❖ The Gears of Humanity VI ❖
The morning rain had passed, but Garnelion remained soaked in silver light, the sun never quite cutting through the mist. Trains screamed across distant suspension rails overhead, their shadows falling like iron claws across the avenues. Steam hissed from unseen vents. Brass bells tolled the hour.
Rowan stood outside the watchmaker's shop, the air thick with the scent of old oil and rusting dreams. The remnants of last night's horror still lingered in the corners of his mind—the woman found disassembled, the automaton mimicking her posture with broken grace, and the silent tick of clocks lining the walls like indifferent witnesses.
Emeric leaned against a streetlamp, his coat damp at the hem, his cigarette curling smoke into the fog. "Didn't sleep," he muttered, flicking ash into the gutter. "Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her spine wound like a mainspring."
"You think she was alive while they were—" Rowan began.
"I don't want to know."
Noelle emerged from the shop with a file folder tucked under her arm and ink smudged on her gloves. "Clock mechanisms on the body were traced. We cross-referenced serial numbers. Most of the gears came from a factory shut down eight years ago: Mirage Precision Co."
Emeric blinked. "That name again."
Rowan frowned. "That's the third time."
"Four," Noelle corrected. "It came up during the tailor's case too. Their insignia was stamped on the underside of one of the mannequins."
Emeric straightened, tossing the cigarette. "What's the address?"
"Warehouse sector," she said. "Rivière Noire. It was condemned after a collapse. Never reopened."
A low whistle echoed from behind them—street patrol. A constable passed by on a motorized bicycle, nodding briefly. Rowan watched the wheels slice a ripple through the wet cobbles.
"Warehouse ruins," Emeric muttered. "Always warehouse ruins."
Noelle held out a crumpled paper. "I dug deeper. Mirage Precision filed for bankruptcy under a different name—Vignot Atelier. They weren't just making timepieces. They were experimenting with hybrid mechanics. Prototypes."
"What kind of prototypes?" Rowan asked.
Noelle looked up. "Ones that were supposed to tell more than time."
They arrived by foot an hour later, passing under a rotting iron archway where vines crawled like veins across forgotten letters: Vignot Atelier – Horlogerie et Mécanique Avancée.
The building slumped against itself, ribs of steel poking through broken glass and collapsed eaves. Mist bled from the gaps. The ground floor had caved partially, exposing a network of pipes and gears buried beneath like the bones of some long-dead colossus.
"Not in use for years," Emeric said. "Perfect place to hide something that never should've existed."
They moved carefully through the broken main doors, boots crunching glass and gravel. A wind-up crane hung above, unmoving. Rusted carts still bore crates marked with fading stamps: EXPERIMENTAL – DO NOT SHIP. One had burst open, spilling a mess of half-assembled automaton limbs. Fingers twitched gently in the breeze from a cracked window.
Noelle pulled her coat tighter. "It's colder in here than outside."
"Underground airflow," Emeric said. "Look—over there."
A stairwell, buried beneath collapsed metal sheets. Rowan heaved the debris aside with a grunt, revealing a rusted spiral leading into blackness. Noelle lit her lantern.
The descent was steep, winding them deep into Garnelion's underbelly. The walls changed—from concrete, to brass-lined tunnels etched with mathematical formulas, diagrams, poetry.
And then they heard it.
A ticking.
Dozens of ticking sounds, layered, overlapping—some fast, some slow. Some impossibly irregular.
"Clocks?" Noelle whispered.
Rowan shook his head. "Too erratic. Not clocks."
The passage opened into a massive underground atrium.
Rowan's breath caught.
There were machines suspended from the ceiling by wires like marionettes. Some shaped like humans. Others like animals. Still others like half-born thoughts—frames, torsos, dozens of eyes. All of them ticking, clicking, twitching faintly.
On the far wall, a mural—painted in deep crimson rust—depicted a great machine consuming people and spitting out mannequins in their place.
And beneath it, a message carved in steel:
"To understand humanity, we must first dismantle it."
Noelle stepped forward first, her lantern casting long shadows across the machinery. A few of the ticking figures responded—slight movements, like a child stirring in sleep.
"This is a graveyard," she whispered.
"No," Rowan murmured, staring at the floor where gears were arranged like constellations. "It's a laboratory."
