It is a machine that looks like a man.

I sat and listened to the person sitting opposite me as he talked. As he did so he gestured to himself, around the room, to the other people sat around the table like he was addressing some outdoor gathering of hundreds and not a handful of people in an underground basement. The blood elf talked – a blood elf in the heart of an Alliance guild are they fucking insane? – and images and words cascaded across the table as he used magic to show us what he meant. Shapes hovered in the air above us like mirages, waving gently in the candlelight. It was like looking through a murky window, showing a single room that looked like it had been through an earthquake.

"We found the first inside our own city when it attacked me in my chambers," he said. "It had disguised itself as one of my kind and nobody had been the wiser until it struck. When it was finally dispatched and…examined…what we found was took our breath away, as the human saying goes."

The maps and glyphs faded away as the elf finished his incantation, and above us floated a hand. It could have been the image in Sara's note taken to a real artist and sculpted: The pink and fleshy skin had been peeled away and inside there was dark yellow and grey metal. As I watched a finger entered the illusion to poke at a thin rod of bronze, and the dead hand's middle finger twitched in response. The scene pulled out, more and more details being filled in as it did so, and instead of just a hand I was looking at the upper torso of something that could have been human, except where it was wounded it showed metal and wheels instead of blood and muscle. Everywhere on the chest patches of skin had been pulled away and pinned back to show insides filled with machinery I didn't recognise and couldn't understand. Some of it glowed with pulsing light, other parts were twisted and warped like they had been exposed to a hellish heat. It could have been some kind of complex gnomish prank, but for the gathering of nobles and spies around me that said this wasn't a bored engineer's grisly toy. This is real.

I didn't realise I had spoken until the SI:7 man replied: "It's as real as you or I, Mr Conray. This gathering isn't just to look at some curiosity brought in by the other side, there are more of these things and every bit as dangerous as the first. Things that look like us but hide this inside them." On the illusion the flesh of the hand was pulled away, revealing long sharp knives inside it.

"What happened?" I asked, already trying to hold in my head what a person could do if it was made of metal instead of flesh. Strong. Fast. Wouldn't get tired. Would a metal man have emotions? Pity? Would it be controlled like a toy or would someone need to give it orders? How much of it would you need to take apart before it stopped working? Wouldn't feel pain either. How fast would it think? I slipped back into my old habits like I had left the guild only yesterday. The fragments of thought came together and spelled out one thing to me: Deadly and hard to kill.

The Blood Elf talked on. "It made its way into the Silvermoon Academia, disguising itself as a student from our Orgrimmar chapter with information about an Alliance spy in the city. When the guards had left and my back was turned it assaulted me. If I wasn't a superbly-trained mage I doubt I would have survived. As it was…" He shrugged. "I had students close at hand. It took seven of us working together to bring it down. Of course my first thought was to report it to my superiors. My second was to come to my other half in your Alliance." He nodded a head at the SI:7 officer sat alongside me, who didn't respond back. No love lost there, at least. Wait…

"You think this was us?" I asked.

"No," the elf replied. "Neither of our…factions…are capable of craftsmanship such as this, or making something that can act so lifelike. Our goblin-craftsmen tend towards the loud and bombastic for their constructs, brute-strength and suchlike. Your mountain-dweller comrades are not known for their small-scale work either."

"Not yet," the gnome said under his breath, and I got the impression only I had heard him.

That reminded me of something though. "Why aren't the dwarves here?" The seat I had expected the final Alliance member-race to take was instead occupied by the Blood Elf, and the man made me nervous. It was the eyes; a solid green with a darker emerald core where the pupils should have been. An experienced soldier can see another man's intentions and emotions in his eyes, but against elves you can't do shit. He sat across from me grinning slightly as he spoke and used his magic like a light-show, and the entire thing gave me the impression of a predator that hadn't quite decided to eat the prey in front of him. Dwarves had never trusted elves, of any kind, ever. I wondered if their people not being here was more than just a lack of extra seating. I glanced sideways at the only other human at the table with me, and the SI:7 agent shuffled on his seat as he replied.

