The silence in Elara's workshop was the loudest sound Elias had ever heard. It was a crushing, physical weight that pressed in on him, heavier than the city's perpetual smog. He moved through the metallic carnage, his boots crunching on shattered glass and twisted brass. His eyes, trained to see every detail, every threat, now only cataloged the ghosts of what was lost. He stopped at a workbench, where the mangled form of a clockwork nightingale lay. The space where its intricate voice box should have been was a hollow, empty void.
The sight triggered a memory, sharp and painfully clear.
He was standing in this very spot only a month ago. The air then was filled with the scent of machine oil and Elara's bright, infectious laughter. She was holding up a delicate silver gear. "Corbin, you're a genius! The tonal resonance is perfect!" she had exclaimed. Elias had looked over at the man she praised. Corbin was her lead mechanic, a shy, brilliant man with perpetually grease-stained fingers and a nervous energy. He had ducked his head, a faint blush on his cheeks. "It was your design, Miss Elara. I just followed the schematics." Elias had given Corbin a respectful nod. The man was gifted, his loyalty to Elara absolute. He was a part of her world, a part of the light she brought into Elias's life.
The memory shattered like glass as Director Thaddeus Thorne's voice cut through the silence. "It's time to go, Elias."
Thorne, the Director of Her Majesty's Clandestine Cogwork, stood silhouetted in the ruined doorway. In his office, high above the city, the order came down like a guillotine.
"The Vultures are a cancer we have been trying to cut out for years," Thorne said, his voice laced with iron. "They are beyond your reach, and if you pursue them, you will be acting as a civilian, not an agent. I will have the Constabulary arrest you myself. You are a weapon of the state, and I am pointing you elsewhere. Am I clear?"
"Crystal," Elias bit out.
"Good," Thorne said, his expression softening almost imperceptibly. "Then focus that rage. The Sons of the Forge have an armored train loaded with enough aerosteam fuel cells to level a city block. It's approaching the Rustfang Viaduct. Get on that train, secure those cells. That is your mission. That is your only mission."
The Rustfang Viaduct was a spiderweb of rusted iron suspended over a chasm so deep, the bottom was lost in shadow. The wind howled like a hungry beast as Elias, a dark shape against the storm clouds, fired his steam-powered grappling hooks. The claws screeched as they found purchase on the armored plating of the speeding train. He was reeled in, hitting the side of the car with a bone-jarring impact before scrambling to the roof.
The fight was brutal and close. Inside the cramped corridors, the Sons of the Forge fought with frenzied desperation. Elias moved through them like a phantom of violence. A guard swung a heavy wrench; Elias dislocated his shoulder with a single, precise strike. Another charged him with a steam-knife; a silent dart from Elias's wrist-mounted crossbow sent him slumping to the floor. He took a glancing blow from a ricocheting slug, the impact a fiery starburst on his ribs, but he pushed the pain down, fueling the cold fire of his focus.
He kicked open the door to the final car and froze. At the front, a radical leader was arming a master detonator. Hurrying to help him was a man whose face turned sheet-white with shock and terror. Corbin. He was alive.
The moment of disbelief was all it took. The radical leader snarled and slammed a secondary trigger. The side of the train car peeled away in a deafening explosion. The world became a whirlwind of fire, screaming wind, and twisting metal. Corbin was sucked out into the open air, a ragdoll swallowed by the chasm below. Elias was thrown against a bulkhead, his vision going black for a second. With a surge of adrenaline, he lunged forward, disarming the primary detonator just as the wrecked carriage groaned and tore free, leaving him in a mangled, screeching ruin of a train car that had miraculously stayed on the tracks.
He had barely survived. His report to Thorne was clinical, omitting the one detail that now burned in his mind. He was on his own.
His hunt took him deep into the Geargrinder's Bazaar, a black market that pulsed like a diseased heart in the city's underbelly. The air hummed with the hiss of illegal steam-mods and the glow of banned voltaic technologies. After hours of navigating the treacherous social currents, Elias found his lead: a jumpy pawn broker who had been approached by a badly injured man trying to sell a priceless acoustic gear. A gear Elias recognized from Elara's nightingale designs. The man was heading for the Grand Terminus.
The chase was a blur of motion and sound. Corbin, his arm in a crude sling, saw Elias and ran. He vaulted over ticket counters, dodged steam-porters, and slid down a luggage chute into the maintenance tunnels. Elias was relentless, a shadow locked onto its prey. The chase climaxed in a chamber filled with the deafening roar of the station's primary steam regulators. Elias tackled Corbin to the grimy floor.
"Why, Corbin?" Elias's voice was a low growl, all pretense of control gone.
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" the mechanic sobbed, all fight gone from him. He confessed everything—the gambling debts, letting the Vultures in, the promise that Elara wouldn't be harmed. They had used him and then tried to dispose of him on the train.
"Who was he? The man who paid you?" Elias demanded, hoisting him up.
"Kestrel!" he shrieked. "A brute who calls his fists thunder and lightning! He fights at the Ironweld Foundries for coin!"
Elias needed more. "The voice box. Why did they want it?"
Corbin's eyes widened in terror, but not at Elias. His gaze was fixed on Elias's shoulder. "What… what is that?"
Elias glanced down. Clinging to the fabric of his coat was a tiny, intricate clockwork beetle, no bigger than his thumbnail. Its brass legs were twitching, and a minuscule crystal lens, where its eye should be, glowed with a faint red light. It was a listening device. A tracker. They had been on him the entire time.
Zzzzz-TCHINK!
A red laser dot appeared on the wall beside Corbin's head. A sharpshooter.
Elias reacted instantly, throwing them both behind a massive iron pipe as a high-velocity slug slammed into the spot they had just been, showering them with sparks and concrete dust. The Vultures knew. They knew he had the name. The hunt had just become a two-way street. He was no longer just the hunter; he was now the prey.