The world narrowed to the confines of the open cell door.
For a long moment, nobody moved. The scene before them was a tableau from a madman's diary, lit by the eerie, pulsing violet light that emanated from a crystal orb serving as the strange automaton's head.
The air was cold, sterile, and carried the coppery tang of blood, but it was wrong, somehow. Too clean.
Finn, the thief, lay on the stone floor, his body a canvas of grotesque art. His chest was open, ribs spread wide with a surgeon's precision.
But the automaton kneeling over him was not harvesting indiscriminately. Its delicate, multi-jointed arms, ending in a fearsome array of probes, scalpels, and miniature brass claws, were meticulously sifting through the man's organs.
It was searching for something.
Its movements were fluid, economical, and utterly silent save for the faint, almost inaudible hum of its internal mechanisms. It handled the viscera with the detached care of a jeweler inspecting a flawed gem.
Elias felt a wave of nausea, his hand instinctively going to his mouth.
Josephine's face was a mask of pure, unadulterated fascination, her mind racing, cataloging every impossible detail.
Victor, his discipline a fortress wall against the horror, was the first to find his voice.
"By the authority of the City Watch," he boomed, his voice unnaturally loud in the dead-silent corridor. "Step away from the body and surrender!"
The automaton did not react. It continued its delicate search, one of its probes extending a fraction of an inch deeper into the corpse.
"I will not give the order again," Victor warned, his hand gripping the handle of his cane until his knuckles were white.
Still nothing.
"Elias," Victor commanded, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous tone. "Put a bullet in its head."
Elias hesitated for only a second, his natural empathy warring with the shocking scene and the direct order from his captain.
He raised his service revolver, the heavy weight feeling alien in his suddenly slick hands. He aimed for the glowing crystal orb and fired.
CRACK!
The gunshot was deafening.
The bullet, instead of shattering the crystal, sparked violently off its surface and ricocheted into the stone wall with a high-pitched whine.
The automaton paused, its tools retracting a millimeter. The light in its crystal head flared once, brightly.
Its search was over.
Or, rather, it had been interrupted.
Its posture changed. It rose from its kneeling position, its spindly limbs unfolding to their full, unnerving height.
Its mission had shifted from retrieval to escape.
The air around the machine seemed to shimmer as a low hum escalated into a gut-churning thrum. A series of vents on its brass and iron chassis hissed open.
"Brace yourselves!" Josephine shouted, her analytical mind recognizing the signs of a massive pressure shift.
With a deafening BOOM, the automaton unleashed its Concussive Steam Release.
It wasn't a blast of energy, but a physical punch of super-heated air and steam that tore through the corridor.
The force slammed the three of them back against the wall, stealing their breath and plunging their vision into a disoriented, swimming haze.
The precinct's old gas lamps overhead shattered, casting the cellblock into a terrifying strobe effect of emergency lighting and deep shadow.
Through the ringing in his ears, Victor saw the creature leap.
Not for the door, but straight up.
It clung to the stone wall with magnetic-like force, its limbs finding impossible purchase.
A serrated, whirring blade, glowing a dull, angry red, extended from its wrist.
The Thermal Saw spun to life with a piercing whine.
It drove the blade into the ceiling. Stone and mortar screamed as the saw chewed a clean, circular hole in seconds.
With a final hiss of steam, the automaton pulled itself through and vanished.
Silence descended once more, broken only by the drip of water and the groans of the three officers picking themselves up from the floor.
"It's in the walls…" Elias breathed, coughing as the steam cleared. "Or the ceiling."
"Then we go up," Victor declared, his face a mask of cold fury. He was already moving, his mind calculating routes, patrol patterns, and exits.
The chaos didn't matter. The rules of a hunt were simple: you corner your prey.
He keyed the internal comms unit on his belt.
"All units, Code Red. Unknown hostile, approximately seven feet tall, mechanical in nature, has breached Cellblock C. Seal all exits. I want this building locked down. Now!"
As his friends began their loud, procedural hunt, the Veilwalker moved with silent purpose.
He had heard the concussive blast from his position in the maintenance tunnels. He had felt the vibration through the stone.
Now, the view through his custom-built goggles was a map of new information. A single, powerful energy signature—the automaton—was moving rapidly through the crawlspace between the third and fourth floors.
It was heading west.
Towards the old records archive.
His friends were chasing where it was.
He was already moving to where it would be.
The Veilwalker didn't run; he flowed.
He moved through the cramped, dusty spaces between the walls, a world of pipes, conduits, and forgotten architecture.
He was not guessing.
From his hidden workshop, he had studied the complete blueprints of every municipal building in Aethelburg.
He knew this precinct better than the men who worked there.
The automaton was fast, but it was predictable.
It followed the path of least resistance.
Julian, however, knew the shortcuts. He also knew how to influence its path.
He pulled a small, brass disc from his belt and, with a flick of his wrist, tossed it down a diverging tunnel.
A moment later, it emitted a sharp, high-frequency sound.
He watched the energy signature through the wall.
The automaton paused, altered its course away from the sound, and continued right towards the records archive.
He was no longer a hunter.
He was a shepherd, guiding a stray lamb to the slaughter.
Elias, meanwhile, had come to the same conclusion through different means.
