《[PUBLISHED] Substation Seven: Condemnation》


 1 - Finale

    The live-gild sun rays are muffled, choked through dense, endless clouds that reduce the lithe, warm energy of the Sun. All it emits is a dead, cold, almost fluorescent filter of light; perfect for taking a test.


    It''s five rows of ten students each, with every victim gripping his or her pen like a lifeline.


    The proctor, sitting motionless at the professor''s desk and with a supreme view of the test-takers, sets his eyes on them like a living fixture of pure observation: waiting, anticipating for the moment he sees that one stray glance, or that single passed note. Tests in the Royal Academy of Engineering aren''t to be taken lightly, we all know.


    A certain, rather-attractive Kimley Gaunter nips at the inside of her mouth when she reads over the final question on the first page:


    "A quadrametric di-mana circuit with a torso cross-connection will display what following output in a frame 1 automaton?"


    With a deep breath, Kimley comes to the bitter realization that this, like half of the questions on this exam, were not in the study material at all. She sneaks a blink-fast glance at the others in her row:


    Mortified, disgusted faces stare down at their pages. In fact, the whole room would be silent in their dismal state, if it weren''t for the pencil strokes of one single student, all the way at the end and the back.


    Kimley isn''t our heroine, but this girl is.


    Clare Airineth, academically years ahead of her peers but two years younger, snaps out the final strokes to her answers, finishing the test at the speed expected of a class 5 engineer. With a wide, socially-clueless smile, she passes over the immensity of jealous gazes on her way down the steps from her row to the proctor.


    His sunken eyes twinkle with a sort of pretentious half-victory half compassion when he takes her test into his wrinkled, pinkish hands. "Gave up alr-" The proctor stops a moment, adjusting his glasses while perusing through the pages. "Ahh, well there''s one in every class, I suppose," he says, correcting himself with a raised brow. " That''s an A+. You have a nice day, Miss Airineth."


    "Thank you, sir." She bows her head, her sprightly blond cowlick performing a humorous, flippant wave over her generally well-combed appearance, her single earring drooping aside to do the same, albeit with a more respectful style to it.


    She turns to leave the classroom, sparing a look over to her classmates. They all look at her with that mix of envy and grief; not hatred because they wouldn''t admit it, but certainly a desire that she weren''t there with them.


    With the same, kind smile she got from her mother, she leaves them to their fate, certain this is just the destiny of people who would rather have friends than have a comprehensive grasp of their material. Making a smooth swing out, she exits the classroom with a true sense of excellence. She''s younger than the others, and yet here she is, outdoing her peers in spades.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    She almost starts monologuing in her head, with the great King Victor congratulating her on the recipient of Class-5 Head Engineer, but the professor has been waiting on the other side of the door, leaning about coolly in his tweed vest and waistcoat.


    "Went well, I trust?" He asks, popping his pipe to the side of his mouth.


    She stutters. She''ll never get used to the fact that the professor for this class is none other than Jack Elwood, the living rock star of the automaton engineering field.


    "W-yeah it... yeah, great, sir!"


    He nods at an angle with that expressive mix of charisma and certainty he''s perfected over years of tests. "Great. Your mom would be proud."


    She has no idea what face she''s making at him, but is very hopeful that it''s a smile. "Thank you, sir! I''m sure she would be... sh-"


    "I''m sure your project is going to be just as impressive."


    There''s a pause in the hallway, her green eyes steadily widening. "...The what, sir?"


    He arches his face in a way that creates in her the simultaneous urge to go right up to him and either kiss him or punch him in the mouth so hard that it bleeds; a sort of semi-pretentious confidence that she cannot help but find both infuriating and attractive. He''s got twelve years on her and she knows she''s too young, but she can''t help imagining.


    "Your thesis project, next Friday."


    "Next..." the words cut through her like a saw.


    "You remember from your syllabus, right?"


    She''s quiet a second, a slow, lying nod all that she produces for the longest time.


    "Y-yes. Yeah, the master''s presentation thesis class. The one all final year masters students have to do?"


    He leans his head down just a tad, sizing her expression up past his thin-rimmed glasses. "The one you''ve been working on since the beginning of the year?"


    Like a conduit of midnight, a cold sweat overtakes her like dew on the grass.


    "Yes sir, I''m already done! It''s on... infrastructure."


    He leans back with a smile. "Wonderful. You know, I''m really proud of you."


    Even hit with a compliment like this does nothing to save her from the gut-wrenching horror of failure. "Thank you, sir," she says, her tone like a broken record.


    "Your mother was an amazing woman, and it''s worth restating that she''d be very happy to know how well you''re doing."


    "Thank you, sir."


    He draws back, leaning on the wall and reaching for his pencil and algorithm-filled notebook. "I know your dad''s just as proud; any father would. You''ve got a class five ahead of you, Miss Airineth. The other students are good, but you''re driven, and that''s exactly how all the class fives are. That''s what sets us apart. Run along now and spend time with your father. You''re going to be busy a year from now when you get that commission, after all."


    "Yes, sir, thank you, sir." Clare bows, backing away in the same movement.


    Elwood nods again. "Have a nice day."


    "Thank you." And at that, she finally feels secure enough in her formalities to leave the outer keep and head down the streets home.


    The moment she''s out in the fresh air of the day and the shadow of the walls she stops. One, two, then three deep breaths pass through her as she tries her best to calm down, but it''s not helping. She has to get to work immediately; progress is the only way to fix this. She glances up to the rim of the wall, those densely-armored guards doing their rounds, braving the cold weather for hours on end to keep watch outside and measure the water level of the ocean; she''ll do it for people like them. She''ll invent something that can do it in their place.


    Strutting at a double-quick pace, Clare passes by the circulating crowds of humans and automatons; human-like in shape but faceless and clearly more mineral than animal. She rushes by without so much as a greeting to anyone or anything, readily reaches the Royal Library of Engineering, and slips inside aiming for one of the underused and always-silent study rooms.


    She spends the next two hours pouring over ideas for a thesis, but to no avail. What contribution could she possibly make to such a readily-shrinking body of available discoveries? What''s more, how could she have possibly forgotten?


    This will be the last problem of this caliber she has ¡ª it only gets worse from here.

 2 - Smooth

    Feels like only minutes have passed, and then she sees him enter the library as well.


    A young, dark haired and somber-featured lad with a solemn look of constant contemplation, his brows at a seeming permanent raise in what she can only assume is either confusion or concern. She raises her hand nervously to her best friend from behind her pile of books. He looks about, waves back, and joins her in the little enclosure of bookshelves.


    "Afternoon, Clare," he says with a light, almost chivalrous trepidation.


    "Afternoon," she responds with a deflated bleat. "This is it, I guess," she scoffs as though her life were the punchline of an eighteen year old joke.


    Waine sighs. "I''m... I''m really sorry you''re going through this."


    Still with that empty grin, she looms further over the study table, like an oaken pond reflecting back her monumental failure as a living creature; given such promise and so many opportunities to succeed, for it all to fail. "Yeah, well thanks," she says. "I guess getting carried away was my end after all, you said it."


    He would chuckle and give her his usual playful shove, but this is no laughing matter. "Surely there''s something you''ve thought of?"


    "It has to be an original contribution, Waine. If I can''t think up something by tonight, there''ll be no way I''ll be able to do enough research to push it out in time."


    He brings up his knuckle and gently crosses it over his chin for a scratch. "Well, when I was researching for mine I just asked myself what is something important that no one''s thought about? Maybe it''s something the ancestors had that we''ve forgotten. Everhold''s really old, after all; twelve whole generations now. What''s something that people want to know about, something that effects them?"You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    Clare stares deep into the desk, reflecting her thoughts off it with a fatalist contemplation; as if the question where written on the surface, and it were the most important question to even be asked.


    "I said it would be on infrastructure. It has to be that," She says after a pause.


    Waine smirks. "So what... logistic improvements? Routing?"


    "I don''t... I don''t know."


    "Well that cuts down your options a little, but honestly you could stretch the definition to mean anything." He sighs. "Have you thought about agriculture routing? Those autos could always do their job a little bit faster."


    She shrugs. "That''s not my expertise at all, and that''s what half the class'' projects''ll be about."


    He draws back. "Are you sure? I''d..." he looks across the library, making sure no one''s nearby before he leans in. "I''d give you my notes for my project. It had a pretty good side-line and it''d be an easy out. I''ve practically done the whole thing but presented something else."


    Clare glances up to Waine. "You''d... you''d let me use your research?"


    "Sure. You deserve it, and I wouldn''t publish it if you needed it."


    "That''s..." she smirks with a wince. "That''s really, really nice of you, but it wouldn''t be right."


    "Come on, if you don''t come up with something to present you''ll get kicked out of the academy. You''d be a Class two!"


    "W-"


    "Do you want to be a mechanic for your whole life?"


    She looks away bitterly. "...No."


    He draws in with a firm gaze. "Then take my research. Make your own project out of it, present it, and become the class five we both know you deserve."


    "But I don''t deserve it if I didn''t do the wo-"


    "Clare."


    "..." She sighs, bites her tongue, and looks back to him. "Let me think on it."


    "Alright, fine," he smiles back. "Take your time, you wouldn''t need more than a couple of days to put it together with my notes."


    She gets up and gathers her materials.


    "You''re leaving?"


    She nods. "I need to go home. It''s late."


    "It''s barely four."


    "I gotta try to do this myself. I''ll let you know, though."


    He stares her down a moment, and then lays back with a lean. "Well, alright. You know what you''re doing. You''ve always made your stuff work one way or another. Keep your chat-stone on you, though."


    "Will do. Thanks again."


    Waine scoffs. "Get out of here. Go think up a thesis idea." He waves her off with a shooing motion, his smile relaxed, only until she waves back and leaves the library. He takes a deep breath. "Alright, good job, Mister Brightmoor. Good job," he recites to himself with relief.

 3 - Home

    Walking down the muggy streets of the residential quarter, Clare crumbles tightly into herself with both hands in her pockets.


    She hasn''t the slightest clue what to do. Any proper magi-tech engineer would just do the work, or admit to their failure and do their best to pick up the pieces, but Waine is offering her an easy way out. If she takes his notes and puts her name on it, she''ll get her degree, get her guaranteed class four, get that forty an hour.


    "But she wouldn''t do that," Clare notes coldly to herself, passing beside a pair of agricultural automatons on their way to the mechanical eighth within the industrial quarter; likely for repairs, she guesses. She smiles at them like she would a person, and they nod their heads back; they''re wonderfully complex thanks to Everhold''s solid foundation of magitechnology, but only the ones that need to be. Managraphy is expensive and time consuming, after all, so they''re usually made only as intelligent and safe as their environment requires.


    With a misted, cold breath, she nods to herself with the decisiveness of an adult, despite her youth. Her mom won her commission fair and square; so will she. It won''t be easy, but honesty is the one policy that she definitely instilled in her. Her mom never backed down when it came to the truth.


    She gains a brief, nostalgic grin when she remembers the time her dad demanded to know why she left her auto and its parts in the downstairs bathroom.


    "It''s not like we get visitors, dear," Clare repeats to herself, quoting her mother.


    She reaches her street and steps up to her home''s front porch. She sniffs a moment while standing by the door. Her dad''s already back; and the cooking food only barely masks the scent of the horrible, weird underground.


    With a gentle knock, Clare is given prompt entry by the servant automaton, who bows its head in greeting. Her father only lets it open the door. He wouldn''t trust it with anything else after the accident with her mother.


    Clare thanks the machine, bows her head back, and steps in carrying everything she brought with her as her father''s voice rings through the wooden home.


    His name is Zach. He is a sad man.


    "Hey," he starts, "short day?"


    She steps up for a hug with the man, emerging from the bright kitchen. "Same could be said for you. How are you doing?"


    They hug, his silver-white bristles brushing over her hair.


    "Good, good I suppose," he says, drawing back to show the same gentle smile amidst that crushed, worldly face.


    "Suppose?" They both enter the kitchen, the earthy notes of the tiles giving the room a comfortable warmth on top of the actual temperature coming from the pot at the side of the room, bubbling away with a promise of good things on the way.


    Turning for the pot, he tosses his hand out dismissively. "Naw, it was good. Normal day, just tired."


    She pours herself a glass of milk from the refrigerator and takes a seat. "Anything happen?"


    "The usual. One of the autos got stuck walking between two nodes. Some genius decided to go down and switch ''em around."


    She takes a sip. "Wow, people do that?"


    He shuffles the pot by the handle, the simmering stew whining against the hot edges. "Not often. It''s a no-man zone, after all."Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    "Because it''s important?"


    "That, and..." he sighs. "The autos are real simple down there."


    Clare knows to lay off. "I''m... I''m sorry, dad."


    He shakes his head. "It''s not safe for people without a personnel node on. The auto''s down there will tear you right in half thinking you''re some sewer refuse; too stupid to know the fucking difference between a living human being and just some stupid tr-"


    "Dad, please."


    "I just..." He sighs, and increases the heat before turning back to his chair. Only now does she notice the open beer next to the pepper shaker. He takes a quick swing. "People make me sick sometimes. They don''t have a goddamn clue, acting like there''s something worth hiding down there. Even if you didn''t get killed, it''s still illegal. If Everhold''s power infrastructure were to take a hit, it''d put a quarter of the city down for a month, n'' that wouldn''t be pretty."


    Despite her conscious mind''s best efforts, her eye gains a spark when he passes the word "infrastructure". "So... why do they come down there?"


    He takes a sip while he gives her a dissatisfied, concerned shrug. "Curious, I bet. Met a class one down there once, decided to hide out during work hours."


    Clare looks to her glass. "That''s pretty bad."


    "He said he wanted to know the truth. He thought there was some way out from below."


    "Out to the ocean?"


    There''s an expression on her father that Clare, as a growing lady, can just barely take note of here. She is certain that he has a brief look of disgusted, tired, hateful misery, as though her question had a physical, intensely bitter flavor to it.


    "Yeah, out to the ocean," he says simply, staring into his ale with a mindless, soulless stare.


    Clare smiles. "I''d like to see it sometime, you know."


    "The ocean?"


    "Yeah. I hear class fives can go up to Victor''s observatory and see over the walls, even get up on the wall with the secret guard and see it up close."


    He shrugs. "S''pose it''d be nice to see over the walls, if even once."


    She nods, feeling like she''s gotten her hand back in the discussion and off the indirect topic of her mom.


    "By the way," he slowly brightens up, his tired eyes gleaming with a little positivity. "How''d the exam go?"


    "I''m reasonably sure I got top marks, but..." she scoffs awkwardly, not sure how to break it to him. "I have a project thing... that I wasn''t really thinking about. It kind of caught me by surprise."


    He raises a brow, holding the bottle high to his lips.


    "I... it''s my thesis."


    Zach blinks a few times in surprise, bringing his drink down. "You... oh, darling... I''m sorry."


    "Thanks, I..." She shrugs like he would. "I don''t know what to do. I told Professor Elwood it would be on infrastructure. Do you have any ideas?"


    As sorry as he feels for her, he clams up, knowing exactly where this chat would lead if he let her have her way. "There''s a lot you can do with a topic like that. You don''t need my expertise for anything. After all it''s your thesis, darling."


    "Yes, but I just need some inspiration. I want to know how your job could be improved through engineering. You said that... that the substation autos could be improved. Don''t you think you could get a magi-tech on it and make sure that they''re as safe as the servi-"


    "No. That''s a stupid idea, Clare. I''m..." He turns away, leaning back and avoiding her gaze, which really is too much like her mother¡¯s. "I''m sorry, but that''s not going to work out. I don''t want you coming anywhere near those things. Their plates are too old, the managraphic''s smeared. There''s no telling what they''d do if they saw two personnel nodes walking around, that and I only have one of them, so that''s no twice. I have to be careful just as myself... they walk to me sometimes, thinking I''m a goddamn latch needing opening or something."


    "I could tell you what they''d do."


    He looks up at her like she''s finally crossed the line. "That so? More than momma, huh?"


    Clare''s hair stand on end, staring back at her father''s frost-blue eyes. "...Dad I... You said it was... you said it was an industrial a-... oh."