"The king-under-the-mountain is too occupied with domestic important matters to concern himself with this," the man said quickly. I could smell the bullshit coming from the excuse, but kept quiet as he turned back to the maps on the walls, the trail that crossed the world. "This is the quarry you'll be hunting Mr Conray. It is fast, it is strong, it fits into our cities like a glove and until recently we had no idea they existed or how to track them at all." He pushed his chair back and stood, and everyone looked up at him through the haze of magic above the table. "We're here because your guild is the best and you were known as one of its premier alumni. Because there is a new player in our game and we need to know who they are and where they come from, else we might find ourselves waking up one day and be surrounded by these constructions." He swept a hand at the magical pictures floating above. Pieces of a corpse that had been stripped away and then peeled apart to reveal knives and sharp edges and tubes that could have been rifle barrels. It looked like whatever the thing had been it had an arsenal inside it.

I looked at the maps on the wall, bright ribbons criss-crossing the country. Something about them was…wait. "There're three lines here." I stood and went over to the wall. Up closer and in the bright light it was obvious. The ribbons came close and sometimes met, but always stayed distinct, three separate paths carved across the world. Looks like they'd already made some progress. One began north, in the small island-chain that the Draeni called their home. It ran south across the ocean to the mainland, and ended in Night Elf-controlled lands, just before it would hit the Barrens and the Orcs that lived there.

"That one was discovered and ran shortly after our newfound friend alerted us to their existence," the Draeni said in his heavy accent, and a touch of amusement. A huge finger pointed at the line I was looking at that started in his homeland. "Once we knew of it, it was not so hard to track down. It had some trouble duplicating my people's unique…attributes." A hand ran through the Draeni's thin blue tentacles that hung from his chin and jowls where a beard would have been on a human or dwarf. "It fled south to beyond Ashenvale, where it was lost on the edges of the Barrens. Maybe to meet up with his master or controller, maybe just to hide. Maybe it took itself apart and sits in pieces at the bottom of a river." He shrugged his massive shoulders, a gesture he had to have learned from being around humans. "I do not think we are so lucky, however."

I looked at the map of the Eastern Kingdoms and saw the second red line that started at Silvermoon City and ended south in the Ghostslands, only a few hundred miles from its starting-point. "This is the one you killed?"

"The one that tried to kill me first, yes," the blood elf said. I wasn't watching him as he said it. I was watching the Si:7 man, and saw him twitch, just a little, as the words came from the Horde agent's mouth. Just one more thing to ask later, when this farce was over and the real work could start. "It gave us a chase but in the end we were the victors."

The third one then. It didn't start or go through Silvermoon, but deep inside Lordaeron, the old human capital and now one of the Horde's main cities, controlled by the free-Undead. The path it took was twisted, sometimes headed east or west instead of directly south. It took a second, but eventually I realised the random path wasn't quite so random. It wandered through Silverpine and Hillsbrad, the Wetlands and Lock Modan, all areas with heavy forests as it headed south. "Is this it?"

"Everything we have is in this room," the intelligence man replied, waving a hand around the place and the stacks of papers. "This will be the only time this group assembles, until you find out what we need." The man stood away from the table, towards the other exit of the room. "If you will come with me, we can begin to see to your needs while my fellow conspirators excuse themselves. Then you can begin."

"Some of us have a long road to travel," the female night elf said. At no point during the meeting had she so much as looked at me. I knew why, and I couldn't blame her. Just being in the same room as her made me feel twitchy, and it couldn't have been pleasant for her either. I could hear the venom in her voice and I knew the others had heard it to, but they pretended not to notice, except the SI:7 man who couldn't resist glancing between us.

"A good journey to you all," the Draeni said as he stood, looking around the room and finally at me. "And good luck on your chase my friend. Should your hunt take you north to us it would be a pleasure to speak in less awkward circumstances."

"And to you, sir," I said, and meant it. I'd never met a Draeni yet I didn't like, and this one didn't break the chain.

"See you soon," the gnome said.

The Blood Elf stayed silent as he stood, and the last look I had at him before the door shut between us was those green eyes staring at me, and the edges of his mouth twitching upwards.

Even as I hoped I'd never see the Horde agent again, somehow I doubted that would be the case.

"Thank the Light that's over."

If the room we had just left was a conspiracy nut's dream, the one we came into next couldn't have been more different, nor could the change the man underwent when the door closed behind us and we were alone. It was an old storehouse somehow had made an effort to transform into something approaching a study. Stone walls had been covered up with pretty if meaningless tapestries and old dusty furniture had been dragged in from the barracks upstairs to replace the storage barrels and lockers. The light was good though and the long upholstered seats were comfortable, which was all I needed after the eye-straining dimness of the gathering we had left, and the hard wooden stool I'd been sitting in. The man sprawled down onto a chair opposite me, wrinkling the nobleman's outfit that had in the flickering candlelight of the meeting-room looked imposing and luxurious but now in a good light looked wrinkled and ill-fitting, like they had been meant for a person two sizes bigger and he was just borrowing them. He looked exhausted. Now that I could actually see him I took another look at the intelligence man. A clutch of brown hair in a short haircut that could be pat down into a military shave or swept back a nobleman's coiffure, a thin build that in baggy clothes hid anything from an athlete's build to a lazy shopseller's bulk. Everything about his appearance looked like it could be something else with the right care. He was a spy alright.

