Marcus didn’t hesitate. He reached into the iron trunk, his bare hands plunging into the icy liquid, his fingers wrapping firmly around the heavy bronze collar attached to the girl’s severed neck.

«Close your eyes, Subject Seven!» Marcus roared, his skin swelling with black, branch-like veins that pulsed with rapid golden light.

Before Victor could react, Marcus heaved the dripping head upward and slammed its flat brass base directly onto the top of the central glass sphere. The fit was seamless, as if two pieces of an ancient, forgotten lock had finally found each other after centuries apart.

A sound like cracking glaciers tore through the chamber.

The amber fluid inside the sphere turned from a steady glow to a blinding, furious crimson. High above, the massive bronze gears grinded to a shuddering halt, sending a shower of red sparks down upon the operating table.

The girl who wore Helena’s face sprang up from the rubble of shattered glass, her tore leg leaking golden fluid as she sprinted toward Marcus with terrifying speed. «You’re ruining the sequence!» she shrieked, her voice dropping all human inflection to reveal a harsh, metallic screech.

Marcus didn’t turn. He threw his elbow back, catching her across the neck with enough force to snap her head at a horrific ninety-degree angle. She crumpled instantly, but her fingers twitched violently against the flagstones, her golden blood pooling toward the central sphere like mercury drawing toward a magnet.

Victor dragged himself backward, his chest burning as his holographic flesh continued to tear and flicker like a dying video signal. Through the translucent blur of his own arms, he could see the complex clockwork inside his torso grinding against itself, spilling small, dark droplets of bronze oil onto his knees.

«You lied to me,» Victor gasped, his voice layering over itself—part human, part grinding metal. «I remembered Mogadishu… I remembered the blood on my hands…»

«Those memories belonged to the man on that table!» Marcus yelled over the deafening hum of the rising crimson light. He grabbed Victor by the collar of his flickering vest, pulling him up until their eyes were inches apart. Marcus’s pupils had completely dissolved into pools of swirling gold. «The real Victor Vance died protecting my daughter! I built you from his shattered bones and clockwork to bring her back!»

«She’s dead, Marcus!» Clara screamed, crawling out from under a collapsed brass support beam, blood streaming down her forehead. She pointed a trembling finger at the head atop the sphere. «That thing isn’t your daughter! It’s the core of the Geneva machine! If he turns that key, every biological host within fifty miles will flush into the central reservoir!»

Victor’s eyes snapped to the operating table.

The man strapped down—the real Victor Vance—began to convulse violently. The surgical straps snapped one by one with loud, whip-like cracks. The man’s eyelids fluttered open, revealing solid, milky-white pupils. His jaw unhinged with a sickening crunch, opening far wider than any human jaw should, releasing a low, rhythmic hum that mirrored the frequency of the mechanical heart.

«He’s waking up,» Victor whispered, a wave of profound, unnatural terror washing through his artificial circuits. «Marcus… what is he?»

«He isn’t your father, and he isn’t you,» the floating head inside the glass sphere spoke again, her voice echoing directly inside Victor’s brain, calm and crystal clear amidst the chaos. «He is the first vessel that survived the ignition. Look at his wrist, Victor.»

Victor forced his gaze down to the convulsing man’s right arm.

The leather sleeve of the surgical gown had torn away. Beneath the pale skin of the man’s forearm, thousands of microscopic metal needles were squirming like larvae under the surface, rearranging themselves into a glowing, intricate map of coordinates.

It wasn’t a scar from Mogadishu. It was an ignition code.

«He’s not a body,» Victor realized, the truth hitting him like a physical blow. «He’s the map to Svalbard.»

«And you are the torch,» Clara shouted, scrambling toward a control panel built into the base of the chamber’s outer wall. Her hands flew across a array of heavy brass switches. «I’m locking the vault! If we burn the core now, the signal dies here!»

«No!» Marcus screamed, launching himself across the room toward Clara.

A heavy iron blast door began to rumble downward from the cavernous ceiling, its thick teeth descending to seal the only exit.

At that exact moment, the man on the operating table sat bolt upright. His milky eyes locked directly onto Victor. Without a word, he lunged off the table, his movements terrifyingly fluid, and drove his bare hand straight through Victor’s chest.

Victor gasped, but no air came. The man’s fingers wrapped around the glowing brass clockwork core ticking inside Victor’s ribs.

«Thank you, brother,» the man whispered in Victor’s own voice, a cold smile tearing across his pale face. «For carrying my heart back to me.»

The man pulled back, ripping the brass core cleanly from Victor’s chest.

Victor fell to his knees, his vision fading instantly to black as his holographic skin completely vanished, exposing a hollow, skeletal frame of tarnished copper and broken wires. As his consciousness flickered on the brink of total shutdown, he watched the man press the glowing core into his own open chest cavity.

The entire cavern shook as a blinding beam of golden energy erupted from the man’s chest, blasting straight through the descending iron blast door and blowing a hole into the dark forest above.

Through the rising fire and smoke, Marcus looked back at Victor’s collapsing frame, his expression twisted in horror.

«It wasn’t a key to save her,» Marcus choked out, stepping back as the floor beneath them began to split wide open, revealing an endless, glowing abyss beneath the chamber. «It was a locator beacon.»

Far above them, through the blown-open ceiling, a massive, shadowy silhouette descended through the dark storm clouds over the forest—a leviathan of brass, iron, and floating glass, identical to the machine beneath Svalbard, hovering silently over the earth.