    "Yeah, it sure as hell was. I didn''t tell you about it because you were too young... but I guess you''re old enough now."


    At once, Clare''s worries go from her thesis, to her mother''s fate. She draws in, tightening her grip around the glass of milk to the point of nearly shattering. "Okay." She leans into a tilt, causing the little green-gem earring on her right ear to swing about with equal interest.


    His eyes glaze over with aged, damaged carelessness. "...She was the best magi-tech in Everhold, your mom. She was Victor''s personal adviser during the year three hundred redesign for the agricultural quarter''s auto stable, but everyone knows that; everyone would tell you... She held the position for a few years."


    "We were about to move into a new house, right?"


    "I mean, what else would you do with that many pieces?" He sighs, shakes his head again, and continues. "She started getting... nervous."


    "Nervous?"


    "Yeah."

 4 - Mary

    Ignoring the calls from the pursuing guards, a bemasked Mary Airineth slams her boot into the rusted grate down in the agricultural quarter. The iron oxide snaps crustily forward with a crash, opening the way to the sewers, but most importantly, the magi-electric substation system. "I know it''s here," she spits under her breath, crawling through with an indignant, wild rush. With a flick, she taps on her collar-bound light, shining out in a far reaching, if dim, bluish light. Mary dashes down the refuse-ridden etched stone spillways, she takes what seems like a dozen sharp turns in the dark. She''s memorized the path, and she knows she doesn''t have much time before Zach catches wind, but by this point she''s is willing to meet any challenge to find the truth. It just doesn''t make sense.


    There''s another turn in the dark system, and this one wasn''t expected. She stops in place, her short, heavy breaths betraying her horror.


    "It''s the wrong way," she mutters to herself, her voice muffled through the gas mask''s filters.


    With a clumsy, frantic speed Mary unfolds the two maps of the interlaced sewage and substation systems. She holds them together, joining their ink into one, faded image, and shines her light from under it. It''s simple enough, she just made one wrong turn. Her ears, however, tell a much darker tale.


    From the edge of her hearing, she can hear it, the eerily-paced, promptly-measured steps of an automaton. She looks up from the maps while stuffing them messily into her pocket:


    Posing like a leisured stroll, but at a pace that is just under a jog, a janitorial auto appears, its mana-graphic sight-sigil on its head like an icon of burning, murderous efficiency. She doesn''t back up when it looks her way, having caught her in its field of vision. Of course the auto doesn''t take her for a person; these ones aren''t intelligent enough to have that sort of sophisticated artificial intelligence. Mary understands that the auto sees her as a confused pile of disposed organic matter, at five foot six in height and at one hundred and fifty two pound in weight; just something to be separated and moved out to prevent a clog.


    Without ceremony, it starts straight for her, making no sound but for its foot steps.


    "Administrator argument," she says coolly.


    Reaching for her neck, it stops cold, its rock-like alloy fingers but a meter from her head.


    Its managraph symbol pings white for a moment, showing that it''s waiting for a command input.


    Mary inputs nothing, but just passes by. She''ll let Zach, the only man in Everhold to bear such an immense responsibility as maintaining the sewers and substations, to clean up after her. The auto is still as she leaves, to be stationary until given its next directive.


    She retraces her steps, rechecks her maps, and then goes down another route. This one is right.


    In only a minute she finds herself in the well-lit substation system area. She looks to the wall to the spray-painted relief.


    "SUBSTATION 4" it says, with small arrows pointing left and right leading to either substation''s 3 or 5.


    With a bated, strained breath, she starts down the great circular way to substation 5. It''s a long run, and it takes a toll from 4 to 5, and then 5 to 6, occasionally meeting autos along the way and initializing with her voice commands just as quickly. Once she gets to substation 6, she looks down the tunnel, curving away enticingly. There''s no light down that way, but there is a way none the less. There''s something there. With a few choice glances she looks over the half-dozen warning signs present along the walls as she passes them by:


    "NO ACCESS"


    "AREA UNDER MAINTENANCE"


    "DANGER: CONSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS"


    "DANGER: NON-SOCIAL AUTOMATONS IN SERVICE. SEVERE INJURY OR DEATH COULD..."


    "PROCESSION INTO CORDONED AREA IS IN VIOLATION WITH PRINCIPLE 1-23..."


    She makes sure to stop for the last one. "YOUR CURIOSITY IS NOT WORTH YOUR LIFE. TURN AROUND NOW. NOTHING PAST THIS SIGN IS WORTH DYING FOR," it reads.


    She looks down the way, just a couple minutes more and she¡¯ll be where the last substation is supposed to be. The one where it all hinges on. She steps forward, just when she hears his voice.


    "Mary!"


    She turns around, and sees Zach, fully kitted out and staring her down from substation 6''s entry tunnel. He can see her clearly. Her usually slicked down, conservative style is a frazzled mess with strands reaching every which way¡ª the mask''s straps pushing them out of place comically. Her eyes under the lenses are wide, bestial, and impatient. Her demeanor is sunken, ready for movement; desperate.


    "...Don''t stop me," she says, her voice an empty husk of what it was a week ago.


    "Baby, if you were going to take my mask why didn''t you take my node? You know how danger-"


    "Because you would''ve come down here with or without it. I wasn''t going to risk you for my sake. Now please, just turn around."


    "No, Mary. I''m owed an explanation. Just what the hell''s going on with you?"


    "You don''t know. Nobody knows."


    "What?"


    "It''s wrong, Zach. The whole thing''s fucked up from the start."


    He takes a deep breath. "Doctor Petrassus doesn''t matter. Nobody cares what he said about you, honey. Just go to the secondary review and they''ll cl-"


    "This isn''t about what he said. This is about the truth. I can''t stand idly by while we slowly die out."


    "I-is this about the granary? Everything''s fine, honey! We have more food than we ever had! Everhold''s better than ever! You of all people know tha-"


    "No. It''s not sustainable. It doesn''t work. I did the math, I can''t believe I didn''t sooner."


    "What?"


    "I sat down and I figured it out, Zach. There''s more to this than just the ocean... it''s not even there."


    There''s a nervous pause between them.


    "Of course the ocean''s outside the walls, honey! We have people posted every day watching it!"Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    "Have you ever met one of these people?"


    He scoffs. "You know they can''t give away their identities. Their line of work is still top secret!"


    She scoffs in return. "And do you even know what the ocean would look like?"


    "We have pictures! The viewing port!"


    "We have sketches. Assumptions. Generations of misinformation built upon a set of choice lies. We are trapped in here. No one asked, no one questioned. We just kept working. In our incessant reach for food, for the working day, we forgot where we came from."


    "Honey."


    She squints in the dim lights. "..."


    "Don''t do this. Clare is asleep, at home. She has no idea what''s going on, and I don''t want to explain to her in the morning that you went running and screaming into the sewers to get killed by an auto. Don''t do that to her."


    "Zach, I need to kn-"


    "Don''t do that to me. Don''t be selfish. You''re just going to get yourself kill-"


    "And if I don''t we will kill ourselves! Whatever our ancestors did those years ago, it wasn''t reasonable. I can''t blame them, they probably expected to be behind these walls for no more than a few decades, but we''ve been here for three hundred years, Zach. Histories and generations!"


    "But King Victor knows, honey! He was there!"


    "King Victor doesn''t matter! I don''t care if he''s immortal. I don''t care if he''s a god! He''s going to get us killed! He''s senile! We have to find a way out!"


    Zach peers behind her shoulder, to the construction zone between numbers 6 and 1. "...Mary. There is no way out. The ocean would have come in through a passage. The place would have flooded. The autos there, I saw them. They don''t have social programming, at all. They would kill you no matter what you said, no matter what you had on you. If you go down that way, you will die."


    She doesn''t miss a beat. "That''s a chance I''m willing to take for our little girl."


    "She''s too fucking young to lose her mother! Think about her! Don''t you want her to have a good life?"


    "There''s no good life here, she wouldn''t want her children to starve to death, and I wouldn''t want her to have that."


    "We''re fine here, Mary! What the fuck have you been reading to make you think otherwise?!"


    "In about a decade from now, we''re going to start losing it. Harvests won''t have enough nutrition in the soil. The rotations won''t work as well. We''re at the crest before the downward spiral. It''s only going to get worse from here."


    "It''ll get worse if you give up! Don''t you dare quit on me! Quit on everyone!"


    "I''m not quitting. I''m trying to save you."


    "By killing yourself!?"


    "There''s something down there, Zach," she nods behind her into the dark. "It''s not labeled on the maps. I th-"


    "That''s because the city doesn''t need more than six substations! We''ve never had a power outage, anywhere!"


    "But it''s still there. They wouldn''t have it for no reason, Zach. There''s something there, and even if no one else cares about what''s there, it''s the only way. I''ve spent hours, and hours going over the blueprints for the city. That is the only place the entrance could be."


    "Hun, I saw the maps too. Nothing''s there."


    "Because you haven''t checked for yourself. Just because it''s not marked doesn''t mean it''s not there. I''m going to find out... I love you."


    Zach takes a scarce, hard breath. "Baby, don''t do this."


    She starts off down the hall. "Bye."


    "Stop!" He sprints forward. "Fuck''s sake, Mary. Please!"


    She doesn''t stop, and her lithe frame goes through the complex at a speed he never expected she was capable of. With all his gear it''s all he can do to just fall behind a little bit with each step. He sheds his pack. It''s still not enough. He drops his tools, she''s still faster. He finally drops his personnel node, that heavy, managraphed block ensuring safety from semi-social autos, onto the floor as he leans into a sprint.


    Racing ahead down the corner, Mary can hear his frantic steps gaining on her, but coming up from the front is her salvation; at least that''s what she thinks.


    An unassuming automaton, brownish black from lack of cleaning, drones calmly in the dark; its glowing green managraph shining dull against the eternal blackness of the construction zone.


    It notices her and starts forward like a woodcutter to a set log, prepared to split. It''s slower than her, and she bypasses it around the side, forcing it to be a buffer between herself and her husband.


    Zach isn''t so sly when the auto turns on him. She can hear a crash behind her as he hits it, and a small struggle as he yells out administrator commands, all of which that the automaton ignores as it attempts to grab a hold of him.


    "Mary!" Zach yells, regaining his footing as he scarcely slips from the auto''s slow, certain grasp. "Mary, please don''t do this!" he yells, blocked by the automaton''s approach.


    She hears him take a deep breath.


    "Maryyyy!"


    And that''s the last she hears of him. She knew he would be okay. He deals with those stupid autos all the time, after all; but to be honest she would allow him to die for this. She wouldn''t want to admit it, but she''s honest with herself enough to know she would sacrifice anyone, even him, if it meant securing a future for Clare.


    "I''m sorry, Zachi," she mutters, only a minute away from the seventh sector in the underground. While the above city may be split into eighths and quarters, there''s seven substation turrets. She''s almost there, past what she''s certain is a fake construction project, made by a cowardly leader that refuses to let his people escape his insane social project. She passes a few splatters of blood, illuminated clearly by her bluish light. She inspects them without stopping: all giant, human-sized marks, accompanied by drained streaks across the floor as if the victims were dragged off shortly after.


    Automatons at work, certainly.


    Finally, she passes the last of the materials, molded and rusted with age. Something''s wrong here, and no one, not a soul in all the city, is aware. In the dark hall, the tunnel leading to substation 7 juts out horrifically into the blackness. Untouched for hundreds of years.


    She slows down, checks the way she came and the way looping around to substation 1, then turns in to the unhidden, but guarded passage. The thing she really, really hates about it though, is how incredibly tight it is; perfectly sized for an automaton. She''d have no room to get by if she met one, and could only go back.


    Mary keeps her pace slow, trusting her ears to alert her of anything behind her. The ancient, moistened slime of the cobblestone is slick under her boots, forcing her to take to a flat-footed, even slower pace inside the silent passage.


    After a whole minute of the mad, tomb-like quiet, she sees a light at the end.


    With scoff of disbelief, she heads forward to the bluish light, shining like the day offering relief.


    She knew it, she was right.


    Taking care not to slip, she starts at a quickened pace toward the end of the passage, becoming so bright that she no longer needs her light. The thoughts of returning to the city flash through her mind, of telling everyone about the way out, about freedom from their kingdom-sized prison. She can''t wait to show Clare the outside! She can''t wait to see trees for the first time, just like she knows there''ll be! Ignorance can be bestowed from generation to generation, but so can hope, and at this moment, there is nothing but hope in her heart, just before she reaches the end of the tunnel.


    It''s not daylight, but the blinding white-blue light of an automaton in an error state.


    She stops flat, shorting her pace the second before crashing into the twitching automaton.


    Mary takes stock of what she''s seeing with wide eyes and a chill runs down her spine.


    She''s in a compact, round room, precisely the same that would hold a magi-tech substation, large, whirring contraptions regulating magitechnical currents to offset the chance of a rare, but rarely-survived overload.


    The automaton, so old that its serial designation label is rusted to naught but an orange-brown smear across its neck, is flinching back and forth in an abrupt, almost human-like speed, as if moving to save a life.


    Behind the uncanny scene, she can see, just barely visible past the automaton''s floodlight of a face, a rounding corner, leading to a stairwell. "Substation 7" leads somewhere.


    The engineer just stares at the scene for a moment, the auto making a droning preparation before the *click* that constitutes the error, again and again and again. She can''t say for sure how long it''s been here on it highest power setting, but she would venture to guess since the founding of Everhold itself.


    Mary Airineth, class five magi-tech engineer and head for the last dozen top-emblem projects in the kingdom, subconsciously strokes her left ear-lobe, holding a small, green earring; a tick of hers she''s afraid she passed onto her daughter the same week she gave her the other one of the pair.


    Finally, she clears her throat.


    "Administrator argument."


    The auto does nothing, and she nods in self-response. Of course a non-social auto wouldn''t listen to anything she says. The only way she could talk to it would be to open it up and alter its managraphy: the inner circuitry of the machine that magically dictates commands into the frame of the auto''s golem-like body. She won''t, she has no time, and she frankly doesn''t give a damn about debugging autos at a time like this, when it''s all waiting for her, all at the other side.


    She takes the first step forward to pass by in the close, one-meter clearance offered by the automaton, and no sooner does she pass it, does she feel the rock-solid grasp of the automaton take hold of her shoulder.


    There is no clicking noise this time.

 5 - Learns

    Clare sits there at the table, clutching her glass of milk; entirely untouched from the moment he started his story.


    "That hallway was the last I saw her." Zach says, gazing forward with a numb, cattle-like stare.


    "So... so she could still be alive!"


    "... A few weeks later they found a skeleton in the rot, eaten over by nature at the edge of the sewer system. It was only after it was stripped clean enough for the bones to show that anyone noticed it... guess I can''t blame ''em. No one likes to go down there."


    The two are dead silent, each holding onto their beverage of choice like the one strand of comfortable lies a soul can cling to amidst the brutal, savage, demonic truth.


    Clare looks up from her milk with a quiet, meek expression. "The story where she got bumped by an auto up on the mill rafters, then-"


    "A lie."


    She looks back down. "So, you mentioned something about a docto-"


    "Doctor Petrassus. He''s the class five medical examiner. His say is over everyone when it comes to medical opinion."


    "... And he said she was crazy?"


    "Just about." He takes a long breath, wrapping his hands around his bottle as if they were holding Mary''s hands. "Said she was overcome with a bout of poor nerves and wasn''t... wasn''t ''viable for service'' any more."


    "But why?"


    "She started... saying things."


    "What kinds of things?"


    Zach looks down to the table. "A whole lot of bullshit."


    "Dad."


    "It was. I don''t want you hearing it."


    "What was it?" She demands, her tone gaining a wry edge.


    His breathing picks up. She knows that''s a bad sign. "Honey, I''m saying this for your own good. She had a lot of ideas¡­ separatist ideas. She was smart; smarter than me, that''s for damn sure. But when you get too much of a good thing, you start putting yourself in dangerous places. She was in a dangerous place. She believed so much that there was more outside of Everhold a-"


    "She thought there was something outside the walls?"The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Zach sighs. "...Yeah."


    "But isn''t it just ocea-"


    "Yes."


