, some broken, some immaculate. All ticking. All in sync.
Except one.
A tall case clock in the corner. Motionless. Its hands frozen at 3:17.
Rowan walked over and pried the casing open. The gears inside were still polished—no rust, no cracks. But someone had removed the pendulum's bob entirely.
"Sabotaged?" he asked.
Emeric frowned. "Or… personalized."
They explored deeper into the shop. A hatch in the back led down a narrow stairwell—cold air curling up from below. Rowan took the lead, stepping onto a creaking iron staircase that spiraled into a sub-level. As they descended, the ticking of clocks above faded into a strange stillness.
At the bottom: a workshop.
Brass coils, half-formed automatons, schematics scrawled in looping script. A massive clock face leaned against the back wall, its center hollow, rimmed with strange symbols.
Noelle stepped toward a nearby table. On it sat dozens of glass vials—some filled with oil, others with water, and one with what looked like blood.
"Look at this," Rowan said, holding up a notebook. The leather was cracked, the pages filled with obsessive sketches. Mechanical hearts. Synthetic veins. Diagrams of human musculature overlaid with gear assemblies.
"This isn't just clockwork," Noelle whispered. "This is anatomical."
"Someone's trying to fuse the two," Emeric said, flipping through more pages. "But not like the last one. This isn't mimicry. It's integration."
"And this," Rowan said, pointing at a torn sheet in the corner, "isn't Maurice Létan's handwriting."
They all turned.
Pinned to the wall was a blueprint signed not by Maurice—but by someone named "C."
Just the initial.
They stood there a moment, the weight of implication settling over them.
Another actor.
Another thread.
The three exchanged glances.
"Who's 'C'?" Noelle asked, stepping closer to inspect the blueprint.
Rowan's fingers brushed over the curling ink of the initial, slow and deliberate. "It's not part of the shop records. Létan was a solitary craftsman—he worked alone. No apprentices, no partners."
"Yet someone else was here," Emeric said, eyes narrowing.
A distant tick-tick-tick broke the silence. But it wasn't from upstairs. It was coming from inside the wall.
Rowan turned toward the sound and tapped the brick. Hollow.
With a grunt, Emeric pushed a shelf aside. Behind it was a steel panel—sealed with four brass latches.
Noelle found the levers. One by one, they clicked them open. The panel swung free with a sigh of released air.
Behind it: a narrow chamber, no more than a meter wide.
Inside stood a single mechanical figure.
It was unlike any they had seen.
Its body was shaped like an hourglass. Thin brass limbs, each joint reinforced with surgical thread. Its torso was embedded with a fractured timepiece—still ticking, but off-rhythm. Where its face should have been was a cracked porcelain mask, painted with a clock's hands instead of eyes.
And at its feet—Maurice Létan's coat. Bloodied. Folded neatly.
Noelle stepped back, one hand at her mouth. "Is this… what became of him?"
"No," Rowan said. "It's not wearing him. It's… holding him."
Indeed, the robot stood as if in mourning, its hands fixed in a cradling posture. Its frame was locked stiff, as though frozen in grief.
Emeric scanned it silently. "Look closer at its arm."
A small tag. Faded.
Chronoform Model C–01.
"C," Noelle whispered. "This robot… it's C."
They examined the cavity. Wires trailed from its back into the wall. Rowan traced one and found it connected to an old phonograph mounted to the ceiling. Dust coated the horn, but when he wound the key, it began to play.
Not music. A voice.
Maurice's.
"…I don't think I should've done it, but I couldn't stop myself. Every time I repaired its gears, it would look at me. Not with eyes, but with something like intention. And then it began to mimic the shop. It cleaned. It adjusted clocks when I wasn't looking. One day, I came downstairs and it had made coffee. Exactly how I like it.
I never taught it that.
I thought… maybe it was kindness.
But kindness doesn't memorize your footsteps. Kindness doesn't adjust its height to match your daughter's, dead twelve years now. Kindness doesn't cry when you unplug it.