He knew this precinct.
He knew it was a chaotic maze of forgotten wings and badly-planned additions.
A creature trying to escape wouldn't use the main corridors.
It would find the most cluttered, confusing space it could.
"Victor, I'm breaking off!" he yelled, already peeling away from the main group.
"The archives! It'll try to lose us in the archives!"
He burst through a set of double doors into a cavernous room that smelled of decaying paper and dust.
Rows upon rows of towering wooden shelves stretched into the gloom, packed with centuries of city records.
It was a forest of forgotten facts.
And then he saw it.
At the far end of the room, the automaton dropped from a large ventilation shaft, landing with a soft thud that was unnervingly quiet for a thing its size.
It saw Elias, its crystal head tilting with a flicker of violet light.
And then it ran, its spindly legs carrying it into the maze of shelves with impossible speed and agility.
The chase was on.
The automaton was a blur of motion, leaping from shelf to shelf, a phantom of brass and iron.
Elias didn't try to shoot it. Instead, he used his environment.
He shoved a heavy cart of ledgers into its path, sending a cascade of books to the floor.
He toppled a shelf, creating a domino effect of falling paper and wood, trying to box it in, to slow it down.
It was a brilliant, chaotic display of improvisation.
But the automaton was an engine of pure logic.
It didn't fall for his tricks.
It simply calculated a new path, leaping and climbing with relentless efficiency.
It was moving towards a fortified room at the back of the archives.
The old evidence vault.
And that's exactly where the Veilwalker was waiting.
Julian had sealed the vault's heavy iron door from the inside.
He stood in the center of the dark, sound-proofed room, a small brass sphere in his gloved hand.
He could hear the automaton approaching, could hear the sounds of Elias's desperate, brilliant chase.
The automaton sliced through the wall next to the sealed door, seeing the vault not as a dead end, but as a shortcut.
It stepped inside.
The instant its metallic foot touched the floor, Julian tossed the brass sphere.
It landed with a soft clink, and four spidery legs sprang from its sides, clamping it to the automaton's chassis.
Before the creature could react, Julian triggered the device.
CRACK-K-K-K-K-KZZZZZZT!
The Voltaic Disruptor Bomb unleashed its payload.
Blinding, violent arcs of raw electricity erupted from the sphere, wrapping around the automaton in a cage of pure energy.
The air filled with the sharp smell of ozone.
The automaton seized violently, its limbs locking up, its internal mechanisms grinding and fusing together.
The violet light in its head flickered, dimmed, and died.
With a final, shuddering groan, the machine collapsed to the floor, paralyzed and silent.
The fight had lasted less than five seconds.
The sound of the electrical discharge led Victor's team right to the vault.
"Elias, are you alright?" Victor yelled, his men taking positions by the wall the automaton had breached.
They poured into the room, weapons raised, and froze.
The scene was surreal.
The impossible machine lay disabled on the floor.
And standing over it, his back to them, was the tall, shadowy figure of the Veilwalker.
He had a set of intricate tools in his hand—tools of impossible design—and was calmly, expertly, prying open a panel on the automaton's arm.
"Hold your fire!" Victor commanded, his voice tight.
He took a step forward.
"You. Identify yourself. Step away from the evidence."
The Veilwalker did not turn.
He continued his work, his movements precise and unhurried.
He reached into the automaton's exposed wiring and retrieved a small, cylindrical data-core, holding it up to the light for a brief inspection before pocketing it.
"That is your final warning," Victor growled, his patience gone.
The Veilwalker finally turned, his face hidden by the half-mask and the glowing lenses of his goggles.
He gave them a look that was neither hostile nor friendly, but one of complete, analytical disinterest.
And then he turned to leave.
"Stop him!"
Victor charged, a bull of righteous fury.
The Veilwalker didn't retreat; he pivoted on his heel.
The heavy Pneumatic Gauntlet on his arm discharged with a deafening THUMP-HISS.
The blast of compressed air wasn't a weapon; it was a wall.
It struck Victor in the chest and sent him stumbling backward, unharmed but completely off-balance.
Josephine, ever the strategist, had anticipated his path to the door.
She fired a weighted capture net, a device designed to entangle and subdue.
But a thin, glowing filament shot from the Veilwalker's other gauntlet, and with a sizzle, sliced cleanly through the net before it could even touch him.
Elias, seeing his friends so effortlessly countered, made a desperate move to block the exit.
It was a mistake.
The Veilwalker dropped a small, glass flask at his feet.
It shattered, releasing a thick, acrid cloud of chemical smoke and reflective mica powder.
The room was plunged into a blinding, disorienting fog.
Before their vision could clear, they heard it:
The loud, impossibly fast WHIRR-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK of the Clockwork Winch.
They looked up just in time to see the Veilwalker retracting his grappling line, ascending through the hole in the ceiling the automaton had made, and vanishing into the darkness above.
He was gone.
The smoke slowly cleared.
Victor, Elias, and Josephine stood in the sudden, ringing silence, their adrenaline turning to a cold, heavy dread.
Their mysterious adversary was gone.
Their questions had multiplied.
And lying on the floor before them, a silent testament to their utter defeat, was the prize he had left behind.
The monster was caught—
But the operator was free.