    Clare draws back at her father''s tone, but it''s clear to both of them that the answer isn''t good enough for her. She knows he hasn''t seen it; no one has except King Victor.


    "So... that''s it, then?" she asks, looking away in an awkward, hurt mix of spite and shame.


    "...Sweetie, I don''t... I don''t want you to look at your mom differently because of this. She was an amazing woman. It''s just the way she left us was... harder than most. She had a lot of stress on her shoulders. Preventing the starvation of everyone in these walls was her job, her main responsibility."


    "That''s a lot for a person."


    The two can''t bare to look at the other.


    "Just..." Zach scoots his chair back. "I''m sorry. I need some fres-"


    "Just put it next to my room," Clare says with a start, beating him out of the kitchen at twice the speed as she heads directly upstairs. "Good night."


    "I know you''ll need some time," he says softly, scooting back up to the table with a sad frown. "I love you."


    She slams the door behind her, and leans against it.


    So this is how it happened. She was lied to, but she can forgive that. What she cannot stand is how he just accepted it. She spares a thought it might be because he''d rather live in a comfortable lie than a horrible truth, but it''s not good enough for her. She''s not sure what to feel, what to think: That her mother could still be out there, somewhere, and that he was too scared to go find out.


    On the brink of tears, she braces deep into the door, not so much to keep anything out, but to push her immense frustration against something that can take it.


    With a muffled sob, she comes to a decision. This is much bigger than a school project, but she can''t just throw it off on the sidelines. If her father''s right and there''s nothing past there, if her mom really did just die for nothing, then she can always go back, and bring back a report on automaton safety standards in low-manned locations. She could make a case for it to never happen to anyone again, but right now, she''ll expect the best.


    She takes her chat stone, sends a small spark of magic in it that all humans possess, and raises it to her lips.


    "Waine."


    There''s a pause before it lights up with his voice. "About time. Let''s meet up at Jacques'' and talk about it over some coffe-"


    "I need your help with my project," she says bluntly, easing off the door and heading over to her bedroom window.


    Another pause, and he responds with a surprised tone. "Wait... so you have an idea?"


    "Yeah, and it''s a big one."


    "Well damn, alright! How may I help?"


    "You need to... I don''t know yet. I''ll see you at Jacques'' at eight."


    "Yeah? Why so late?"


    "I need to take a look at something."


    "Where?"


    "The library."


    "Just some confirmation?"


    "Something like that. See you."


    "See y-"


    She muffles the stone back into her pocket and reaches for the window. It won''t be for a while for her dad to realize she''s gone, especially he if keeps on drinking like he has been this week; he''ll probably fall asleep before dinner''s ready anyway.


    Clare opens the window wide and crawls through. She''s surprisingly lithe for her lifestyle of studious pursuits, and is able to navigate the small porch roof with little difficulty. She closes the window back with just an inch to spare, leans over the porch roof, and swings herself over with no more than an easily-managed meter-high fall to await her.


    Her shoes making a delicate clopping sounds upon the brick, she lands and crouches down in the same movement to avoid being spotted from the window. She sneaks off until she''s out of the pitch of the windows, and she''s free. The library is just a quick ten minute walk away, she should be able to get all she needs to confirm her suspicions.

 6 - Half Liar

    Jacques'' coffee shop is their preferred place of meeting. It has a calm atmosphere, but more importantly, it''s close to the central castle, where they both spend the large chunks of their waking hours. There has been worried discussion around the kingdom that in a few harvest''s time there won''t be enough coffee to go around to keep all the shops running, which is news that the roasters are indeed troubled by, but they''re mostly happy that they''re getting more business because of it. "Last time you''ll ever have the drink" is a strong advertisement, after all.


    "No sugar okay? They''ve been charging out the ass for it." Waine says, bringing the two tin cups to their table in the comfortable nook of the store.


    "Yeah," Clare responds with a nod, taking her cup from him while still focusing on her notes.


    "So what''s this big idea of yours?" He asks with a genuinely interested, positive look.


    She takes a sly glance around, as if it were secretive in nature. He scoffs at the dramatic sight.


    "Come on," he adds with an arched brow. "It can''t be that bad can i-"


    He stops himself, seeing her unfold one of her copied diagrams of the magi-tech substation blueprints.


    "Oh...." He clears his throat. "That isn''t the substations, is it?"


    "Keep it down," Clare whispers.


    "R-right."


    "It is," she reveals, flipping the blueprint to make her notes legible to him. She points at different sections of the diagram as she explains her case. "I have not one, but two theses I could use. First one would be about an improved social blueprint that could be simply printed on the autos down there. They''re fully anti-social, they don''t even recognize humans and living."


    Waine''s smile starts dying out, steadily losing any humor to his features. "So it''s definitely illegal."


    She gives him an annoyed glance. "Well, you don''t have to he-"


    "N-no," he corrects. "I got you."


    She smiles. "Thanks, Waine. I''m glad I have a friend li-"


    "But you''re just going to have the substation chief go and take reports, right?"


    "No, I''m going down there."


    From his look of concern, a new smile is born; this time it looks positively demented. "Y-... Clare, listen to yourself. Everyone knows what non-social autos do to people."Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    "So? Why not fix it?"


    "Because we don''t need to. If they were never given social programming, they won''t obey any commands. If they don''t obey any commands, they''ll just do what is in their programming, and Clare, substation autos have two things in their programming: ensure that the substations are maintained, and remove foreign debris. Do you know what that makes you, Clare?"


    "I know, b-"


    "You''re a way better student than I am, Clare. Everyone knows you''re the best, but you can''t just overlook the basics. Autos are nothing to mess around with. You remember year one of undergrad?"


    She looks away, taking up her bitter coffee for a sip.


    "Luis died, in front of everyone in the classroom. You were a sophomore at the time, but you were in the academy when it happened. I was there in the room. The second he turned on his auto it-"


    "I know."


    "Then why?"


    "Are you going to help me or not?"


    "I... This is suicide! You could be expelled, imprisoned, killed! Clare, you have no reason to do that. You''ll just be throwing yourself away, and I don''t want to see another friend, let alone my best friend get her head torn off by some senseless pile of shit." He leans in, just like at the library. "There''s a better way to do it. When you set one of those in motion they''re impossible to stop if their chassis is closed! You''re actually talking about opening a live one up, Clare!"


    "Maybe that''s necessary."


    "Clare. If you''re going to be getting an auto, you might as well just design an auto to protect you and hold the other one at bay while you-"


    "That''s... actually a pretty good idea," she says, looking down and jotting a note.


    "Uh... No, but that would then be stealing. You said yourself... Clare, Clare are you listening?!"


    "I''m listening," she says, eyes still down at her paper.


    "I know you''re stressed, but this is no time to ruin your life. You have a father Clare, and friends! Your... damn, you''re like one step away from meeting Victor! You''re making waves! Don''t throw it away."


    "I''m going to do this, Waine. My mind''s made up."


    "Then let me change it! We all love you, Clare... I love you!"


    Only now does she glance up from her notes with a raised brow.


    "A-as a friend."


    "Mmm." She looks back to her notes.


    "Look, I... I''ve had enough friends die for no reason. Wouldn''t you rather just not be a class four than die? Are you absolutely crazy?"


    "I must be."


    "Then why won''t you listen?!"


    "You said so yourself," she leans up and picks up her cup. "I''m absolutely crazy."


    "Wh- you." Waine groans, rubbing his face and throwing a weary, agitated gaze to Clare. "Just... okay, just let me come with you."


    "...You''d... you''d do that?"


    He clears his throat, a slight blush marking his pronounced cheekbones. "I... yes, of course."


    "That''s... thank you, Waine, but I need you up here."


    His expression bitters. "What do you mean?"


    "I need you to be my communication hub, just in case anything happens... I don''t want dad to wonder." She says this, of course, but she''s not even sure if she means it.


    Waine draws back, takes a long, stressed breath, and comes to terms with what''s about to happen. "I-... Alright, Clare. I''ll do it."


    A faint, sad smile crosses her face. "You''re a real friend, Waine."


    "...Yeah, don''t mention it."


    She leans back over the diagram. So I''m going to go in and try to-"


    "Couldn''t you just make a duplicate non-social or somethi-"


    "Waine."


    "Right, sorry. Go on."


    She shakes her head as she leans down once more. "Okay, so I''m going to go in, open an auto, and deactivate it. Change up its¡ª"

 7 - Faithful

    The plan in place, all she needs now is the equipment. With a slow trot home, she thinks it over. She knows exactly how she''ll do it, in fact. There something she never dared to use, despite all her deepest curiosity, but she knows it''s her only choice.


    Using the same way she came in, she enters the house. With a silent, straining crawl, she etches over the window, and lowers herself to the floor. If someone told her that she''d be crawling out of windows to get into the sewer level this morning, she''d laugh at them, but fate has a way of guiding people out of their character, or perhaps leading them into her true self.


    Clare opens the door to her room with a gentle creak. Her foot bumps into something mid way. Instantly she pulls her foot back with a peep. She clearly envisions the boot of her father, stopping her exit. He must have found out; Waine that bastard.


    "D-dad?" She asks, only a centimeter around the frame to see around.


    There''s no response.


    Steadily, her thoughts turn to darker things. It''s funny, how one can be surrounded by society and comforts, and still only see what they want to see, but the mind is life''s most powerful wizard, capable of turning the most unassuming places into horror scapes of wild fantasy.


    Perhaps, she wonders, if it''s not her dad, after all. Sure enough, it did sound more like something... artificial, she feels.


    She just stands there for a moment, the door cracked open just a sliver, just enough for her to reach out, or for something else to reach in. Clare shakes her head. She''s being ridiculous.


    She pokes her head out into the dark hallway, and sees nothing, which confuses her until she looks down.


    Far from a horror and far more unassuming, the bowl of stew left for her by her father sits cold on the floor. A faint smirk crosses her lips; if she''d opened it any faster she probably would''ve turned it over.


    Clare takes up the bowl, eats a few bites, and takes it down with her to the first floor.


    Waiting around the corner and standing at attention by the door is the house automaton. She stops in the middle of the hall and admires it a moment, the moonlight reflecting dully off its chassis in a way that''s simultaneously beautiful and terrifying for her; so familiar, and yet so entirely unlike a person.


    She remembers back when she was a little girl. She had nightmares about them, the automatons. Almost all of them were made and finished by the time she was born. They were always a part of her life, especially considering her mother always had them in the house.


    With a sort of sacred reverence, like to a spirit, she bows her head gently before keeping on to the side room- added on after her mom got her class three job. Always a few second¡¯s walk from anywhere in the house, she comes to the nostalgic realization that she hasn''t opened this door since she was a little girl. With a deep breath, she reaches for the knob, and opens the door to her mother''s workspace.


    It was a sense of shared solemnity that had both her and her father leave the door shut permanently in the first few weeks after her death, and now the bond will be broken out of necessity.


    She swings the well-oiled door wide, revealing her mother''s work table, her enormous piles of notes at all sides and walls of the room, and in the end, sitting in its quaint wooden chair as it has been ever since her disappearance, her pet project, the custom automaton; which Clare hasn''t laid eyes on since she was last in here, years and years ago.


    Clare turns on the lights and closes the door behind her with the profile of a gentle breeze, taking great care not to make noise.


    Safe inside, Clare puts aside her bowl of stew and approaches the automaton; unique everywhere from its resplendent alloy chassis to its internal managraphic circuitry. It reminds her so much of her mother, she almost never saw her without it nearby, considering her mother spent most of her time at home in this small, almost claustrophobic room.


    Her gaze sharpens with determination, and she steps up to the auto. Like a knight in waiting, it remains bent over in its chair, Mary''s chair right beside it from where she used to work on it. It''s on this chair that Clare sits down to open up the auto''s faceplate. She''s looked through dozens of autos before for class, but never one like this. The joint system latching on the faceplate is set what seems to be an interior lock. She can''t get it off.


    After a couple minutes of labor, Clare draws back with a puff. She needs to find the key. The young lady takes a moment to think over likely places for the key, and then turns about to see the small picture of Mary holding her as an infant, resting up in the corner of the room.


    She pauses, having completely forgotten about the picture until now, and gets up to approach the frame. Reaching behind the wooden exterior, Clare feels along the lower, inner rim of the backside, and she feels a slight, cool bump along her fingers. With a victorious coo, she retrieves the auto''s interior faceplate key, the first of its kind that she''s seen. She always knew her mother was considered the very best automaton engineer of her time, but had no idea her designs would be this complicated.


    Clare hasn''t even the slightest idea.


    Plunging the little turn-key into the side of the auto''s head, Clare clicks it around a few times until a permissive, satisfying *snap* rings through the room. She removes the key, stuffs it in her pocket, and with almost sacred trepidation, she lifts the faceplate.


    Clare, usually cool headed, can''t stifle the gasp.


    Waiting within the head are the automaton''s managraphic logic plates: the brain of the machine not unlike a circuit board, but they''re so much thinner than the others, in every way. The plates are a fourth of the width of a usual, and don''t have the clunky weight of them, either. The managraphics are so thin, so unbelievably fine, it looks like it was written by a pen, rather than the industrial paste tubes used in the academy workshop. What she has the most trouble believing, however, is that the single plate she pulled is double sided, providing double the bang for a single circuit. Whatever this logic command is, she wonders, it must be unbelievably sophisticated. Considering this single plate contains more managraphics than even a highly-social four-plater automaton, it probably won''t have more than the first plate the next one contained in its head¡ª but she''s wrong.


    She puts aside the first plate, and removes the second plate, then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth. In all, she removes twelve plates of double-sided managraphics before reaching the end, proving to her that her mother had to make the plates so thin for the sake of simply putting it all inside without having to extend the actual chassis of the auto. She nods with a slow, impressed tilt of the head, simultaneously inspired and intimidated by how wonderfully complex and elegant her mother''s managraphics are; it''s like looking at little paintings, rather than an unsightly industrial necessity.


    Her awe takes a steady turn to fear when she realizes that which every engineer has been taught to be not just a standard, but a requirement.


    "Wait," she mutters. "Then where''s your core plate?" Clare asks, partially to herself, and partially to the auto as if it could respond.


    She flips through both sides of the twelve logic plates, but sure enough, not one of them has the small black speck upon a core plate, and none of the plates have the clear directive for activation; the very first plate students are taught to design.


    Clare sits in reverence of the auto for a near minute, pondering just how in the world this is all possible. She was planning on adding or changing one of the plates to include a material deconstruction protocol which she would use to protect her against the non-socials at the substation system, but this is so unheard of it completely defies recognition.


    It''s the first time she gets the feeling, and what a horrible, rotten thought it is: an overwhelming unease of paranoia. For the very first time, Clare ponders if just maybe, possibly, something she was taught is wrong, or in fact is a complete lie in the first place. It''s the sort of feeling one gets when all of society doesn''t feel quite as much like a safe community of like minds, and more of a pen, for animals and other things that need to be contained for their own good.


    The engineering student shakes her head. She can''t get distracted.


    With a fascinated, if nervous, anticipation she replaces the logic plates in their proper order and closes the faceplate, concealing the soulless machine within and restoring its appealing, almost elegant visage.


    She waits a moment, and suddenly realizes how stupid she''s being. This auto won''t start by itself as the others do, because then it would have been active for the entire time. She wonders if perhaps it''s not finished, but just as the thought crosses her mind, she hears a voice.


    "...Good evening," it says; a distorted, breathy, eerily-faint voice says, as if its voice is just barely reaching past its mask.


    Clare jolts back, flipping back from her chair and catching herself just in time before the backside slaps into the ground. She looks around briefly to see if she''s being watched, but focuses right back on the automaton. She''s sure of it; it just spoke to her.


    "H-...hello?"


    "...Hello," it says flatly, its voice like a cross between a bellows and a flute valve. Clare''s never heard anything quite as unnerving in all her life; similar to industrial noises forming words in a bare mockery of human language.


    "You... talk," a wide-eyed Clare sputters, slowly straightening her chair so as to not make noise.


    The sounds of an internal logic register work through its head with gentle, nigh-silent clicks; like the footsteps of a spider. "...Yes. I can talk," it says, putting some extra inflection on what it believes is the most important word in the sentence.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Clare cannot believe her ears at both the short clicking in its head, nor the voice.


