The Leviathan Pub was usually a place of organized chaos. Tonight, it was just pure, unadulterated chaos.
"Where is she?!" Jack roared, violently overturning a heavy oak table. Mugs of ale shattered on the floor. "People don't just vanish into thin air, Ivy! Track her!"
"I'm trying!" Ivy shouted back, her fingers flying desperately across three different brass analytical dials. "She ditched her comms piece. She threw away the magnetic boot-heel! She doesn't want to be found, Jack!"
Asher sat in the corner booth, hugging her knees to her chest, looking terrified. The Twins were pacing like caged tigers, looking ready to punch straight through the fossilized bone walls of the pub. Rowan leaned heavily against the doorframe, still shaken from his encounter with Alfred, but his eyes were hard and focused.
"She left to protect us," Rowan said quietly, his voice cutting through the shouting. "After what happened at the mill... she knows the Syndicate Enforcers will be hunting for a 'Witch.' She thinks she's a walking bomb."
"She's family!" Jack slammed his fist into the wall, cracking the plaster. "We don't leave family behind in the smog."
BZZZT. CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.
The mechanical ticker-tape machine on the bar suddenly spooled out a massive line of paper. At the same time, the gas-lamps in the pub flickered and dimmed in a synchronized pattern.
A single symbol was burned into the paper tape using a heated needle: The Broken Circle.
"Cipher," Ivy breathed.
A voice hissed from the brass horn of the gramophone. It wasn't the usual pre-recorded, automated briefing. It was live.
"Giants. Ash-Runners. Phantoms. Converge on Sector 0. The Node. Immediate priority."
"We don't have time for Cipher's bloody games," Jack snarled at the brass horn. "We have to find Dot."
"I know exactly where she is, Jack," Cipher's mechanical voice cut through the static.
Jack froze instantly.
"Do not panic," Cipher continued. "But if you want her to survive the night... bring your crew to the Node. We have a war to start."
The gramophone clicked off.
Jack looked at the crew. He holstered his heavy revolver.
"Let's go."
The roof of the Old Cathedral was the highest accessible point in the Ash-Dregs. It was a massive, rotting skeleton of blackened stone, stripped of its beautiful stained-glass centuries ago to feed the Syndicate's furnaces.
Dorothy sat on the precarious edge, her legs dangling over the dizzying abyss. The wind whipped her heavy coat around her. She watched the sweeping, red searchlights of CorpSec zeppelins cutting through the smog far below. They were actively hunting for her.
She looked at her bare hands. Beautiful, terrifying sparks of golden light danced effortlessly between her fingertips.
"It's a beautiful view from up here."
Dorothy gasped, spinning around. She scrambled backward over the slate tiles, golden light flaring violently in her palms, ready to strike whatever had snuck up on her.
Standing in the deep shadows of a broken, soot-stained gargoyle was a figure wrapped in a heavy black cloak.
"Who are you?" Dorothy demanded, her voice shaking but aggressive. "How did you find me? I dropped my trackers."
"You scrambled your technology," the figure said. His voice wasn't masked by a brass bellows. It sounded remarkably human. Slightly raspy, tired, but firm. "But you cannot scramble a star. You shine entirely too brightly in this dark city, Dorothy."
"Are you an Enforcer?" Dorothy hissed, the golden light intensifying, illuminating the ruined cathedral. "Did Victor Velox send you?"
"I am not your enemy," the figure stepped out of the shadows, keeping his hands visible and empty. "I am the one who watches the Dregs."
"Stay back!" Dorothy warned, raising a glowing hand. "I... I don't want to hurt anyone else."
"You didn't hurt them," the figure said softly, his tone completely non-threatening. "You saved them. At the mill today. You saved your family."
Dorothy lowered her hand slightly, her chest heaving. "I'm a danger. My powers kill."
"It destroys," the figure corrected gently. "But destruction is a necessary component of creation. To build a new world, the old one must be disassembled."
He stopped a few feet away, the wind pulling at his cloak.
"We are going to steal the Book of Knowledge tonight, Dorothy. We are going to finally break the iron chains of the Syndicates. But I cannot do it with just hackers and carriage drivers. I need a true force of nature."
Dorothy laughed bitterly. "I'm a runaway with a ticking time bomb in my blood. I'm a nobody."
"You are a Princess of Aethelgard," the figure stated.
Dorothy froze. Her blood ran cold. She hadn't told a single soul what Nana Rose had said.
"You are the strongest person in this city," the figure continued. "Join me. Not as a rebel in the shadows. But as the heavy artillery. Help us win this war tonight, and I swear to you... your orphanage will never need to buy a breath of clean air again."
"Who are you?" Dorothy whispered, sensing a strange, irritating familiarity in his conviction and his cadence. "Why should I trust you? For all I know, you're going to sell me to the Barons."
The figure reached up and pulled back his deep hood.
Dorothy's eyes went wide. Her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp. She stared at him, stunned into absolute silence.
"You..." she breathed.
It was the twitching, clockwork nose that gave it away. The sharp eyes.
The man said simply, holding her gaze without blinking, "I am Cipher to the revolution. And I need your help, Dorothy."
Dorothy looked at his face. He had just given her his greatest, most dangerous secret. He had put his anonymity—his only true shield against the Syndicate—directly into her glowing hands.
She stood up slowly on the slippery slate. The golden light in her hand didn't fade; it steadied into a solid, unwavering beam.
"I don't want to just fix the system, Cipher," Dorothy said, extending her glowing hand toward him.
"I want to burn it to the ground."
Cipher smiled, taking her hand. "Then let us start the fire."