Chapter 3: The Final Gear
Elias froze upon seeing his own name. With trembling hands, he reached into the empty cavity where the doll's "heart" had been, and pulled out a small, round voice recorder. It was Barnaby's most intricate piece of technology.
The Horrifying Truth
When Elias pressed the button on the recorder, Barnaby's weakened voice emerged:
"Elias... If you're listening to this, it means I'm already gone. A doll can never become human, but a human can become a doll. That fire twenty years ago... your daughter... I couldn't save her. But I preserved her memories, her 'soul,' within these gears."
Elias could barely breathe. That fire. That bitter memory. He had believed he failed to save his daughter from the flames, but the old clockmaker had locked her consciousness, her memories, into Alice's porcelain body.
The Killer's Mask Removed
"She had come to know too much," a cold voice sounded behind him.
Elias turned to see Lady Clara standing there, gun pointed at him. But her hand did not gleam like skin—it shone like porcelain. Clara was Alice's "perfect" version, Barnaby's first successful experiment.
"Barnaby was about to awaken Alice. But if Alice awoke, she would take my place. There's no room in this city for two 'living' dolls," Clara said, her finger tightening on the trigger when...
Suddenly, Alice's body on the table let out a sharp creak, as if screaming. The remaining gears began to spin. The silver key on the table was drawn magnetically toward Alice's hand. With her last strength, she flung the key at Clara's feet. In the moment Clara lost her balance, Elias lunged at her.
The End
During the struggle, part of Clara's face cracked open, revealing not flesh and blood beneath, but rusted metal and tangled gears. She was merely a machine that had convinced itself it was human.
As the morning sun pierced through the fog, silence settled over the workshop. Clara's body lay motionless, and Alice's porcelain form gave one final faint click, like a last breath, before falling still. Elias sat holding the hand of the doll infused with his daughter's memories.
A "Silence of the Gears" began to reign over the city. Yet the silver key in Elias's pocket trembled ever so slightly... as if to remind him that this was only the beginning.