    "In your head... is that a register?" she asks with an awe-struck tone.


    "...Define term: ''register''."


    "Like, huge logic circuits. The agricultural machines have them, but they''re much, like, way bigger; the size of buildings."


    "...I do not understand your terminology. Please rephrase inquiry."


    Clare looks at it with a slow, stupid glare. "Uh, nevermind. I need your help."


    "...I do not understand your terminology. Please rephrase inquiry."


    She bites the side of her lip in thought. Of course social automatons have pre-set phrases they can receive that translates to interior commands, which is why most non-industrial autos will indeed stop if someone speaks the word "stop". It''s apparent that this one is a little more complex, but simply not. She considers her next words more carefully.


    "State directive," she says, and at once she can hear the interior register clicking away in communication with its logic-plates.


    "Directive: Protect Clare."


    She gets another chill down her spine.


    "How did you know my name?"


    "...I do not understand your terminol-"


    "Who is Clare?"


    "...Clare Airineth, daughter of designer, Mary Airineth."


    "W-why do you need to protect her?"


    "...Due to directive."


    Clare sighs. "Uh... What do you need to protect Clare from?"


    "Danger."


    "Yes, but what is it? Did your designer think I would be in trouble?"


    "...Input user undefined."


    Clare raises a brow. She''s confused only for a second, though.


    "Define user: Clare."


    "Definition input."


    "Current user is Clare."


    The automaton clicks in thought. "...Doing so will overwrite current user profile for ''Clare''. Do you wish to proceed?"


    "Yes."


    "...Present user key," it says, reaching out its hand as if to accept something.


    She smirks awkwardly; she hasn''t the slightest clue. A few seconds of silence passes, and the automaton continues.


    "...Error, user key not presented. Action terminated," it says, putting a damning emphasis on the word ¡®terminated¡¯.


    Clare crosses her arms and turns away for a moment. She doesn''t have access to change anything through voice, and she has no clue what she''d be dealing with in the logic plates, but if her mother expected this to happen one day, then she must have left something behind.


    She thinks hard, all the way back to her childhood. What was the one thing that the two of them would share? What is something that the machine would recognize?


    Slowly, Clare draws back with an impressed realization. She raises a solemn hand to her ear and removes her green earring. After all, automatons can recognize mineral structures quite easily. She clears her throat to try again:


    "Define user: Clare," she says.


    "Definition input."


    "Current user is Clare."


    The automaton clicks in thought. "...Doing so will overwrite current user profile for ''Clare''. Do you wish to proceed?"


    "Yes."


    "...Present user key."


    She pops the earring, her mother''s only memento to her, into the palm of its hand.


    In an instant, the clicking noise inside its head increases violently in decibel and speed.


    "User key accepted. Key designation: Clare Airineth. Privilege: administrator. You have two messages. Do you wish to proceed?" It says this, reaching its hand out further to return the earring. It dumps it onto Clare''s lap.


    Her gaze is wide, like a herd animal spotting a wolf in the tree line. "...Yes," she affirms, barely catching the earring from slipping from her lap.


    The auto leans its head down, as if in remembrance. "Playing message:" At once, there''s another clicking sound, and from the automaton is a voice, Mary''s voice.


    "Clare, this is your mother. Do not repeat anything I am about to tell you to anyone. If there is anyone listening to this with you, you need to stop this recording. I gave you the earring to remember me by, just in case my suspicions are correct and something should happen; whatever that may be. You have this machine to take care of you. I don''t know all of the details, because to clarify I would have to risk my life, but when you come of age, you need to get out of the city. Don''t listen to your father, or your friends, or anyone else. I know there''s a way out somewhere, and I''m looking for it. I''ve gone down section by section, blueprints and work orders, for months, and I think I''ve finally found it."


    Clare takes a deep breath in sync with her mother in the recording.


    "Something''s horribly wrong, Clare. Everhold was never meant to maintain human life this long. It seems hopeful now because we are inventing things to solve our problems, especially with agriculture. I expect by the time you become a young lady that''s what most engineering students will be majoring in, as the problem is only going to get worse. Clare, our ancestors, whether they knew it or not, have placed us in a terrarium where, eventually, the balance will be offset permanently against us. If we were all machines, it could work, but we aren¡¯t. We¡¯re people; people that make mistakes. We only have so much soil, so much nutrition, so much rainfall every year. The fact of the matter is that we are approaching an increasingly delicate logistic problem, and I see absolutely no way to solve it.


    I''ve written the chosen of King Victor about it. They¡¯re good people, I think I believe them when they say Victor is a god, but I don''t think he''s a wise god. The Chosen claim they can speak to him through telekinesis, you know, but what they told me strikes me as something only a fool would claim. Again, don''t repeat what I''m saying to anyone; the culture that has developed has pointed more and more to the inside of itself, not sparing even a thought as to the outside world. Don¡¯t believe those lies about the wall guard. There¡¯s something wrong with them, I know it. There¡¯s more to this than we¡¯re told.


    People don''t even wonder what''s out there anymore; we just say ''it''s the ocean'' and leave it at that, as if that little port hole was enough for us to look out and sate our curiosity. To even question otherwise is considered the ravings of a lunatic. I just... it doesn''t make sense. How could they have made this entire city in time for the waves? Who would have told them ahead of time? Victor? Maybe, but I doubt it. I''m not firmly under the suspicion that Victor has been lying to keep us here; I¡¯m not a terrorist. I don''t doubt that he''s well-intentioned, he has to keep the peace, but it''s going to get us all killed.


    Clare, the world hasn''t flooded. We are only fooling ourselves. I am sure of it. There is no ocean out around our walls. If anything I''m sure of that. We have been fed a convenient diet of lies our entire life, so have my parents, and their parents, and so on.


    I''ll give you another recording if I can, but for now you just need to know you have to take Carrie with you; she should be at least close to done by the time you get this. I left a bag for you under the floorboards at the right side of the door. I love you so much, sweetie. You''re going to start at the academy next week, and I know you''ll do great, even if I won''t get to see you graduate."


    There''s a click, and the automaton raises its head back to address her.


    "You have one message. Do you wish to proceed?"


    Clare, gripping her knees and at the verge of tears, pauses a moment before speaking. "Yes."


    "Playing Message:" Another soulless click, and her mother''s voice is audible again. It sounds like she''s crying.


    "Sweetie. I''ve got to go. That arrogant fuck Petrassus finally put me up for board interview. They... please, sweetie, never forget that I love you. I love you so much, Clare."


    There''s a few intermittent sobs over the recording before Mary continues.


    "Take the bag, put on the mask, go to Substation Seven and continue through the wall. I know it''s there. Make sure you take Carrie with you. She¡­ eh, it will get you there, where ever it is. Don''t tell anyone. Don''t tell your father, or anyone, again; if anyone finds out they''ll try to stop you. They just don''t understand, they''ll never fucking understand! Please, Clare, take it and get out of here, but before you do, take the bag, like I said, under the floorboards on the right side of the door, and put on the mask- don''t take it off until you get out of the city; honestly you should just sleep with that on I don¡¯t know what¡¯s down there, not yet. Get food for the trip, anything else you need, and go. I can''t explain because I don''t have much time. They''re going to come today to take me away, I just know it. I love you, Clare. I love your father, but he wouldn''t understand. You have to leave him. I love you. Goodbye, Clare. I''m going to find out for myself if I''m right... this is it. I love you, never forget it. I love you."


    There''s another click, and that''s that.


    "That''s all messages," Carrie says. Clare doesn¡¯t think Carrie sounds like a ¡°she¡± at all; the voice is too deep.


    Clare is left with a silent room, and a realization waiting for her ever since she was a little girl. With this, comes a decision. The thesis couldn''t be further from her mind at this time.


    With a slow, bated breath, Clare draws in the courage to speak, but instead gets up, turns for the door, and kneels down to its right. The automaton, apparently named Carrie, gets up with her, taking to its feet a speed that would, if she didn''t know better, would fool her into thinking it were a human. She lifts up rug''s corner to reveal some unset boards; an unnailed patch board square, and a secret underneath.


    Clare lifts that as well to find a medium-sized gray rucksack, untouched as it has been for years. She pulls it up and, under Carrie''s watchful gaze, she opens it.


    Hooks... roping... gloves... a pre-charged clip-light... a knife... a parchment containing a blueprint of the substation circle, with a simple line map leading to number seven, and a weird mask. It''s rubber, with two glass lenses and a pair of steel attachments to the lower face, seeming to feed into the breather in the center. She''s pretty sure this is a gas mask, but she''s only gotten to see her father''s up close before, for those rare moments when he hits a gas pocket below. Rubber is ridiculously expensive, after all, and is only used for the most pressing industrial applications.


    She sighs, flips it around to see the straps, and dawns the mask. It doesn''t feel good, like some little monstrosity squeezing her skull, and it''s more than a little difficult to breathe with it. She''ll do it to humor her mother though; it''s not so unbearable so long as she forgets she''s wearing it. She wonders briefly if her mother took one along with her as well, and she takes a long, calming breath, the mask''s filters producing a slight hissing sound from the pressure.


    "Okay, let''s go." She says, with a solemn tone, repacking the sack and swinging it around her shoulder before reaching for the knob.


    Carrie doesn''t say anything, but steps up behind her shoulder at the ready. It''s eerie to have an auto follow her so closely, let alone follow her at all. Made by her mother or not, she can already imagine its cold hands grasping at her like a mindless non-social.


    Doing her best to cast the thought from her mind, she turns out the light and goes to the kitchen. Mary said she''d need food for the trip, after all.


    She leans around the corner and spots her father, slumped over the table, his almost finished beer lazy in his hand while he releases steady, gentle snores. This is, unfortunately, where she finds him asleep the most. She never really got to know him; Mary''s loss changed him forever.


    Clare sneaks into the kitchen, grabs some of the hard tack on the counter, and about faces the other way back to the hallway. She returns to see Carrie watching the house automaton, which is staring back at it. What makes Clare particularly concerned about this is that the house auto isn''t supposed to act on anything inside; it''s only supposed to open the door.


    Despite her previous misgivings, she gets beside Carrie, using it as a divider between her and the house automaton, which immediately looks to her when she enters its sight range. With a strictured breath, Clare moves in sync with Carrie, the both of them passing through the thin entry way and heading for the door.


    The second she touches the doorknob, the house auto flinches, as if it were about to lunch to the door, but Carrie stands firm between the auto and Clare. She opens the door quietly, though at an increased speed seeing the house auto''s movement, and slips through the door.


    She''s outside in the misty night of the Everhold streets, with Carrie emerging right behind her, exiting backwards to keep a close eye on the house auto.


    "...We must hurry to the way point," it says.


    Clare doesn''t want to ask, but she knows she has to. "What?"


    "...There was an observer posted. We have been spotted far too early for safe travel."


    "Who is-" Clare stops herself, she doesn''t even need to clarify. Clare immediately comes to terms with the disheartening realization that at all hours of the day, no matter what, the home automaton would always be in sight of the workshop door.


    A sickening chill runs down her spine. "Let''s just go."


    "...I do not understand your te-"


    "Follow me," she says shortly, taking a quick glance at the parchment map before moving towards the nearest sewer entry in her memory.


    "...I will follow you," it says.


    Though the mask may conceal her vision, her ears are as sharp as ever. Not even a block away, she very clearly hears the sound of her house door opening. Clare picks up her pace, and Carrie in step with her.

 8 - The Layer Peels

    Marching with a mask on is far more stressful than Clare ever could have imagined. It''s choking out her every breath, and she struggles to pull in enough air to keep the pace. Occasionally checking behind her shoulder in the alleys, she finds the man hole right where she expected it, three blocks down and one to the right; she tripped on it once as a kid. With a sigh, Clare double checks her map to make sure it¡¯s the right one, then flips her pack around to retrieves her gloves. She''s seen her dad after work enough times to know this is going to get messy.


    The oversized thick gloves slide on easily, but she knows that''ll be the quickest part of this. She lowers herself into the cover''s metal bars, and lifts. It''s of the sort of unbearable weight that is both physically and psychologically intimidating. The slime-slick refuse caked into the handles makes it so slippery and difficult to handle, Clare is helpless to do anything but nervously clam at the pair of handles, avoiding her grasp with disgusting ease. She tries for the better part of a minute, and leans back with a sigh.


    "This is so stupid," she groans under her breath. Just before trying again, she realizes she''s not making use of the tools she has at her disposal. She gets up with a dignified lift, removing the already vomitous gloves from her hands. "Carrie."


    "...Address recognized."


    "Lift that."


    "...Define term: ''that''."


    She points at the man hole. "That is the cover."


    "...Define term: ''cover''."


    "Really?"


    "...I do not u-"


    "This! Right here!" She pats down on the grate.


    "...I do not understand your terminology. Please rephrase inquiry."


    She takes a deep breath. Clare needs to use full sentence commands, of course. "Okay... okay: what is this, Carrie?"


    Carrie looks down. "That is a forged disk of metal, covering an entry way of some sort."


    Clare fixes her fingers together, the gloves pointing forward with a squish. "Can you lift this object?"


    "I can attempt lift that object."


    There''s a short pause with Clare looking between Carrie and the manhole cover.


    "Okay. Will you lift the object?"


    "...It is not in my current directives to lift said object."


    She takes a deep, deep breath, and sighs. No sooner does she do this, does she notice a figure in the mist emerging two blocks down, its pace slow, but measured right in their direction. From its gait and the weight to its steps, it''s clear that it''s an automaton.


    Her mind clicks into overdrive. "Define object as ''cover''," she says, her tone now flat and quickened.


    "...Definition accepted."


    "Lift cover."


    "...Lifting." Carrie steps up to the cover, smashes its fingers into the gap between the cover and the entrance, and flips the cover up like nothing. "Lift complete."


    Clare glances away from the approaching figure, fumbles out her light, and clicks it on to check below. The smell is unbelievably bad, even through the mask, but she doesn''t care. With a rush of adrenaline, she starts down the ladder and into the system. The moment before she descends, she makes out even more figures appearing from the mist, each of them heading their way.


    "Replace cover," she says.


    "... Replacing," Carrie says, at least smart enough to step down inside before putting it back over their heads.


    "O-" she pulls in a nerve-wracked breath. "Okay it should be... th-this way," Clare instructs, working over the map with her putrefaction-covered gloves. With a firm step forward, she starts down the gross blackness of the sewer, coffin-black by all save her collar light and Carrie''s managraphed faceplate, shining dully in the corpse-scented dark.


    The two go through the sewage-slicked paths of Everhold''s refuse system, only half an idea in Clare''s head about their bearings. The walled kingdom is eight kilometers in diameter, so it takes her nearly thirty minutes to figure out the general orientation and reach the lit, however dimly, halls of the substation system.


    "Here we are," she states with relief. "I guess it''s just..." she looks at the map again, and looks to the side of the wall, she''s already near substation six, lucky her. "I guess this is next to... agricultural?" She reorients herself to make sure they''ll go the right way and starts northward along the sloped hall. In only a minute, they pass by the side tunnel for substation six. She looks down and sees a lit, whirring room filled with complex magi-tech machinery. "Not far now," she says, the moment she feels a little rumble on her thigh¡ª her chat stone.


    She picks it up, takes a deep breath, and activates the voice.


    "Hello?" She asks, halfway expecting the voice of an automaton.


    "You sound nervous," Waine says through the brightening, chained jewel. "Where are you now? Have you gone i-"


    "Y- I..." She clears her throat while traveling down the hall. "N-no. I don''t think I''m going to go through with it after all."


    "Thank god, dude!" He exclaims in relief. "That was such a stupid idea. Okay well tomorrow let''s meet back up. I got a shit-load of notes an-"


    "Hey, I''ll see you later," Clare interrupts. She hears something coming from down the hall.


    "Wait, why?"


    "I''m... I''m busy."


    "Busy wh-"


    "Sleeping."


    "You don''t sound very sle-" is all he can get out before she shoves his voice back into her pocket. She strains her hearing to the footsteps.