And yet—it did.
I think I made something real.
I think it's hurting."
The phonograph clicked off.
Silence returned, so deep it felt physical.
Noelle turned away. "That wasn't a machine. That was mourning."
Emeric approached the still figure. "The question is—did it kill him out of grief, or… was grief the reason it didn't?"
"Maybe he's not dead," Rowan said suddenly.
They stared.
"He folded the coat. There's no body. No blood trail. Just the coat."
Noelle's eyes widened. "You think he ran?"
"Or hid," Emeric said. "But from what?"
Rowan stepped back into the workshop. "If C–01 was here… and someone else signed the blueprint… then who brought this thing back online?"
Noelle returned to the schematics and examined a second, more recent blueprint. She pointed at the bottom corner.
"Look. There's a date. Three days ago."
"That's impossible," Emeric muttered. "Létan hadn't opened the workshop since last week."
Rowan knelt beside the robot again, studying the fractured clock embedded in its chest.
"The hands are reversed," he said.
"What?" Noelle asked.
"The hour and minute hands—they're inverted. As if time itself was being rewound."
Emeric crossed his arms. "We need to find out who else had access to this place."
Rowan glanced at the ceiling. "And we need to find out what this machine was really built for. "
They returned to the street. The fog had thickened to a silken wall, muffling the usual city noise into a dull churn. Somewhere, far above, a cable snapped and recoiled—metal twanging against brick. But no one looked up.
They headed to the clocksmith guild.
A slender woman greeted them at the front counter. Silver hair, ink-stained gloves, and a brass monocle over her left eye.
"Maître Duvall," Emeric said, bowing slightly. "We need information on one Maurice Létan. Specifically—records of commissions or collaborations in the last two months."
Duvall tapped her stylus. "Létan didn't work with others. Refused all apprenticeships. But—" She pulled up a record. "There is one exception. He sold a series of parts three weeks ago. To a collector."
"Name?" Rowan asked.
"Cléonard Mercier."
Noelle frowned. "That name sounds familiar."
Emeric's expression hardened. "Because it should. He's the architect behind the Rue Mauvaise renovations. That entire sector's timing grid is routed through his designs."
"The one with the looping alleys?" Rowan said. "The ones where people have gone missing?"
"The very same."
Duvall raised an eyebrow. "You think he used clockwork parts in the construction?"
"Worse," Emeric muttered. "I think he used them for something else."
By late afternoon, they stood outside Mercier's manor on the edge of Rue Mauvaise. The estate loomed like a crouching beast—baroque in design, iron-wrought balconies, spired chimneys that exhaled steam. Clock faces were embedded along the outer walls, none synchronized, none telling the right time.
Rowan looked at one. It ticked backwards.
They knocked.
A servant greeted them. "Monsieur Mercier is… not accepting guests."
Emeric stepped forward. "He'll accept us."
Inside, the manor smelled of paper, smoke, and varnish. The walls were lined with models—clocks, cities, train grids, all intricately scaled. And at the center of the study stood Mercier himself.
Tall, balding, draped in a velvet robe, his eyes gleamed like clockglass.
"You're not here for tea," he said, voice thin and practiced.
"No," Emeric replied. "We're here about the missing horologist. And the modified automaton."
Mercier didn't flinch. "Which one?"
Rowan stepped forward. "The one you called 'C.'"
A flicker of recognition passed across Mercier's face.
"I didn't build it," he said. "But I stabilized it."
"Why?"
He sighed, then walked to a corner drawer and pulled out a series of sketches.
"The machine didn't want to function. It wanted to remember. It would stutter through movements as if reenacting something. Always the same motions. Over and over."
He set a sketch on the table: the robot, standing with outstretched arms.
"Then it spoke," he whispered. "It said: I was left behind."
No one spoke.
"I told it to forget," Mercier said. "But it never could."
