Prelude

They stood in the alleyway where the centerpiece of the machine had fallen, exposed to the world. Schreber was hunched against a wall, his arms clasped tight around him, either a protective gesture or a pained one. With so broken a man as the good doctor, Murdoch found it difficult to tell.

"What are you going to do—now, John?" The doctor's eyes were alight with the excitement of John's victory—their victory, really. For while a still voice inside told him that he could have come to understand the workings of the Strangers' technology with study, there would never have been time to do so without Schreber.

"I'm going to fix things." The answer was a simple one, really. At that moment, everything seemed so simple. "You told me I had the power, didn't you?"

"I can make these machines do anything I want, make this world anything I want it to be, just so long as I concentrate hard enough."

He wasn't sure if it was the words themselves or the still tone of his voice that drained the enthusiasm from the doctor's expression. Schreber was left staring at him as one might a strange dog, uncertain of its friendliness.

Without another word he turned to the machine where it had settled on its side. A part of himself was quietly amused that the face of the device resembled a clock, though he wasn't sure why this was so. It just seemed right. Without numbers and canted at an angle it was impossible to say what time it would properly read. In a way, he supposed it didn't really matter. Without a true day or night, time had been one of the cruelest illusions. False promises and lies were all this place had to offer.

That was one of the first things he would have to fix.

He could feel the mechanisms as they churned, buried deep and unseen beneath him. He could feel how the parts were supposed to fit together. He could feel the damage that had been dealt by the upheaval of the Strangers' warren being broken open like a hornet's nest. Without their influence, the machine responded to the lightest touch of his will. A discordant vibration that had crept into its working ground itself out as the machine began to mend, twisted metal and more exotic elements knitting together like healing flesh. Soon the City itself would be ticking along flawlessly, matching its rhythm. Just another exertion of will, so slight, and he set the first of his plans into motion.

The hand on the clock began to move and he stepped away, satisfaction tugging the corner of his mouth into the thinnest ghost of a smirk. He turned toward the mouth of the alley, rubble crunching loudly under his feet. The mess would soon sort itself out. He had places to be.

"Where are you going?"

He turned around to regard the doctor almost as if he'd forgotten him. A part of him had, he realized, as though the man had been part of the background. Unimportant. An expression wrote itself upon his face that evidenced amusement at the question, as though all the answers should have come to Schreber as simply as they had to him, and it was with the same empty humor that he delivered his answer.

"Shell Beach."