    "An auto," she says.


    It rounds the corner, and it''s clearly a semi-social, the small band of paint around its arm designating it as having that feature.


    She shrugs. "Okay. Administrator argument," she says with a confident, expectant tone.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    The automaton, locking on to Clare, marches straight for her without stopping; in fact she''s almost sure its picking up speed.


    "Administrator argument!" She repeats, making sure her voice is carrying through her mask.


    No stop, no ping, nothing but the steady steps forward.


    The moment she takes a step back, the auto breaks into a sprint. She''s never in her life seen an auto move so quickly; it defies all logic.


    "Carrie, run!" She cries, starting for the opposite way the same moment she hears a dense, industrial crash. She looks around just in time to see the industrial auto fall to its knees, its faceplate removed and smashed through by Carrie''s steel hands.


    The auto crooks over to its side, convulses a moment, and with a final jolt, its managraphy loses its glow into a dead, cold gray.


    "Target neutralized," Carrie says in a dead drone, but with critical emphasis on the word ¡®neutralized¡¯ as if Carrie is intelligent enough to appreciate the idea of violence.


    Clare looks down in at the tarnished auto, a steady cloud of dust still trailing from its face from where Carrie slammed into it.


    "Holy shit."


    "...I do not understand your termino-"


    "That''s..." she coughs. "Good job, Carrie."


    "Thank you, Clare."


    "Why didn''t it stop?"


    "I do not know."


    "This is weird," she says with an unsettled, abrupt tone.


    Without another word, Clare passes by the instantly derelict automaton to continue towards substation seven. Like before, Carrie steps right behind her, keeping closer over her shoulder matching her exact pace.


    She continues down no more than a minute before she hears it, the haunting din that will torment her for her journey.


    It''s a faint, crowded, crumbling sort of noise.


    "Do you... do you hear that?"


    "...Hear what?¡±


    "That noise."


    "...Yes. I do."


    "Well, what do you make of it?"


    "I think we should continue."


    Clare sighs, shakes her head, and  leaves it at that.


    Just around the bend are the signs, capitalized warnings stretching on into the dark. She clicks her light back on, and gasps. Just past the signed off area she can see it. The blue-shaded light make it even easy to spot the dark, splattering marks, uncleaned, dried over, and left for what could be ages.


    "Wh-" she marches up to it at a quickened pace. "Carrie, what''s this?" She points.


    Carrie walks up to the wall and draws its finger across, just as the crumbling sound from around them picks up slightly in decibel.


    "...It is human blood," it says dryly.


    Clare pushes a closed fist to her chest. "D-do you know whose?"


    "...I do not understand yo-"


    "Follow me," she commands shortly, not with enough patience to listen to it repeat the same phrase over and over. The mark of blood could be anyone¡¯s, after all; she can¡¯t panic over the smallest things.


    The two push on through the darkening way, more and more trails of blood are present, intermittent with huge, person-sized splattering. If it weren''t scary enough, this is finally the fulfillment of Clare''s darkest fears. The rumors, the whispered tales of loss; they were all true. People died down here, and one of them could be her mom.


    This is as bad as she can imagine it, however the reality will stretch far, far deeper than she is presently capable of grasping. She will find what lies in substation seven, but not all of her will make the trip.


    In the darkest park of the substation, Clare finally shines her light on the enlarged text print of "Substation 7".


    She doesn''t say anything, just starts down the way. Her pace slows down to a weary, mouse-like gait. The dried blood is practically painted throughout the tight hallway. Either a lot of people have been out through here, or in, it has to be one or the other in her mind.


    "Oh god," she whimpers, slowing down even more through the hall, her footsteps sticking to the carpet of rotten blood. Not just blood, she can smell, but anything a human might contain has been strewn along this hallway, carelessly splattered by the hands of a machine no doubt.


    Finally, her imagination overtakes her. Like a clock ticking steadily in reverse back to its first midnight, she feels a primal urge overcome her; a heightened sense of constant, expectant dread. She just knows there is a terrible something nearby, waiting to shatter her view of the world forever and cast her into an abyss. She knows it is the truth. Deep in her subconscious, she begins to believe in gods other than the immortal King Victor, and they are all wicked, surely. Going through the hall of blood leading down to substation seven, Clare cannot help but slow to a crawl in the middle of the tunnel, leading the way in front of Carrie which, despite its obvious strength, will not be able to protect her from what she''s about to find.


    "Please be okay, momma," Clare whispers under her breath, finally stopping cold in the disease-filled tunnel.


    "...We should increase our pace," Carrie suggests, apparently quite aware of some horrible threat that she isn''t.


    She takes a deep breath, reeled into herself with a pathetic shiver. "Why?"


    "...Our objective, once acknowledged by ''Clare'', must be attained as soon as possible."


    "Great, but why?!" She whimpers, the rumbling sound becoming ever louder.


    "...''Clare'' may be neutralized, thus rendering objective null."


    "Wh-" Clare understands perfectly well what Carrie is saying, but she refuses to believe it.


    "Are you... do you think I''m about to be¡­ killed?"


    "...I do no-" Carrie stops its error message, this time by its own volition. "We have run out of time," it says, the rumbling noise from behind them finally gaining enough definition to be identified.


    Clare straightens herself as she looks around Carrie''s shoulder. From the darkness behind them, a dozen managraphic sight plates are visible from the dark, each owned by a soulless, single-minded automaton. They''re all moving straight for her.


    "No... No!" Clare shouts, tripping backwards and covering her backside with the petrified blood and other fluids from a dozen people. She struggles to get to her feet, slipping through the muck before regaining a wavering balance. "Come on!" She screams in command, running forward with a slipping stride forward.


    Carrie continues right behind her through the dark, the mad approach of the machines completely overtaking her hearing like a tidal wave of walking metal.


    Slipping and stumbling forward, she outruns the group with Carrie, but only for a moment when they begin picking up pace, their sickly green visors reappearing from the dark.


    "No, oh god, please no!" She shouts on the brink of tears, the very moment a light emerges at the end of the tunnel. It''s bright, so wonderfully bright. "The way out! Carrie, come on!" She exclaims with a victorious cheer, resorting to an almost-slide across the slippery bricks while maintaining a steady pace.


    Carrie says nothing until the very end, when it enters its actual vision. "...''Clare'' user should get behind ''Carrie'' system."


    "What? No!" She scoffs, the feint glow of their pursuers still just barely visible behind them.


    "...This is an emergency."


    "Yeah big surprise," she snarks just as she reaches the edge of the tunnel. "Any more ingenious dedud-" Clare swallows her breath and turns around in a tripping spin, her momentum sliding her ever further, ever closer.


    In front of her in the substation room is an automaton, untellably-old and clicking back and forth in what seems to be a glitched route. It stands resolute in its purpose, whatever that is, with its managraphed faceplate shining out like a bluish floodlight.


    She only has seconds to decide, and decides to do what her mother did.


    Clare springs forward with a deep, held breath. She knows a glitched auto shouldn''t act upon her presence, but this is all too weird.


    Carrie is going forward as well, but at a sprint to close the distance between the two of them.


    The second she passes through the tight spot next to the auto, it reaches for her with the speed only a machine could produce. In a barely perceived, confused second, Clare very clearly feels a forceful grip being placed on the skin of her neck, only to stop the second Carrie tackles the auto and crushes its solid skull.


    It was only a touch for an auto, but to Clare, and another person, the contact draws a rush of blood from the point where it grabbed her. She slaps her hand to her neck in immediate pain before slamming against the wall in a sudden moment of confusion.


    "C-oh no," she mutters senselessly between gasps. "That''s bad, that''s really bad."


    Carrie rises up from the wreckage of the erroneous auto. "Target neutralized. Inquiry: Status Report for ''Clare'' User."


    "I..." She winces, arching her neck over to try to cover more of the wound. "I don''t know. Am I going to die?"


    The automaton looks over to the hallway, the pursuing group has almost arrived, visors blaring like murderous cindering coals, as they approach the bulkhead door. "...''Clare'' user is incapable of expiration."


    Clare''s not sure what to say as her vision starts graying out into those blotting, confused impressions of the world around her. The noise starts to muffle, and she feels too weak to stand up. All she remembers is seeing the door.


    "Close the door," she says simply, "close the door."


    There''s a pause. She cannot even hear what Carrie says, but from the shadows of the hallway, lit demoniacally by the gazes of the automaton mob, there''s a great thud, followed by a cacophony of smaller, dense beats.


    A few misty seconds pass, and she feels an automaton grab her. Her subconscious tells her this is the end, that she''s about to be torn to shreds and found weeks later in some designated refuse pile, but the grasp is so unbelievably gentle, it''s almost like a person. Far from the separation of nerves she was expecting, she suddenly feels light. She screams anyway, and curls into herself as best she can.

 9 - A Shock

    "...It is apparent that ''Clare'' user chassis has sustained damage." It''s Carrie, and it clicks away in though looking over the picked up student. "Chassis is biological in nature... estimation of injury is... very minor," it says, this time with a very, very slight tone of what sounds like disappointment to her.


    Still curled up and with her faculties quickly returning, Clare feels over the wound. No arteries, no flesh; the auto did nothing more than pinch its hands slightly into her neck, squishing the skin together for an uncomfortable, but altogether-nonthreatening, internal injury.


    "I''m..." she messes with it a little, wincing the second she actually puts pressure on it. "Wow, that hurts!" She''s not sure exactly what happened, but she did hear once from one of the medical engineers that a person can "think" themselves into an injured state if it psyches them out enough. She takes a few long, recuperative breaths, and then unfurls in Carrie''s arms. "Put me down."


    "...I do not und-"


    "Release ''Carrie'' user chassis," she interrupts blandly.


    It drops her right on the floor with a decisive plop. "Gah! Idiot! Stupid!"


    "...I do n-"


    She looks over to the door, taking back to her feet with surprising readiness. "How long will the door hold?"


    Carrie looks to where she''s looking, and pulls the context of the action it had just made from its registry. "...I do not know."


    She groans briefly. Of course she couldn''t expect it to take measurements any more accurate than a person. "What all that managraphing good for, then?"


    "...I do no-"


    She cuts it off with a sharp groan. "Nevermind. Come on and let''s get out of here before they break thr-" She stops herself, having finally turned around from the door.


    There it is, a small, unassuming hallway curving sharply to the right. There''s no substation here, not even the signs of what was a substation, just a turn to the right, a crushed auto, and the two of them.


    Just like when she thought she was about to die, she doesn''t have anything to say. For the better part of a minute she just stares down. The answers to all her questions wait around that corner, and she''s afraid she''s not ready.


    "This is the way out," she states in awe.


    "...This is surely a path to the way point. I am under the impression that our next plan of action is to continue on down that hall."


    Clare scoffs at its obvious observation. Though it worries her that it clearly knows more than it''s letting on, the manner in accessing that information is too complex for her to retrieve. She looks back down to the path. Her injury doesn''t feel quite so bad anymore, especially knowing the unknown is waiting for her. She glances back to the bulkhead door. She''s not sure why a substation would need one, but she''s certain whoever designed the city had a reason, whatever it is. Now, however, she''s forced to go forward. Hearing the slow, steady beating from the other side, no doubt the automatons attempting to break through, she knows they will probably be there until someone comes to get them.


    "With no stimuli or pro-noted route, they''ll be there forever, won''t they?" She says with a cold tone.


    "...I do not understand your terminology. Please rephrase inquiry."


    Clare just nods her head. "Guess this is it."


    "...Inquiry: Definition of ''this''."


    She sighs, and looks over to the machine with a smile. "The part where I find out what happened to my mom. Come on."


    "...Noted."


    With the first step, she heads down the hall and turns the corner, with Carrie close behind and no worse for wear.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Her nervous blue light shines on the tunnel, illuminating it for the scant ten meters before another turn. She notices a few separated splotches of blood going down, quite unlike those large, dragging lines from before the substation. Looking more like the trail of someone bleeding, rather than a deconstructed corpse being dragged off.


    Mulling on it, the small spark of hope in Clare''s eye alights into a glimmer. Could it be that her mother got out?


    "I''m coming," she says, the moment she rounds the corner once more.


    She has to stop again at what she sees, so terrible are its implications. They are supposed to be at the very lowest level of Everhold, and yet here it is.


    In front of her, mocking her every understanding of where she lives, is a rusted spiral staircase, leading down into the cold, silent black.


    "This can''t be," she mutters to herself. In a moment of complete disbelief, she actually pulls out the map to double check the diagram she''s looked at over and over and over. The substation system is supposed to be the very lowest level of the city, but here''s something else going lower. She expected to go through tunnels for no more than a minute. "N-no," she says reassuringly. "It''s just a dip, or it''s up on a cliffside! Of course! That''s how we were able to withstand the flood waters!" She says this, almost expecting validation from Carrie. The automaton makes no movement.


    "Come on, let''s go!" She shouts gaily as she starts straight down the crusty stairs, each step making a satisfyingly industrial ring.


    The two descend deeper into the darkness, but it''s not nearly as deep as Clare has first expected, it couldn''t have been more than a couple of stories.


    She scoffs. She''s going to go outside of Everhold, find her mother, and that will be that! Perhaps she thought the people of Everhold wouldn''t want to leave, and Clare is starting to feel like that''s okay. "To each their own," she mutters with a tone of slight pretension, like only now she''s joined the very exclusive club of free-thinking individuals among humanity; those that have escaped.


    Finishing down the steps, she muses on what society outside the walls must look like. Perhaps they are great cities as well, even greater than Everhold. How silly she feels, how very pathetic she was, not even having the courage to scale the walls. She was so distracted by the bread and circuses, the work and the prestige, that she too never asked herself if it was all a false pretense. Of course, she was never lied to, she¡¯s certain, but she was just fooled, like all the rest. It was just a set of truths held from one generation to the next, and then one day, those truths were no longer factual. The waters must have receded, and it was safe to come out from the walls. She feels sorry for them now, but knows she couldn''t change their minds, not unless she could somehow hop up the other side and tell them all to destroy their houses to build a ladder to meet her. If she finds her mom she''ll ask her about it.


    Clare shakes her head with a mild smirk. She''s sure of it now. Everything''s going to be okay, and she just worked herself up. There''s nothing all that unusual about this after all, she feels; just humans tricking themselves, and then not learning from the older generation.


    At the bottom of the stairwell is another tight passage, of the same, recycled sand-brick, but with a bit of water at their feet. At the end of the passage is another bulkhead, this one is closed.


    She stops briefly, and wonders why.


    "Carrie," she asks, stepping up to the door, her feet pattering in through the water with already tired, clumsy steps.


    "...System recognizes address." It drones back.


    "Any idea what''s behind that door?"


    It clicks for a moment. "... It is ''Carrie'' System''s understanding that this route leads to-" it clicks again. "The part where I find out what happened to my mom. Come on," it finishes, providing a surprisingly good tonal repeat of her words just a couple minutes ago.


    Clare looks at Carrie with disappointment. "I''m serious."


    "...This system is also serious," it says, emphasizing the word serious with a slightly deeper mechanical tone.


    She''ll just have to take the dive¡ª hopefully not literally.


    Clare clears her throat and turns for the bulkhead door. The kingdom has such little metal, it''s surprising to see so much of it used just to make a door; it must be for good reason. With a grim anticipation, Clare walks through the water up to the door, and places her gloved hands upon it. She feels... confident; however it would be wrong to miss the thought that if there is water on the other end, the pressure would probably kill her instantly, blasted back into the spiral staircase and divided into crimson spray.


    "It couldn''t really be water on the other side, could it?" She asks.


    Carrie steps up at the ready. "...Only visual confirmation would tell for certain." As per its usual, the auto''s tone is completely blank; it''s her ultimately her choice.


    "You''re right," Clare reaffirms, and with a silent prayer, turns the wheel-handle for the door. There''s a few loud, scraping cranks, and at once, the door''s pressure into its lock mechanism subsides. It swings into her grip permissively, and she practically gasps in relief.


    "Yes!" Clare draws back with a deep breath and a hop. "See! No water!" She adds as an exotic bouquet of scents flows through the door.


    "...That is good," Carrie says, doing its very best to add to the conversation in some way.


