The air in Sector 7 didn't belong to the living. It was a thick, metallic soup of suspended coal dust, spent steam, and the acrid, ozone-tinged stench of burning Aether that coated the back of the throat like oil.
Julian Vane wiped a streak of grease from his forehead, leaving a dark smudge against his pale skin. He stood in the cavernous shadow of The Iron Sovereign. It wasn't just a locomotive; it was a cathedral of polished brass and blackened steel, a beast so massive that the maintenance bay's gaslights struggled to illuminate its upper decks. The machine was cooling down after a cross-continental haul, its massive pistons letting out rhythmic, dying hisses—shhh-clank, shhh-clank—like a leviathan settling into a fitful slumber.
To anyone else, the Sovereign was a marvel of Arcadian engineering. To Julian, it was just another monster that needed feeding.
"Vane! Stop daydreaming and get under there!"
The voice of Foreman Grimes barked from the metal gantry above, echoing off the corrugated iron walls. Grimes was a man built of suet and bad temper, his face permanently flushed from the heat of the foundry.
"I'm going, Grimes," Julian muttered, his voice lost in the ambient drone of the workshop.
He adjusted his grip on his wrench. It was an ugly thing, heavy and rusted, its handle wrapped in strips of worn, cracked leather that had absorbed the sweat of two generations. It was the only thing his father had left him besides a pile of debts and a suspicious reputation. But the tool had a balance to it, a weight that centered Julian when the world felt like it was spinning off its gears.
He stepped off the platform and lowered himself into the maintenance pit beneath the engine.
The temperature spiked immediately. Even "cooled down," the Sovereign radiated a heat that pressed against Julian's canvas overalls. It was dark down here, a claustrophobic tunnel of pipes, gears, and dripping oil. He clicked on his headlamp, the yellow beam cutting through the gloom to reveal the underbelly of the beast.
It was a maze of copper arteries.
"Pressure gauge on the auxiliary tank was reading low," Julian whispered to himself, his eyes scanning the complex network. He ran a gloved hand along a thick pipe, feeling for the tell-tale vibration of a leak.
The metal hummed against his palm. But it wasn't the steady, mechanical thrum of a steam engine. It was erratic. Nervous.
There.
About ten yards down, near the main injection valve, a faint azure light pulsed in the darkness. Julian crawled forward on his elbows, the grime of the floor soaking into his sleeves.
He reached the source. It was a hairline fracture in the reinforced glass of the Aether line. From the crack, the fuel wasn't dripping; it was floating. Tiny, luminous blue droplets defied gravity, rising slowly like reverse rain before evaporating into a glowing mist.
It was beautiful. It was the only clean thing in the entire sector.
Julian sat up, wiping his gloves on his pants before reaching for his belt pouch to grab a sealant patch. He needed to be quick. Raw Aether was volatile. Breathe in too much, and you'd wake up three days later with no memory of who you were.
He brought his wrench up to loosen the clamp surrounding the glass. He needed to relieve the pressure before sealing it.
The moment the iron of his wrench touched the copper of the clamp, the world tilted.
It didn't happen with a sound. It happened with a drop. The oppressive heat of the pit vanished instantly, replaced by a bone-deep cold that seized Julian's lungs. His breath hitched, turning into a cloud of white vapor in the sudden freeze.
Thump.
The sound came from inside his own skull. A heavy, dull thud, like a fist pounding against a submerged door.
Julian froze, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Who's there?" he whispered, feeling foolish immediately. He was alone under a thousand tons of steel.
He tried to pull the wrench away, but his hand wouldn't obey. His muscles were locked. The vibration from the pipe traveled up the tool, through his arm, and drilled into his shoulder socket.
Then, the static began.
It started as a low whine, like a radio between stations, but it sharpened quickly into a cacophony of noise. It wasn't mechanical. Gears didn't weep. Pistons didn't beg.
...cold... so cold...
The voice was faint, sexless, and layered with a thousand others. It echoed in the hollows of his ears, drowning out the hiss of the steam.
...let us out... burn... it burns...
Julian gasped, his eyes widening in terror. He stared at the leaking blue mist. The azure light flared brighter, pulsing in sync with the erratic rhythm of his own terrified heartbeat. The mist began to swirl, twisting into shapes that made no sense in a world of physics and engineering.
For a heartbeat, the pipe wasn't a pipe. It was a throat.
"Stop," Julian choked out, squeezing his eyes shut. "Stop it!"
The vibration intensified. The wrench in his hand began to glow—not with heat, but with a cold, pale luminescence. He felt a sharp, stinging pain in his fingertips, as if needles were being driven under his nails.
See us, Julian. Hear us.
The voice knew his name.
His eyes snapped open. He looked at the Aether tank above him. The thick brass plating seemed to turn transparent, dissolving into mist. Inside the tank, churning within the high-pressure liquid, faces pressed against the glass. Distorted, elongated, mouths open in silent, eternal screams. Old men. Women. Children. Their eyes were hollow voids of blue light, staring directly at him, accusing him.
They weren't fuel. They were the engine.
"No..." Julian whimpered. He summoned every ounce of willpower, screaming through grit teeth as he wrenched his arm back.
CLANG!
The connection broke. The wrench flew from his hand and skittered across the concrete floor, the sound ringing out like a gunshot in the confined space.
The cold vanished. The heat of the engine slammed back into him like a physical blow. The voices were cut off instantly, replaced by the mundane dripping of oil and the distant clamor of the factory.
Julian collapsed back against the dirty wall of the pit, gasping for air as if he'd just surfaced from deep water. He was shaking uncontrollably. Sweat mingled with the grease on his face.
He looked at his hand.
The glove on his right hand had disintegrated at the fingertips. The skin underneath was no longer pale flesh. From the nail down to the first knuckle, his index and middle fingers had turned into a hard, translucent blue substance.
He tapped his fingers against the concrete floor. Tink. Tink.
Like glass. Like crystal.
"Vane! Are you sleeping down there or did you die?" Grimes's voice roared from above, shattering the moment. "The schedule says departure in twenty minutes!"
Julian stared at his crystal fingers. He shoved his hand deep into his pocket, his heart still racing like a runaway piston. He looked at the leak. It was just a leak again. Just blue chemical fuel.
"I'm... I'm done," Julian called back, his voice sounding hollow, foreign to his own ears.
He picked up the wrench. It felt cold, dead, just a piece of iron. But as he climbed out of the pit, emerging from the darkness into the harsh gaslight of the bay, Julian Vane knew that his world had irrevocably changed.
The city of Arcadia wasn't running on science. It was running on a graveyard. And for the first time in history, the dead had found someone who could hear them.