"Long day?" I asked.

It seemed to be the right question. "Long week. I'm sorry about all that darkroom crap, it was all we could throw together quickly that would make everyone happy." He sounded tired. "It's been a hell of a mess since that smug elvish asshole arrived in the city, we're still playing catch-up on this whole situation." The man reached upwards and even though he looked half-ready to fall asleep right in his chair the handshake was just as firm as mine. "Aaron Vickers, SI:7."

"Elias Conray, Stormwind Guard. So what's really going on here sir?" I asked.

"You don't have to call me sir. Stormwind Intel is civilian, not military, and so are Guardsmen. Let's stick to last names until we know each other better. I'm your liaison with the city until this whole mess is over by the way, so that might not take long."

That suited me fine; I'd never cared much for rank. "Sure."

"As for what's really going on you heard most of it already. The no-bullshit version of it is this: A week or so ago the Silvermoon Academia – their version of our Stormwind Mage Organisation basically – got in contact with our Archmage and said they had something they wanted to show us. The smug bastard from back in there came across a few days later, under cover of dark so to speak. The Archmage took one look at the Blood Elf's little 'present' and brought it straight to the Royal Keep. From there we got our hands on it."

"Machine-people."

Vickers nodded. "We want them, whatever they are. We want to take them apart and find out what makes them tick and make more of them. Outside of all the sweetness and nicety you saw in that room we want them badly. Imagine an army of them on the borders. We'd never have to give a damn about Orc raiders again, that's for sure. That's why the dwarf representative wasn't here by the way, he took one look at the scribbles that the blood elf brought and if his forgeworkers have spent a second outside their workshops since I'll be surprised. You can bet Ironforge will have some information on these things for you by the time you're ready to start your hunt. Speaking of which, the sooner the better."

"This is a race," I said, and it wasn't a question. It had been there inside that candlelit room, lurking under all the diplomatic words and look-at-us-aren't-we-getting-along rhetoric. The breathed words of the gnome and the barely-restrained anger of the Night Elf at having to sit next to one of her corrupt half-kin. These days we solved our problems with diplomats and occasional border disputes instead of looted cities and burned forests, but underneath everything else the Horde and Alliance were still enemies.

"That elf they sent wasn't some random nobody. Taelan Lightweave is their version of a battle-mage, one of their best, as good as anyone I know of in the guilds or the Crown's forces. I don't know why he's acting the messenger but I don't trust the smug pointy-eared ass. I have no doubt he's already planning to get in your way."

"That's your job, Conray. Get to these walking armouries and bring them back to us. Intact if you can, in pieces if you have to. But either way get them here, and make sure if you can't they don't end up on an operating table in the Undercity."

I nodded and asked the question that had hovering over me all day, from the moment Sara had delivered her message in a smoky Old Town bar to the moment the doors closed behind me on this spy and his shadowy cabal. "So why me, Vickers? A dozen people alone in the Irregulars are good enough for this. Shit, a couple of them could probably find blood in a stone if you asked them to. So why pull me in?"

Vickers leaned back in his sear. When I stared at me it was like someone looking through my eyeballs at the brain behind them. He had a hell of a stare. "Because you have unique skills. You've dealt with unknown factors before and came out on top. Because you've met the 'enemy' in the Horde and you know they're not just slavering orcs and bull-men and zombies, in fact they're just as smart and ruthless as us, and you're not going to underestimate them like so many wide-eyed recruits would. Because you were good enough that you went north and came back."

I shuddered at the word, just a little bit. It brought back too many bad feelings. A chill deep inside I'd had locked away and yet sometimes still escaped its prison and made me shiver. "That was a long time ago."