    Clare nods to herself with an air of pride, stepping back up to the door to swing it open. With a creak, the door floats forward, and the first of the many strokes of true horror pass through her.


    On the other side of the door... is nothing.

 10 - "Nothing"

    It''s not quite nothing, but it''s far more nothing than it is anything else Clare has known in her life. A polar opposite to the tight, nervous spaces of the sewer system, this area past the door opens up- wide, and dark, into an imperceptible expansiveness. Only the walkway out is visible, which stops at a chasmous drop-off and then splits to the left and right.


    Clare can feel a slight warmth blowing through the passage, inviting her through; but the air... it stings her skin.


    Perhaps this is too much for a young adult to handle, especially one that has spent her entire life in the pleasant coffee-scented atmospheres of studious academia; but Clare has a reason to step forward; a very good reason.


    She struggles with herself for a moment in deciding what she''ll do. She expected past the door would be the truth, but not a truth like this.


    "What''s going on..." She says, trembling.


    "...There is the way forward. We should continue," Carrie says.


    "I don''t..." She briefly grips Waine''s chat stone. She could have someone to tell about this; she could persuade him to listen, and he could send someone down.


    She wonders whether they''d come to arrest her or rescue her¡ª probably both.


    "I don''t know what to do, but no matter what... I have to... find her," Clare says. She makes a wise decision. Rather than playing her hand to the people of Everhold right away, she''ll take her time, and wait for more information.


    She steps out onto the very rim of the mysterious, overwhelming expanse of blackness. "W-well, left or right?" She asks.


    Carrie clicks a moment as it steps forward, crossing the boundary of the door. "...Either will lead to our destin-" it stops, clicking away again with a furious tempo. "You have one new message. Do you wish to proceed?" It asks.


    An immense, deathly chill runs down Clare''s neck, like the teeth of some hideous, unseen animal panging for her flesh in a sleepless, ever-stalking stupor. The dread is becoming so palpable that her body is failing to keep up with it. She feels a rotten, foreboding breeze pass by.


    "P-play," she slides up to the expanse of the abyss, and heaves her dinner out into the darkness.


    "...Inquiry: Status Report for ''Clare'' User."


    "I''m-" she gulps. "Play the message."


    "...Playing message." There''s a loud click from his head and, like a blessing or a curse, the voice of her mother seeps from Carrie''s face.


    "Clare... I... at least I hope it''s you hearing this. Keep going down. I don''t know what we''re going to find, but one day you''ll see what Everhold is built on, and I''ll be finding out today... after I get some rest. It''s quiet here, and I don''t see anything to worry about. I''m going to lay back for a little bit. Please don''t push yourself too hard, honey. I... I''m relieved that there was something past substation seven, though. It means I''m right. There''s more, but you know that for sure now, don''t y-"


    There''s a slight gasp in the recording, as if Mary''s in pain.


    "Don''t hate your dad if he told you I died; that''s what everyone would jump to anyway.


    Stay safe. I know Carrie will do its best to take care of you, but you can''t rely too much on it. I worked really, really hard on it; definitely my best work, but it''s still an auto and is prone to mistakes.


    Onward, to our little adventure!" Mary laughs with a slight, morbid humor before the message clicks out.


    "That''s all messages."


    Clare just sits into the wall along the walkway, staring out into the black expanse. The welling of tears in her eyes finally reach their peak, and she lets out a gentle, quick sob.


    "You made it out," she whimpers with a light smile.


    "...Inquiry: What did ''I'' make it out of?"


    "N-" she loosens her mask briefly to reach a hand in and rub her eyes; not really a good idea in places where one would need a mask, but here, she''s fine. "Just shut up. I wasn''t even talking about you."


    "...Define phrase: ''shut up''."


    "To stop making noise," she snaps with a wry, faint smirk.


    "...Noted."


    Clare curls into herself gently for a moment, bringing in her knees and joining her hands as a sort of self hug. The implications of her mother getting through that slaughterhouse of automatons is significant, but to think that there''s more to the journey, that there''s a great, unknown darkness down below¡ª the thought truly horrifies her. Perhaps her entire definition of the world was wrong, and that it actually goes down, rather than to the sides. Perhaps the only thing she has to await her is the crawling underworld filled with squirming, silent things that hunt for flesh.


    Very gently and with great care, she leans just far enough to look down the drop off.


    It''s not absolute blackness down below. Faintly, on the very edge of her perception, she can see the faintest, grayest silhouettes of shapes.


    "Something''s down there," she says, wanting more than anything for Carrie to have something helpful, at least encouraging to say. It says nothing, just like she told it to. After another respite of uneasy breathing, Clare brings herself back to her feet and shines her light down to the floor.


    Illuminated by the direct shine of her blue collar light, small droppings of what is most likely blood trail off to the left. She has her trail. She''ll follow the blood.


    "Come on," Clare says, keeping her nerves together with enough ability to start sketching along the fairly narrow walkway, Carrie close behind her with amazingly quiet steps for a machine. Clare is surprised by the specific ease in which Carrie can walk without making more than a slight *pat* noise. Her gaze trails at its feet for too long, and slips. Upon the slick pathway, the momentum swings her onto the floor and slides her legs across, dangling uneasily over the chasm.


    With a gasp, she reaches forward to grab a hold of something. Just as her torso lowers over the edge, she feels all of her weight lifted off her, with the exception of her coat. Carrie picks her up by the collar with no difficulty at all, and places her neatly back onto her feet.


    "Th-" Clare puffs in relief. "Thank you."


    Carrie says nothing, but nods. She''s having trouble getting it through her head that that slip could have been it.


    "Let''s keep going," she says, this time making good and sure to plant her feet firmly onto the ground, taking small, measured steps every time; almost like a gentle slide than a step. To add, her balance sprawled along the smooth rotary wall, she feels far more stable. The two make their way along the precipice of darkness for several minutes, the mad silence suffocating Clare''s mind like an eldritch anticipation. Thinking on it, she really doesn''t want to do this anymore, but she knows that if it will lead to her mother, even the slightest chance, she has to press on. After what feels like an eternity of skimming along the abyss, she sees it. A gray, crusty ladder, anything resembling color sapped from its body over the long dreary years, stands before her, leading straight down into the dark.


    She stares at the ladder with an impalpable dread. "Are you sure this i-" Clare stops herself when she shines her full beam onto it. The blue light illuminates the old blood, just a small mark, right around the top of the ladder.


    Mom went down.


    Clare grits her teeth in disgust, knowing that this is her answer. The ladder looks incredibly old, as if it could snap from even the lightest of pressure.


    "I..." She glances over to Carrie before looking back at the ladder, practically magnetic to her gaze. She has trouble looking away, knowing that in a few seconds, she''s going to talk herself into mounting it and climbing down. Some of the ladder joints are so dilapidated that a kick could break them, and to think she''s about to trust her weight to hundreds, if not thousands of these age-weakened joints makes her stomach crawl with yet another unique horror; like when one is dreaming and knows they have to jump into the shark-filled ocean.


    Of all things, the ladder makes her short for breath again. The thought of the joints breaking, sending her straight down, or worse, the hinge joiners that hold the ladder to the wall shattering, sending her and the entire ladder in a curved like deep into the blackness. She would crash into the floor, with no clue of what she''d find, and after having her expectations disturbed this many times already, she wouldn''t be terribly surprised if she fell helplessly into a bed of insects, face-first into an automaton''s grasp, or perhaps the dark, cold ocean, rife with horrors untold.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "I don''t...know if we..." she stops herself again. Complaining will do her no good, especially when it¡¯s a numbskull like Carrie as her shoulder to cry on.


    With an uneasy, careful movement, she leans down to get on top of the ladder. Just as she places her first foot on the top rung, she feels another tug. Carrie is pulling at her pack.


    "What?" She asks, exasperated.


    Carrie makes no noise.


    "Okay, you can talk. Now what''s wrong?"


    "I would like to take your burden. This system does not think that structure is prepared for any extra weight."


    She takes a breath. The robot has a point. If it fell over then it could just pick itself back up, but if she were to break the ladder on the other hand¡­.


    She sheds her pack and hands it up to Carrie, who puts it on.


    "Okay, now?" She asks, understandably short considering the situation.


    " ''Clare'' User should exercise a high level of caution when navigating this device."


    Her gas mask stretches gently as a grin crosses her face. "Sure, thanks." Clare starts down the ladder with steady, measured movements, taking great care not to put too much pressure on any one rung, and ensuring she has three points of contact at all time. The rust crumbles along her fingers, covering her gloves in a gray-orange crust. There''s a steady, foreboding creak with every step she makes, the sound running deep through the ladder as if the entire structure was about to give at any moment. Clare doesn''t let it stop her, though. So long as she keeps her weight distributed, she''ll be fine.


    The climb is long, however. Much longer than she expected. It just sprawls on and downward, like an endless gape waiting for any soul stupid enough to climb inside its dark abyss of wonder. Her climbing speed certainly isn''t helping, and neither is the anticipation of what could be waiting for her.


    Again, her imagination gets the best of her. She wonders if there''s something alive down there, and if it can see in the dark, and if it already knows she''s there. With a hushed breath, she turns off her light. There''s something about just staring at the wall, while having her light on that really disturbs her. She feels very vulnerable right now, so she prays  the creatures can, in fact, not see in the dark, and by turning out the light the least she can do is lower her profile.


    Five minutes of this trembling anticipation continue, and then her foot hits something. She gasps from the surprise, pulling it up while simultaneously fumbling a hand back up to her light switch. With a quiet sob, she sees the area revealed to her. Looking away from the wall and the ladder is a dilapidated set of houses, miserable and sunken with the discolored scourge of mildew, suffocating anything that was once organic in the area.


    The quick dip into the water and the resulting snap back up was a decisively jagged movement. It isn''t until she feels the actual rung of the ladder giving way does she notice she placed both her hands tightly on the same one, leaning back with all her weight. The rung snaps, and she falls into the heavy, murky, cold water, like the embrace of death.


    Her feet are still securely hooked onto the ladder, some subconscious attempt at holding onto anything that isn''t wet, but it¡¯s this action that holds her under for a few seconds. She can''t pull in any air through her mask, it¡¯s doing its job perfectly in creating a seal around her face, but it¡¯s not long before water seeps between the filter valves and begins covering her face. The smell of the outside, muted by the safe, chemical comfort of her filter''s charcoal-base screen, practically chokes her now that she can actually perceive its scent.


    Old water, dust, mold, mildew, and any number of forlorn bacteria flood into her mask, and in her fight to inhale, she pulls in some of the water instead. She kicks her feet off the ladder in a fit to regain her balance upward just as she vomits into her mask. The water isn''t just putrid, but it hurts, as if it had acidic qualities. It takes a few seconds, but she finally gets over herself and takes back to her feet, cold, wet, and disgusted far beyond anything her body''s encountered in her entire life.


    With a bitter, almost angry posture, all she can do is stand still while her body passes the rest of her digestive tract''s food back up through her mask; a swirling, acidic torture that must simply be suffered through.


    This is presently the most agony she¡¯s been through


    She takes a pause to lift her mask just enough to drain the fluid; surely none of the air could get in and make this any worse.


    She spends half a minute just standing there, shivering as a grinding sound comes from above. It''s Carrie, pack over its shoulder and sliding down the sides of the ladder in a swift decent. The auto jumps off the ladder just in time before its weight takes its toll on the ladder¡¯s sides, and plants its alloyed feet into the water alongside her. Carrie takes a moment to look over their surroundings, and then calmly turns its head to the soaked young lady beside it.


    "Inquiry: Status Report for ''Cla-"


    "Shut," Clare starts with a sputter, "up." She doesn''t want to talk, she just wants to be miserable and scared for a moment. It''s weird, feeling jealous of an auto, but right now she really doesn''t want to hear from something that cannot possibly understand how she''s feeling at this moment. A few seconds pass, and she takes her first breath with any tone resembling composure. "Okay. Where now?" she finally asks.


    "..."


    "You can talk, Carrie."


    "I only know we must continue."


    "Shit," is all she can say to that.


    With slow, shuddering movements, she casts her azure light over the sunken streets. There''s a curtain of what looks like spores, swirling and clouding her vision, already poor through her mask, so it¡¯s especially hard to see. The eerie silence of the upper threshold they came from is only slightly disturbed by the eerie calmness of the water below. She just knows there''s something down here; call it unconscious intuition, but there''s something very old inside of her that stirs from these sensations. There''s nothing quiet about it. At least the substation system was familiar, and that huge precipice was wide open, but this is concealed, tight, waiting. She has the unsettling premonition she might end up as just more bacterium for the massive biological soup she''s knee-high in right now.


    With a quick glance behind her, she looks over at the ladder, its bottom part terribly damaged from her physical outburst, but it still looks usable. Clare doesn''t even think to ask herself how she''s going to get Carrie, or her pack back up, she''s not so concerned about that.


    She takes one more breath, thinks about her mother, and just picks a house. At a trudging pace, the two move through the putrid concoction up to her selected structure, looking to be a small home of some kind. It''s design weirdly familiar to her for some reason, like something the design replicated from Everhold.


    "Makes..." she only says that much to herself. She was about to say "Makes sense", but it doesn''t really. The thought flickered through her mind that perhaps the founders of Everhold had a town below, like a camp, while constructing the city, but these structures seem more permanent than that.


    At the door, she shines her light through a few of the holes, checks around to make sure they aren''t being watched, and then pushes into the entrance. The water inside the house stirs from the movement of the door, flushing out a vile concoction of ancient, biological foam. She starts back with a hop, almost falling over again, but she maintains her balance and withstands the sensation of the heaping wave running past her knees.


    "Y-yup," she mutters before shining the light into the home.


    The pitch-black room is illuminated by her blue personnel light, adding a ghostly effervescence to the living room. Rotten books, decayed, curling paint and at the corner of the room, a human skeleton, all display the same sad, ancient gray.


    "Thats..." Clare throws her beam around the room, making sure its safe. "A person." She''d never seen a skeleton before; it''s terrifying to know that something like this is all she''ll leave behind one day.


    There''s a lengthy set of clicking noises as Carrie produces its most thoughtful answer. "It is a calcium deposit, not a person," the automaton says helpfully, causing Clare to scoff.


    "Yes, duh, of course." She waves her light around to another room, looking to be the kitchen, and she sloshes in. "What... happened here?"


    " ''Carrie'' system does not know."


    "Thanks," she says with steadily improving spirits as she shines her light over the cupboards. She riffles through a few of them. Whatever was preserved in the jars is now an incomprehensible pile of mold. "Looks well stocked," she notes to herself, "They couldn''t have starved to death."


    "There is something approaching. ''Carrie'' system recommends silence." Carrie says bluntly.


    Anything resembling a smile on Clare fades into a cold, ready, animal gaze. She pauses, waiting for the water around her calves to still so she can hear.


    There''s nothing but the steady ambiance of the mold and ash brushing along her ears; a posthumous orchestra of a single, terrifying noise.


    Clare still takes no chances. She remembers the feeling of that automaton''s grasp upon her neck before the adrenaline overwhelmed her and told to be ready to die. She subconsciously strokes the spot of the pinch on her neck, red with hematoma She waits quietly with Carrie for almost a minute until, from the very edge of her hearing, she perceives a faint, slow, sloshing noise outside. She casts her emerald eyes over to Carrie, upright and unshaken, staring dully forward into a wall. Of course an auto wouldn''t move until it were necessary; they''re not quite smart enough to prepare for reaction.


    The sloshing sound picks up in volume, perfectly steady, like one of the mixing machines from the processing quarter of Everhold. She visited the creamery vats as a girl during a school trip holiday; she couldn''t believe so much milk existed in the kingdom, let alone the whole world. She''s fairly certain it¡¯s not a cistern making that noise.


    She keeps quiet, and Carrie, as expected, also stays motionless in the room. Her light does, however, cast faintly out of the kitchen''s singular window, just enough so that she can see outside.


    The watery sound continues to grow ever closer, creeping up around the side of the house, and then it passes by the window. Clare sees nothing pass them by.