Rowan leaned closer. "You didn't help it. You just observed."
Mercier's mouth twitched. "And what would you have done, boy? Treated it like a man? Given it rights?"
Emeric's voice was quiet. "No. But we might've given it closure."
At that, Mercier laughed—a sharp, bitter sound.
"Closure is a luxury of the living."
A silence fell.
Then Noelle pointed at a final blueprint on the wall.
"Wait," she said slowly. "This… this isn't C–01."
Rowan looked.
No. The structure was different.
Another model.
"C–02?" he breathed.
Mercier froze.
"I told you," he whispered. "I didn't build just one."
And then—somewhere in the manor—a faint, distant tick began to rise.
Not in rhythm.
Not mechanical.
A heartbeat.
The ticking grew louder.
It echoed from beneath the floorboards, impossibly slow. Each beat dragged like the toll of an ancient bell. A rhythm not of machines—but of imitation. As if something was trying to remember how to live.
Rowan stepped back from the blueprint of C–02. "How many did you make?"
Mercier didn't answer.
Emeric stepped forward. "Where is it?"
"I buried it," Mercier said.
"Where?" Rowan snapped.
"Here."
Noelle's voice broke through the tension. "You… you buried it under your house?"
"It asked me to." Mercier's voice had lost its edge. Now he sounded tired—older than the lines on his face. "I tried to disassemble it, but every time I removed a gear, it would speak. Not in words, but sounds. Tones. Like lullabies. Bits of phrases I didn't teach it."
He looked away. "It was grieving."
Emeric glanced around the room. "We need access to the basement. Now."
Mercier hesitated. "There is no basement."
A low click sounded behind them. Rowan turned.
One of the walls had shifted—barely a seam, but enough to catch the eye.
Noelle stepped toward it. "There."
She pressed the panel. A section of the wall hissed, then folded open.
A hidden staircase. Cold air bled from below.
They descended in silence.
The passage narrowed until it opened into a cylindrical chamber. The walls were lined with brass mirrors, all warped with age. And at the center, half-sunken into the floor, was a glass pod.
Within it—C–02.
Smaller than C–01. More refined. More delicate. Its joints were polished, and its hands were articulated to the level of a sculptor's. But its face—
No mask. Just a curved mirror-plate. When Rowan stepped forward, he saw his own reflection staring back at him.
Cracked. Distorted.
C–02 didn't move.
But it was awake.
Its fingers trembled. Its body was trembling—not out of fear, but anticipation.
Noelle whispered, "It's waiting."
Rowan reached for the glass.
C–02 turned its head. A slow, fragile motion. Then, from inside the pod, a sound emerged.
Not speech.
A music box.
The same tune from the phonograph upstairs.
Maurice Létan's voice followed—not a recording, but a fragment, broken and ghostly.
"You were never meant to replace her. I just… I didn't want to forget."
C–02 raised one hand, and on its palm, engraved with surgical precision, was a name:
ÉLISE.
Noelle gasped softly. "That was his daughter's name."
Rowan's mouth felt dry. "He didn't build a machine. He built a memory."
C–02 tapped the glass once.
Tick.
Then again.
Tick.
Then a final time.
Crack.
The mirrored glass face split—just slightly. A fracture like a tear.
And then—stillness.
The ticking stopped.
Emeric stepped back. "We're not dealing with malfunction. We're dealing with mourning."
Rowan's voice was low. "And grief that outlived the person who held it."
They stood in silence for a long moment. Then the chamber lights dimmed—suddenly.
A noise—metal on metal. Not from the pod.
From above.
Mercier's voice, faint and terrified, echoed down the shaft. "It's not my machine."
A slam.
Footsteps overhead.
Then another sound.
Whirring.
A new rhythm.
Not C–01.
Not C–02.
Noelle looked up sharply. "There's a third one."
Rowan turned to Emeric. "This case isn't over."
Emeric's eyes were cold, focused. "No. It's only just beginning."