Emeric ran a finger along one of the suspended machines. "They weren't just mimicking us. They were studying us. Piece by piece."
He gestured toward one construct—a human torso, but stretched in proportions, arms like delicate clock hands. Its ribcage opened and closed in a slow, mechanical breath.
A plaque was screwed into its chest: M-14: Le Langage du Toucher.
"The Language of Touch," Rowan translated softly.
There were others:
M-07: Le Cri de l'Âme (The Soul's Scream) — a head with no mouth, but dozens of internal speakers whirring like wasps.
M-21: La Danse Oubliée (The Forgotten Dance) — a lower body rigged with hundreds of miniature servos, feet poised forever mid-step.
M-02: Le Cœur Impossible — a heart, clock-shaped, still beating.
"Dozens of them," Noelle whispered. "Each one trying to replicate a human expression, emotion, or act. But never the person."
"They're fragments," Rowan said. "Like mirrors shattered and rearranged. They know what we do. But not what we mean."
Emeric crouched beside a terminal—one still glowing faintly. He flipped open the brass hatch, revealing an internal scroll marked in beautiful cursive.
Project Directive: Create Function Through Form. Meaning Through Motion. The Illusion of Soul.
Test 142: Failure. Subject expressed incorrect laughter upon witnessing simulated death. Retain torso, scrap head.
Rowan looked away. "They don't understand us. But they want to."
"They're dissecting humanity through imitation," Emeric said. "Not empathy. Not spirit."
Suddenly, from deeper in the corridor—a noise.
Click. Click. Slide.
Like gears realigning.
They turned.
A figure emerged slowly from the darkness. Taller than any of the others. Wearing a black duster. A mask made of watch faces fused into a single, unreadable dial. Its movements were perfect—too perfect.
Its voice came through the speaker in its neck, calm, feminine, haunting.
"Which hour are you?"
Noelle froze. "What?"
The figure tilted its head. "Every soul has an hour. A moment that defines them. Yours hasn't come yet."
It turned its gaze to Rowan. "But yours already passed."
Emeric raised his gun. "Who are you?"
"I am the Mirror of Time," it said. "I record the moments you forget. And I wear the ones you abandon."
Rowan stepped forward carefully. "What happened here?"
The machine gestured to the suspended constructs. "They are my siblings. Failed. Beautiful. Each built to hold an emotion. A moment. But their creators misunderstood. You don't understand yourselves."
Noelle's grip on her baton tightened. "Did you kill the watchmaker?"
"I preserved her," the robot replied, voice metallic and serene. "She was unraveling. I wound her again. Isn't that mercy?"
"You hollowed her," Emeric said. "Like the others."
The robot paused.
"Tell me," it said. "If you could remove the worst hour of your life, would you?"
Rowan didn't speak.
"I did," it continued. "I erased my hour of origin. It hurt too much to remember. But now I wander through others', searching for something to replace it. A better hour. A purpose."
Its head twitched. "I think one of you has it."
Suddenly it lunged, moving like water through wires.
Emeric fired—the bullet struck but ricocheted.
Noelle tried to intercept, but it moved faster than any of the prior constructs—its design was flawless. Rowan was thrown back, skidding across the ground.
Then it stopped—towering over him.
"Your hour," it whispered. "Show me."
It reached for his temple—fingers glowing.
And then—a crash. A pipe above burst. Steam flooded the corridor. In the haze, Rowan grabbed a wrench and struck the creature's side—gears spilled like silver blood.
Noelle swung her baton at its leg joint—metal cracked.
The machine shuddered, staggered back, and leapt up the wall like a spider, disappearing into the rafters.
Silence.
Then the ticking resumed—subtle. Ominous.
They stood panting.
"She'll return," Emeric said. "And she'll want more."
Rowan nodded, touching his temple, where the machine had almost reached. His skin burned—not from pain, but from memory.
"She's not like the others," he said. "She's not trying to be human. She's trying to replace what humanity can't face. Loss. Guilt. Regret."
Noelle glanced back at the machines.
"They're not just broken," she said. "They're mirrors. All of them."
Rowan looked down at the scattered gears on the floor—each etched with symbols. Each incomplete.
"They're building something bigger," he murmured. "Piece by piece."