    Her original tenseness re-firms and her already tired body calls upon another burst of attention and energy. The span of time while the unknown something passes by their house and down the street feels like an eternity, her heart rate so unbearably high that it feels like it could fail her at any moment.


    The presence passes by back into silence, and Clare looses a long, wonderful sigh. The high of the adrenaline feels good now that the threat is gone; an unexpected feeling of reward for keeping her mouth shut and boots planted.


    "Okay, what was that?"


    Carrie is still quiet for some reason.


    "Carrie?"


    "..."


    "Carrie!?"


    Carrie turns to its user sharply. "Our position has been triangulated."


    Clare looks on dumbfounded, as if reminded of a secret rule to a game she just thought she was winning. "What?"


    She knows what triangulation is, but she never, ever thought it would be used for something like locating a person.


    "So it''s an auto?" she demands, her breathing picking back up.


    "Pursuing entity is in fact autonomous in nature."


    She stares at the robot with a look of pure astonishment. Of course an auto could still hear her talk from that far away if Carrie could hear it coming before she did.


    She chuckles dismissively just as the sloshing sound returns from where it had just left at a faster, deliberate pace. It''s coming for them.

 11 - Triangulator

    Only two years ago, everything was fine:


    Clare''s sitting safe, warm, and caffeinated in the Royal Academy''s classroom number three. The usual class of statistics, managraphing code, and practical engineering applications has been lifted today, the class coming up to its new block of instruction on automaton navigation dynamics. In sight of this, the strapping Jack Elwood has decided a visual presentation would be the best way to get them interested.


    Clare of course is already interested, she''s not doing this for the pay check, but she loves what she believes was her mother''s line of work.


    "So here," Professor Elwood starts, adjusting his glasses with a nod to the open testing area, "is an automaton with a mono-audio sensor. Can anyone tell me what a stereo-aud-"


    Her hand shoots up just a fraction of a second before Jeremy LeJean.


    Jack nods his head to her. "Airineth."


    "It means that it has receivers at different parts of its body, so it can find something from two directions instead of one," she explains.


    Jack squints. She realizes that wasn''t quite enough, but Jeremy takes the initiative.


    "It means that the auto can triangulate its target," he states with his classic sneer. She wishes she could punch him in the face, but non-violence is a sometimes-unfortunate requirement for civil society.


    Mister Elwood nods gently, firing off a little finger point to LeJean''s direction. "Right. Clare is technically right, but triangulation is the word I''m looking for." He turns his attention back to the testing area with a lone automaton, standing resolutely in the side nearest to the class. "Alright folks, so this auto has a mono-audio sensor in its right arm, but that''s not what I''m interested in in this case. What I want to show you is how an auto with a triangulate-source managraph can build a more accurate picture of a target based on multiple inputs."


    The platinum-blond, uncommonly cute Isri pokes her hand up.


    "Miss Layman"


    "Wouldn''t it make more sense to have it in its head?"


    Jack gives a good natured smile and a few of the students look over to her with incredulous gazes. To them, only an idiot would ask a question that was covered in previous material; nothing is more embarrassing to them than catching up with the class publicly, but Isri doesn''t seem to share the same emotion.


    "If it were a human, yes, but like we learned in block one of your first year, design fits function. Form must adhere to function, always. We build it based on what it¡¯s going to do, and nothing else. For example, it might need an audio sensor inside it¡¯s chassis to make sure everything''s running correctly, or in one of its feet to listen to ground vibrations with the most accuracy."


    Isri Layman squints in thought. "So like, we''re making them do what... I don''t think I get it."


    "Your grades show that, too," Jeremy mutters under his breath like a total cunt.


    Almost everyone hears it, but it was just quiet enough to treat like a whisper. Clare will always wonder if Isri heard it or not, because her expression doesn''t even flicker from his words.


    Jack Elwood sharpens his gaze, but his smile grows. "That''s okay. I can go over purpose of design with you after class," he turns back to the class in general. "So, is everyone ready to see this lad run?"Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    Muted, semi-excited responses emerge from the socially-stunted class, with the exception of Clare, who draws in over her desk with wide, ready eyes.


    He takes this cue to begin, and he walks into the testing area.


    Instantly the mood in the room shifts. Uneasy glances among the students and a pair of gasps overtake the classroom while their professor walks up to no more than five paces from the automaton.


    "S-sir!" Clare exclaims, only to be met with Jack''s hand, signaling for everyone to be quiet.


    "When activated, this auto will target for lifting the cause of the nearest sound. Now you all must be absolutely silent." He hits the remote activator ringed to his belt, operating much like a chat stone would, with a small jolt of mana produced by the operator to turn on the device. The little, magical *ping* of mana sent from Professor Elwood zips into the remote activator, and it lights up.


    Without further warning and with nary a sound, the automaton looks up from its slouched position, the managraphic symbol on its face blinking up with an alert, cold blue. The whole class looks on nervously, watching with bated breath while a confident Jack Elwood taps his foot to the right of him. The automaton walks forward, completely devoid of any social sense of speed; a lumbering, almost comical walk, though everyone knows that they''re not to be taken flippantly.


    Jack lifts his foot to the side and silently steps aside. To the class'' great relief, the automaton walks past him, and continues on. Then, like it weren''t chilling enough, Jack takes a breath to talk.


    "So, it missed me, because it only had one reference point," he says, causing another swell of gasps from the class. The automaton instantly about-faces back to Professor Elwood and walks up to him.


    "Now that I''ve provided it with a second reference point, it could act off the stored first direction, in correlation with its current and past locations for receiving the data, to triangulate m- whoa!" He says, interrupted by the automaton''s cold grip around his waist.


    Clare, already on the edge of her seat, dives out into the stairs to come to his aid, just as three or four of the other students have; the rest are either too trusting or too lazy to try and save their professor.


    Nothing bad happens, in fact, Clare wasted her breath.


    Jack is firmly lifted into the air by the auto, holding him like a delicate child for the dumbfounded class to gawk at.


    "What, you kids didn''t know you could code an auto to be gentle? That''s what social autos are."


    "W-yeah but," Jeremy sputters moronically, "that''s... you''re too trusting!"


    Jack shrugs, still held up like a little pup by the powerful grip of his machine. "When you students are nearing your forth year, you''ll make autos so smooth they''ll play chess. People hate the idea of it though because of... well, you know, but as the next generation of engineers you can fix that stigma. They only do as they are told, and there''s a big difference in code between ''contact-hands-lift'' like the industrials use, and ''contact-halt-lift'' like this boy does."


    "So how do you get down?" Isri says, a question everyone else is wondering.


    He grins. "Its lift is based on sound input. Once it stops picking up noises, it will put me down, and finish its routine by walking back to the start point."


    "So if we keep talking you''ll just stay up there?" Isra asks, finally asking the kind of stuff everyone wants to know.


    His grin turns awkward instantly. "Eh, well yes, technically, but that-"


    "So what''s everyone doing tonight?" Kimley Gaunter asks, pushing her eraser point into her hair with a twirl.


    At once, the classroom is alive with ironic chatter, simply for the humor of seeing their professor dangling like an awkward baby.


    Professor Elwood sighs. "Ahh, then while we''re on the subject of tonight, I''d like to talk about homework for tonight."


    Just as quickly as they started, the class goes silent. A few seconds pass, and the auto slowly lowers Jack to the ground. It turns around, goes back to its start point, and becomes dormant.


    "That''s what I thought," Jack says with a smirk before returning to his desk. "So you all understand that what we''re about to cover isn''t just important for saving you precious time and keeping your auto from running around without a clue, but its also a life or death serious subject. I know you all can take a wild guess as to what would have happened if we used a non-social for this little experiment?"


    There''s a cold silence in the room; the mental vision of a splattered Jack Elwood flashing in a few of their minds; the sounds, the sight and aftermath of it.


    He adjusts his glasses with a critical, serious vibe. "It wouldn''t have ended well. Your managraphs must be bulletproof to get past the safety division, but even approved designs can have flaws. Remember this, take it to heart, and you won''t be the designer of the next Mk.2 Porter. Got it?"


    Sober nods from everyone. They all remember their parents talking about ¡®The Mk.2 Incident¡¯ when they were all children.


    "Good," his smile returns, and everything''s back to being fun. "Let''s continue by opening him up and showing you all how those managraphs look."

 12 - Social Servant

    Imperiled, cold, and buzzed on adrenaline rather than caffeine, Clare holds her breath with the horrific realization that whatever is looking for them now knows what building they''re hiding in. She''s quiet only a moment before she notices Carrie is now moving freely, positioning itself between her and the noise and heading steadily out of the kitchen.


    " ''Carrie'' System will provide a distraction for ''Clare'' User. It is the ''Carrie'' System''s suggestion to not leave this location," it says, not even glancing back to look at her before turning the corner to the doorway leading outside. It does have the courtesy; however, to drop her pack on top of the center table.


    She reaches out her hand with a peep, but she realizes that if she makes any noise the auto will catch her trail, and that Carrie is about to risk itself to brush it off. She decides to trust her machine companion, and watches with trembling gaze as it trudges through the water out into the street. She can hear something outside, seemingly climbing onto a roof, which she assumes must be Carrie, but that can''t be. There''s no way an auto could be so dexterous, she''s certain.


    All she can do is listen and wait for the sloshing noise to come up to the house. Waiting in the miserable, cold and wet dark, she puts every ounce of her being into keeping herself perfectly quiet. She knows those audio inputs are amazing, if not in her studies then certainly now, and she''s not going to take any chances.


    The sloshing noise gets closer, and closer, right up to the side of the house, and then goes past, presumably in pursuit of Carrie. Its noise disappears, but she knows she isn''t safe yet.


    Clare is frozen, a prisoner of her own volition, and way too terrified to move. If she makes any audible noise, that auto could turn around again, this time coming straight for her and with no Carrie in sight. It¡¯s so cold standing in the water, and her gas mask''s filters are utterly clogged with that rife mixture of water and vomit that it takes all she can to pull even a little air through it. Her legs get shaky from her lack of oxygen, but she stays quiet.


    And she stands like this for a very long time.


    The runaway doesn''t know how much time passes, but it feels like stripping nails with one''s teeth. She didn''t consider until several minutes later what she would do if, King Victor forbid, Carrie doesn''t return. In her state of frozen misery, she steadily weighs her options with a clouded mind.


    She could move, but she has no clue what could hear her, or how far away they could hear from. Even the slightest movement could set one onto her, and it would only be when it gets within earshot that she''d know. Also what would she do? Would she just go up the ladder and wait? Go call for help? Clare winces with a pathetic grin. She knows it would take a dozen people at a minimum to peel her out, especially past that swarm of industrials blocking the way between Everhold and this godless hell. Even if they happened to get her out, then she''d have to live with the realization that she''ll never find out what happened to her mother.


    A few more timeless seconds pass, and she takes a deep breath, with it the volition that she''s going to see this all the way through. In a moment of increasing clarity and rare personal maturity, she understands that it¡¯s probably going to get worse again before it gets better, but she knows that however long it takes to find out what happened to her mom, it would not compare to the lifetime of regret she would have to tolerate if she cowered away here.


    This is easier said than done, unfortunately.


    She waits even longer, and though she''s now constantly trembling from the chill, she continues to bide her time. She''s certain above anything that Carrie''s going to come back, it was made by her mother, after all. More minutes pass and the doubts, always waiting with their open door, begin to step into her mind. After all, Clare dear, do you know of any automaton advanced enough to track a human being after running away? Or could you really be so confident as to expect nothing bad to have happened after all this time? Her blooming knowledge of automatons runs at full speed as she decides just how it could have taken this long. She bites her lower lip bitterly, coming to terms with the fact that Carrie isn''t coming back. She wishes she brought a watch, but it felt like over an hour.


    With a few indignant nods, Clare takes steps through the home again, at least for the sake of getting her bag and getting out of the water. She winces with the first movement, listening out for anything that might catch onto her noise, but she doesn''t hear anything, so she heads on. Rounding back to the entry room and going up the steps, the weight of the water dripping from her boots while she struggles up the stairs.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    With muffled, wet steps, Clare reaches the second floor of the forlorn home, its walls covered with pictures and mementos of the family that lived here, all drained out with age. By the looks of them now, she''d say they look more like a family of ghosts than people, only the fainted silhouettes of their faces visible after all these years.


    She creeps through the upstairs, looking for clues that could help her piece together this mystery she''s dropped head-first into, and eventually finds her way into the study, noted by the comfortable reading chair, desk, and short cases of volumes. A far cry from the old books of the library she loves so much, with their aged vanilla scent, these books are all mildewed into barely-legible heaps of knowledge, the delicate pages joining together like grayish bricks of paper and ink. Clare makes a quick attempt to open one, and ends up tearing the book''s binding in half. She makes the most of it, however, and flips the two sides to look over the revealed pages.


    It''s all unreadable. The ink and paper have fully merged into one another, and it¡¯s just smudges and grainy paper shavings. With a sigh she sets the book atop the rest and turns for the desk. Her brow raises upon seeing its sliding front closed and locked. She glances about for a key, but forgets herself and her situation quickly. Her curiosity is strong, after all. She reaches into her rucksack and draws up her knife. Thankfully it¡¯s of a full-tang, all-metal, very dense construction, so it doesn¡¯t break when she haphazardly jabs it into the lock right before smashing her boot into the handle. There''s a loud crack from the impact, and the knife impales cleanly into the rusty lock. She has to wriggle it about after that, but she has it open in under a minute.


    Pulling up the front compartment, she finds a journal, in far better shape than the books on the shelves. With a winsome, almost smug smile, she gently flip it open to the start. The journal belongs to one Marnoff Laneson, and the first pages identify him as someone who "works on the automatons. At the top left of each entry is the date it was made, starting with a 316-04-12". Clare raises a brow at the proposed date. However they recorded time back then is fairly close in date to now, currently being three hundred and nineteenth year since Everhold''s foundation. She spends a moment musing over what they could have been counting back from... that is, unless someone was actually here with this journal only only three years ago.


    She takes back her knife, leaning back into the desk''s chair and looking over the journal, she reads over the long, slanted handwriting of the man who wrote the entry. After the first entry, she decides to skip to the end, because anyone would in this situation, and she turns to the very last written page. Eerily enough, the date, "319-10-15" is only a few months off of the Everhold calendar. Today''s 319-08-22, after all, so it¡¯s a little strange that they''re so close. She winces at the thought, but she supposes it could be possible that her mother wasn''t the very first to cross over. She thinks back to her brief history class, during the nationally-required youth education before her chosen subjects: about the evil, sexist, deadly Separationists, clawing to find any way out of Everhold. She shakes her head. What stupid people they must have been. If Everhold is a prison, it¡¯s a wonderful one. Either way, perhaps this is what the Separationists were looking for. With anticipating breaths and a hope against hope that there''s someone else down here with her, she looks down to the entry.


    This is what she reads:


    "319-10-15


    Entry 491:


    This is it, I suppose. I don''t even know why I''m writing this. Humanity is doomed. No posterity awaits this journal, only a slow eternity out in the nothing of time. No one will read this.


    FUCK!!


    I don''t even know why I''m writing... No, course I do. It¡¯s always calmed me down. Thanks, Teach.


    I can''t believe we fucked up this bad. No it¡¯s not us, is it? Those fucking machines, so fucking stupid. I wish I knew sooner so I could have stocked up. I feel like an idiot. I knew we were running low, but the academy was about to open up the royal reserve, just before the breakdown. Why did it have to go like this?! All I wanted to do was build goddamn autos in peace. I loved my job, but now the shit I''ve made''s going to be the end of me if I can''t figure out how to get to some damn food! Yeah! I''m going to fucking do it! I''m a goddamn engineer! I solve problems, every day. I''m not going to sit here and die. Goodbye, journal. I''ll write the fuck out of you once I''m back. No shitty robots are gonna stop me from getting my goddamn food!


    Marnoff OUT.


    (P.S. In case someone is unlucky enough to be reading this and hasn''t heard, Take Agriculture Street and then a left down Granary to hit the reserve. That''s where everyone with the balls are going. Good luck, whoever you a-


    "


    Clare draws back when she hears a sloshing noise from outside the house, from the distance and the nether she hears something running. Reflexively she takes to her feet, and this causes a loud, grinding screech from her chairs'' legs against the floor. This was a mistake.

