The silence in the workshop shattered not into pieces, but into dust.
Julian was still staring at the wax cylinder, his father's final confession ringing in his ears, when the Hunter stepped through the ruined doorway.
It was huge. A walking bulwark of matte-black iron and reinforced leather padding, smelling of ozone and dried blood. Where a human face should have been, a brass mask was bolted onto the skull, dominated by three glowing green optical lenses that whirred and clicked as they adjusted focus.
Whirr-click. Whirr-click.
The lenses locked onto Julian.
"Subject 0-A confirmed," the Hunter's voice grated out, a synthesized growl emitted from a speaker in its throat gorget. "Why do you weep, little gear? The machine only wants to love you."
Lyra moved before Julian could even process the threat. She was a blur of gray cloak and steel. A throwing knife flashed in the dim lamplight, embedding itself in the leather joint of the Hunter's neck armor.
THWACK.
The Hunter didn't flinch. It didn't bleed. It just slowly turned its helmet toward Lyra.
"Obstruction identified."
It raised a massive arm. Mounted on its forearm was a pneumatic piston-spike, sizzling with pressurized steam.
"Move!" Julian roared, shoving Lyra aside just as the piston fired.
KA-CHUNK!
The steel spike slammed into the workbench where they had just been standing. Wood splintered like dry bone. The oil lamp was knocked over, spilling flaming fuel across the floor. The blueprints of human anatomy caught fire instantly, curling into black ash.
The room was plunged into flickering orange chaos. Shadows danced wildly on the walls of clocks.
"My tools didn't work," Lyra hissed, scrambling backward over a pile of gears. "It's armored against low-frequency blades."
The Hunter stalked toward them, its heavy boots crushing delicate clockwork mechanisms beneath its treads. CRUNCH. CRUNCH. It was slow, inevitable, like a creeping rust.
Julian backed against a towering grandfather clock. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic rhythm that his crystal hand seemed to pulse along with.
You are the Tuning Fork.
"I don't know how to use it!" Julian yelled, more to his dead father than to Lyra. He looked at his hand—the blue crystal now glowing fiercely in the firelight. "I don't know the song!"
"Then scream, damn you!" Lyra yelled, throwing a heavy brass gear at the Hunter's head. It bounced off the mask with a useless clank.
The Hunter loomed over Julian. It raised the pneumatic spike again, the steam pressure building with a high-pitched whine. The three green eyes stared down, devoid of pity.
"Acquisition protocol: shatter the limbs, preserve the core," the machine droned.
Julian stared into the green lenses. He heard the steam building in the spike. He heard the crackle of the fire. And behind it all, he heard the silence of the hundreds of stopped clocks surrounding them. They were full of coiled springs. Tension waiting to be released. Potential energy.
Every material has a frequency.
Julian didn't try to destroy the Hunter. He closed his eyes and slammed his crystal palm flat against the wood of the grandfather clock behind him.
He didn't push. He vibrated. He sent a frantic, messy jolt of raw Resonance into the wood, seeking the metal heart of the clock. The mainspring.
WAKE UP.
A deafening CLANG echoed as the grandfather clock's mainspring snapped, unleashing all its stored energy instantly. The clock face exploded outward in a shower of glass and gears.
But it didn't stop there. The vibration jumped. It traveled through the floorboards, through the shelves, infecting every mechanical device in the room.
RIIIIING!
Suddenly, five hundred alarm clocks went off simultaneously. Cuckoo clocks burst open, their wooden birds shrieking. Metronomes began ticking furiously, faster and faster until their arms snapped. Grandfather clocks chimed the twelfth hour over and over in a chaotic, deafening cacophony of brass throats.
The sound was physical. It was a wall of noise that hammered the senses.
The Hunter staggered backward. Its green lenses whirred wildly, unable to focus on a single sound source. Its audio sensors were overwhelmed. It clawed at its brass mask, the pneumatic spike firing uselessly into the ceiling.
"Its gyro-stabilizers are audio-based!" Lyra yelled over the din, grabbing Julian's arm. "You blinded its ears!"
She pulled him toward the back corner of the workshop, behind a heavy lathe. She kicked aside a dusty rug, revealing a circular iron grate set into the floor. The Sump drain.
"Down! Now!"
Lyra grabbed the grate's handle and heaved. It was heavy, cemented by years of grime, but adrenaline lent her strength. It groaned open, revealing a black, foul-smelling shaft that dropped straight down.
The Hunter was recovering. It shook its head, the green lenses locking onto their movement through the smoke and noise. It let out a roar that drowned out the clocks—a blast of pure white steam from vents in its shoulders. It charged, smashing through tables and shelves, oblivious to the fire biting at its leather armor.
"Go, Julian!" Lyra pushed him toward the hole.
Julian looked back one last time. The fire was consuming his father's legacy. The wax cylinder—the proof of what he was—was melting on the burning table.
He jumped.
He fell through darkness for three terrifying seconds before splashing into freezing, viscous sludge. The smell hit him instantly—raw sewage, rot, and chemical runoff. He gasped, choking on the vile air, sinking up to his waist in the muck.
Lyra splashed down beside him a second later.
Above them, framed by the circle of the grate, the Hunter's brass mask appeared. The green lenses peered down into the darkness.
KA-CHUNK!
The pneumatic spike fired downward. It slammed into the sewage inches from Julian's face, spraying filth into his eyes.
"Dive!" Lyra grabbed the back of his neck and forced him under the surface of the sludge.
They submerged into the suffocating, oily blackness. Julian held his breath until his lungs burned, kicking blindly against the current. They drifted further into the sewer tunnel, away from the light of the workshop, away from the Hunter, and deeper into the bowels of a city built on lies.
When they finally surfaced, gasping and retching, they were in total darkness. The noise of the workshop was gone, replaced by the dripping of water and the scuttling of unseen things in the tunnels.
Julian crawled onto a slimy concrete ledge, shivering violently. The crystal on his hand was glowing faintly, the only light in the suffocating dark.
He wasn't just a mechanic on the run anymore. He was the key to the machine. And the machine knew where he was.