 13 - The Veil Torn

    The rushing noise continues up to the side of the house. She holds her breath in the hopes that perhaps whatever it is won''t come inside. After all Mister Marnoff''s entry didn''t make it sound so bad within the buildings. There''s an unceremonious crashing sound downstairs, and Clare realizes that she can''t expect them to play by rules.


    She dashes out from the office and across to the furthest room from the noise, looking to be a bedroom of sorts. With the din of the unknown pursuer climbing the stairs clear on the air, she shuts the door behind her and pushes a nearby chair under the knob. It should buy her just long enough to figure out what to do.


    "Do not worry, human," a droning, slurring, ancient voice speaks from the stairwell at the other side of the door, "I will escort you to the granary," it says, the emphasis on certain words clarifying it¡¯s status to Clare as another automaton. It must be incredibly advanced, Clare thinks, that it can not only track her from so far away, but also speak coherent sentences. This one is the second auto next to Carrie she''s heard speak, and this one''s voice is far louder, clearer, and way more unnerving.


    "St-state directive!" Clare yells out from the bedroom eyeing around for something to deliver her from this situation.


    There''s a brief clicking noise from the other side, far louder than Carrie''s. "To escort humans to the granary. There is a starvation curfew in effect. All humans must gather at The Reserve to receive rations. Please surrender any additional food you have and come with me."


    Clare doesn''t waste any more time mulling it over in her head; her gaze is locked onto the window. That''s her way out.


    She rushes to the sill, pushes her gloved hands into the shutters, easily opening the lock and swinging them open the same moment the automaton smashes through her makeshift barricade. Looking down she sees the dark, flooded streets of the unknown city, but behind her is far worse. She doesn''t even spare a glance over her shoulder, but pushes her right boot into the window sill to launch off. She leaps with all she has for the roof of the next house, and latches onto the siding with a slap. She scrambles up the roof to regain her footing on the slime-slick shingles, simultaneously turning to her six to look upon the automaton.


    It''s a half-destroyed, its chassis skull torn askew, with its managraph symbol glowing in a demonic, saturated green though under her blue-tinted light its becomes a powerful, sky-like cyan. The auto stands where she was just seconds earlier, unmoving, watching her with its single, arcane ¡°I¡¯m on¡± symbol, acting both as a way for automatons to perceive their world, and as an indicator that it¡¯s active. She knows it can''t see her with it, but the way it turns its head towards her, it certainly seems like it.


    "Do not worry, miss, you are in a state of distress," it explains to a trembling, though very relieved Clare, "I will provide assistance." It starts back to the stairs with a slow, measured trot.


    Clare scoffs through her mask, sounding more like a muffled bark than anything. "Assist yourself in getting the hell away from me, jerk," she says with a smug tone.


    Her victory is short lived, for just as she throws an overconfident, rather rude gesture the machine''s way, it reaches the end of the second floor hallway and turns around. It¡¯s getting a running start. She knows that it is impossible, that an automaton couldn''t lift itself off the group in the form of a jump, but as the derelict auto rushes down the corridor into the bedroom, there''s something about its sheer confidence that tells Clare otherwise.


    She starts back, sliding across the incredibly slick rooftop watching, in sheer disbelief and contrary to her education, the auto smashing its right foot into the sill, completely destroying it in the process, and sending the auto out the window and slamming into the roof. Its hand do not slip, but simply push so hard into the shingles that they crumple under the impact and make handholds.


    Clare''s been inching back this entire time, but now with even more fervor. She''d sooner jump off than let that thing grab her, but she''s so high up now, and she can''t even comprehend what could be lurking below. With a horrified look, she peers on from under her mask as the automaton struggles to pull itself up and regain its footing.


    "Do not worry, miss, you are in a state of distress," it drones, like the crackling of a burning coal, "I will provide assistance." It gets up and starts for her. It¡¯s the very first time she can feel a clear, murderous intent coming from someone, even if that someone just so happens to be a thing.


    "I don''t want assistance!" Clare shouts. "Stop!"


    The automaton continues forward, each step smashing its feet into the roof with certainty.


    Clare''s hit by some of the slimy roof debris while she inches to the very, very tip of the roof.


    "Stop! I don''t need assistance!" She shouts with her knife raised, hoping there''s something inside the auto''s programming that will pull itself away at those words.


    Nothing slows it down, unfortunately, and it continues in a slow, impacting tread to halfway past the roof.


    She knows she has to make a move. Lifting herself up with a shaking, wavering balance, Clare turns to over to the roof of the next house, takes a deep, fleeting breath, and jumps. The girl angles her boot just right into the corner of the roof, throwing her just far enough to land gracelessly on her stomach, hanging on for dear life. Scrambling for a hand-hold, her knife comes in use at a surprising time. Gripped firmly in her right hand, the blade clicks between two of the shingles and provides her with the slight amount of leverage needed to get her unfit self up the roof. Wheezing through her mask considering the mere fact that she''s still breathing a triumph, Clare looks back with a readied, alert gaze.


    The automaton is walking back slowly to the edge of the roof. She''s seen this before.


    With a sharp turn and a blink from its managraph, the auto rushes forward with a confidence she''s never seen in a man, let alone an auto. The smashing steps impact the roof even deeper, sending splinters and ceramic flying with every foot strike. Like a locomotive from hell, the automaton runs forward with furious, paramountly-focused movements, right to the tip of the roof where it pushes down all of its weight. This time it¡¯s not so lucky.


    In a turn of luck that seems to be becoming less and less frequent for poor Clare, the auto''s weight pushes past the boundary of the rafter''s allowance, and in an instant, the auto falls through and down the roof, drowned in a wave of old wood and mildew.


    Clare falls on her lower back in sheer, overwhelmed relief. She turns off the light and lies still along the roof, her muffled breathing steadily calming down from the excitement. She''s already so tired, she can hardly believe that her stamina is so pathetic. Of course, she realizes, a whole youth of said stamina not being tested is probably what gave her such a skewed view in the first place. She shakes her head and cuts a mild, satisfied smile.


    Then, she hears shuffling from below. She doesn''t even need to check to know it¡¯s the automaton, and she doesn''t want to anyway; maybe it will forget about her, or lose track of her. The automaton pulls itself out from the wreckage of the now-half home, and begins lumbering back to her current house.


    Her heart again takes up its mad cadence. She clearly hears a clicking from below. The automaton is thinking, loudly. She holds her breath as best she can, but without any further warning, the clicking stops. There''s a pause, and then the next round begins.


    Clare feels a jolt when the sound of industrial composite meets the pathetic rot of her home''s outer foundation. With a gasp she squirms up along the roof the same moment said roof begins tilting down. She glances down just long enough to behold the automaton, drawing its fist out of the completely destroyed corner vertical of her disgusting safehouse. She knows what''s going on the moment it starts over to the next corner of the house. She''s got to get off. The girl scoots up to the edge across from the automaton''s next beam, just as the blast of splinters arcs up into sight. She spots her next house just in time, a full two-meter jump. The home tilts fully toward the auto, and the roof comes with it. Clare uses all she has to right herself over the edge of the roof, locking her boot''s heel gap and thrusting forward in a single fantastic leap of faith.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    She slips.


    Perhaps the saturation of wet mold prevented proper traction of her boots, or she was too tired to keep it together, regardless she''s met with the same fate. She misses the edge of the roof, however her face does at least catch the opposite windowsill. Her mask takes most of the impact, but when the rich, coppery taste of blood hits her tongue, she knows that''s not the only thing that took a hit.


    She plummets into the water, its already familiar chill providing an agonizing shock anew, and she pushes herself up once more. With a muffled, wheezing cry, she stumbles into a wall attempting to regain her bearings, only it¡¯s hard to run, very hard. There''s now a sharp pain in her left ankle, and her vision, fogged with an eldritch concoction of vomit, sweat, blood and disgusting water, forms over her mask''s lenses like a sort of demonic filter of confused muck.


    Far more like a child than an adult, she trips along the side of the wall, trusting her senses of touch and hearing to guide her away from the automaton, but now the machine¡¯s faster than her.


    The steady, trudging steps of the auto glide it through the water at a slow, but certain pace, forcing forward through any impediment toward its current goal.


    "Do not worry, human, you are in a state of distress," it says, its tone decisively lower this time as it rears up on the impeded, bloodied, tired, cold young lady, "I will provide assistance," it adds, reaching forward.


    It hurts so much to move, but she knows she has to. Calling on her reserve of energy, Clare does her best to ignore the shattering pain that''s now shooting up her leg in her desperate attempt to get away. With a tilted, crazed stride, Clare rushes past house and home, shops and storefront while the automaton''s walking steadily fades out into the distance. She doesn''t ask herself why it isn''t running after her, and she doesn''t care to know right now. All she wants is to get away.


    She runs, and runs, and runs in the dark, the automaton''s sloshing becomes quieter and more distant with every ticking moment. She passes street signs and auto dock stations. She runs on in a crazed, clueless evasion, like a mouse that knows a cat has its scent. She has to go on until she''s certain that it couldn''t pick up her sound input. Finally, she can only hear her own body pushing on through the mess. She wants to keep running, she knows it¡¯s the right thing to do, but it hurts beyond any words she''s learned through her life, she knows it¡¯s that special human something keeping her going, of course, but even that must surely have its limits.


    The safer she feels, the more her mind turns to how much it hurts to run. In the end she could have ran hours more, but the power of the mind supersedes anything the body is capable of. Clare slows down to a relieving trot, the feeling almost curative in its relief, and she spots, from the bare, creepy silhouettes, an alleyway. If she feels around enough she can find her way, it¡¯s worth not having the light on if it means being found again, after all.


    Clare slides into the pitch-black alley, the cold water tormenting and relieving all at once once it washes against her leg. She stops mid-way down the alley, certain she cannot go a step further and, using the wall as a guide, leans back in the dark.


    She''s quiet now, and the faint smile she won on her face has quickly died back to misery.


    "Such a stupid fool," she mutters under her breath, wrapping her arms around herself in a futile attempt to warm herself up. It doesn''t work, of course, and after the novelty of safety passes her by, she''s forced to make her next decision. This does not go as planned.


    Right when she comes to the bitter conclusion that she''s now in a considerably worse place here than she was just thirty minutes ago, right before she made the mistake of going upstairs in that building and making a ruckus, she hears a sloshing sound.


    She can''t believe it. With a trembling gaze, she can see a powerful, inhuman light shining out from where she had come from. She struggles not to pull up her mask to see clearly, but keeps it the seal. Its the same automaton, though, she''s sure of it. She may not be able to make it out, that managraphic beam peering out and blinding her, but she its slight limp is clear.


    "Do not worry, mi-"


    "Shut the fuck up!" she screams, leaning back into another dash. She falls over. Her muscles have contracted around the swelling, and the cramp is too extreme to even use the leg. Clare is forced to pick herself up from the drink and start limping with her one good leg to escape.


    The young lady only hops a few times before getting a clear look at where she''s going. Now lit by the automaton''s light, the dead end of the alley way is revealed plainly to her. This is it.


    "No..." is all she mutters before turning back to face her hunter.


    It hasn''t slowed down a bit, heading straight for her with the full, confident stride of a capable civil servant.


    She takes one glance at her knife through her putrefying mask lens, and she looks up. She has only one shot at this.


    "Okay..." She says, again to herself. "Okay... okay..." Clare repeats again and again, as if to calm her down in preparation for a single, kinetically-genius movement that will save her. "Okay!"


    The second the automaton reaches out to grab her, she dodges as best she can to its side, jabbing her knife with everything she has in between its faceplate to hit the managraphic circuitry. A centimeter off, and she''d miss, but with the adrenaline at an all-time high in her life, the split, aimed second she needs goes by like a frozen frame in time. Clare lines up the strike in this moment of subconscious time and rams it in. She makes the plunge.


    The automaton stops immediately, but she knows this won''t last long as it¡¯s still reaching for her. It grabs her by the same leg that''s injured, and starts squeezing with industrial, mechanical cruelty while it simultaneously lifts her up for better control. Her biology folds under its grip instantly, forcing down ever further as if to completely tear off her leg below the knee. Part of its circuits must still be working.


    With crazed, loose jabs that grazes her once across the opposite wrist, she slams the knife into the latches and disengages the lock. Her mom did it a few times to the household auto, as a joke of course. She always got such a kick out of seeing Clare jump back in shock whenever the auto''s face would just fall off.


    This auto''s faceplate off, Clare smashes the blade of her knife across each and every logic plate, until she finally gets to the end, its core plate, containing their mystical source of power in those small, locked glass spheres. Ethergrain is what she''s been told they are, but she thinks they look more like little speck of black sand. It¡¯s always unnerved her to touch them. Ethergrain is perfectly safe to handle, at least that¡¯s how the people of Everhold understand it, but that faint, quiet vibration within¡­ it feels dangerous to her somehow.


    She smashes the container holding the ethergrain, and at once, the auto''s green light dies out, and her world is again plunged into darkness.


    Clare did it. With the auto''s hand clenched painfully around her crushed leg, she still can''t help but let out a sigh of relief.


    "Yeah, fuck you," she says in-between labored breaths. If anyone she knew were to hear her cussing like a sailor, they wouldn¡¯t believe it, but she¡¯s being pushed far, far past her comfort zone right now.


    There''s a silence for another dark moment, coming to terms with how awkward her current position is . She''s keeping herself stable on its left shoulder, with her hands holding its head and her thighs squished around it for dear life. It''s a rather precarious spot, especially considering that the auto''s inactive body still has her left leg.


    "Well..." She takes a deep breath, "well yeah, here we are," she adds. She nips the inside of her cheek in thought, and decides to turn on her light. Illuminated the inactive automaton, solidly in place, unmoving, and holding its pose even with her weight on top of it.


    Then she hears something in the distance, and Clare knows she has to get away. It''s another sloshing sound from far off, but it''s getting louder. Clare cuts out her light just as quickly as she had clicked it on. She knows she has to move fast.


    With a little stretching Clare reaches its fingers around her leg, and by leaning back a tad she''s able to get a grip on it. With a single, slippery heave, she starts pulling back the first metallic finger from around her shin. Flexing into with a long pull, her face turning red from the exertion, she finally moves its index finger a couple centimeters, and then the auto starts to tilt.


    With a gasp, Clare attempts to correct her position on top of it, but too much so, and pushes it over the other end. The auto falls like a statue into the murky shallows of the alley, taking Clare and her with it. With a splash, she''s again submerged into the cold, greasy floodwater, but this time she''s pinned. During the fall, she pivoted down to secure the weight with her knees, but all this served to do was trap her pelvis under the weight of the auto. Her body seethes with crushing pain as the automaton weighs down mercilessly into her, even with the water reducing it. She struggles, and is able to slide most of her lower torso aside, but its hand is still wrapped around her shin, now acutely angled from the damage.


    Clare strains her arms to push herself over the surface of the water, and is able to reach her mask''s filters just to the very brim of it. If she had just one more centimeter, she could turn her head so that one of the filters would break the surface and allow her air, but she has no such fortune.


    She can feel the water slowly seeping in, her mind''s crying out for air, and her body is locking up with the grim anticipation of its finale. She flails wildly under the water in the futile attempt to somehow bring air below to her, all in vain. Seconds pass into a full minute, and her convulsions reach that trembling, horrified fever pitch that suggests to an onlooker that a consciousness is in its last moments. She reaches for her knife, so trusty for all this time, jabs it into her knee. She''s going to cut it off if it¡¯s the last thing she''ll do, but she doesn''t. With one stab, and then another, her knee cartilage makes way to the sinew and bone, and that''s not something she can remove as quickly.


    The overarching grayness of a doomed mind fills her vision, just as a faint light appears. It¡¯s as if the water around her is glowing. Her last thoughts aren''t of anything but Everhold, her home, her nice warm bed¡ª dry, clean, and inviting. In her moment of helplessness, she would want nothing more than to just be sitting in her favorite coffee shop, her nose buried in her current textbook.


    Then the light overwhelms her, just as the darkness does only seconds after.