Vickers gestured at one of the tapestries on the walls. It was another map of the world, done in the old style of embroidery instead of paper-and-ink, green thread making up the continents on a rich blue cloth. The Eastern Kingdoms of mankind were divided up; the human lands in the southern half and the Undead cities in the north, every fiefdom with the name of its ruler and their heraldry sewn in with perfect precision. To the west across the great sea, Kalimdor was clear of borders but no less ornate. Trees sown onto the cloth with emerald thread that shined where the Night Elves made their home and orange ropes outlining the Orcs homeland on the eastern coasts.

Then above them both, the final landmass that sat above the Kingdoms and Kalimdor like a crescent-shaped moon, its tips pointing down at the other two continents. This one had no decoration adorning it, no detail. Just endless white inside the borders, and one name sewn into the centre in heavy black thread:

NORTHREND

Just reading the name sent fresh discomfort through old scars. "A lot of people went north and came back." And so many more didn't. I could still see their names and faces if I thought back hard enough. Not that I wanted to. Some of those old ghosts still wandered the snows up there; I didn't want them in my head as well. I had told Sildri when I left the Irregulars; I don't want to remember anymore. She hadn't liked it or wanted it, but she had loved me then and she'd done her best and now that pain was safely away where it couldn't claw at my brain and heart. Now the feelings I had of that wasteland were only mild apprehension and bad dreams, instead of shivering fits and screaming nightmares.

"I read those reports you sent in to us from the field, and from inside the citadel, and the others written by the de-briefers. You had more reason than anyone to hate us for what we made you do, Mr Conray," Vickers said as I stared at the map. "You knew enough to ruin us. You could have thrown the whole mess in our faces if you wanted and you didn't. Embarrassed a whole lot of important people and you didn't. The nobles may have wanted to sweep it all away, especially after the debacle with Heartfield, but some of us never forgot what you did for us."

"I wanted to be forgotten," I said quickly, but wondered how true it was. I tried to shake that thought out of my head but it stayed there, clinging on. I tore my eyes away from the blank white space of that gods-forsaken continent and looked at the spy.

"We want to put things right Conray. Catch these machine-men and their makers for us and this is our chance to make up for everything we piled up on you a decade ago."

I've never liked spies. It's an honour thing I guess. I've always thought some of the old hands in the guilds and the Guards put too much stock in honour. They'll risk their own necks and the necks of their men just to uphold some ideal vision of themselves, and too often the result of 'honour' is two men in shining armour patting themselves on the back while around them their soldiers bleed and suffer. But it still has its place, and spies slide around honour like thieves avoiding a night watchman. When you call them on it they make their excuses; 'for the good of the realm' and all that garbage, like it's their right to trample over normal people and the laws to get their target. Now here I was sitting across from one, someone who looked only a year or two younger than me saying things I'd never heard spies say before. I don't like spies, but against all my years of experience I liked Aaron Vickers. "I'll need a few things," I said.

He leaned forward again and the quill and paper was in his hands like he'd been expecting it all along. Probably had been. I wondered how many other people like me he'd had in basements like this, wheedling into doing whatever task SI:7 needed them to. "Name them," he said.

I told myself they were my final excuses, my last excuse to walk away if things looked too sketchy or suspicious. I don't think I was fooling myself, and I certainly wasn't fooling him. "Equipment."

"You'll get what you ask for, within reason. Masterwork certainly, Tiered if we can wrangle it away from the other guilds."

Good luck with that. Guilds fought tooth and nail to find enough materials to make a single set of armour good enough to be called Tiered, and the smiths capable of forging it had backlogs years long. Masterwork would do in a pinch though, anything would be better than the thin steel garbage I'd been using for my last decade in the Stormwind Guard. "If you're going to try and buy Tiered from the guilds make sure you bring gold," I said. One down, two to go. "Support."

"Available," Vickers said smoothly. "The Alliance will have squads standing by if you need them. As scouts or just warm bodies, whatever you need them for we'll approve it."

That was alright but too vague. "Only squads? Squads of what?" I didn't want to end up with twenty-plus useless militia following me, farmers with swords and guns in their hands that would get in the way of the real soldiers, or worse still end up shooting us in a confused moment. Guildsmen hated militia.

Vickers shrugged. "Regular guardsmen, from the city regiments. You'll probably get a platoon if you ask nicely. Don't use them for anything unreasonable. You're not invading Orgrimmar."

"Good enough." I had no excuses now. I was going to do it and both of us knew it. I threw out my final demand, and even as I did so I knew there would be no problem. I was suckered in and I hadn't even bothered to put up a decent fight. "I pick my own team."

"Done, whoever you want. If they have contracts already we'll arrange the paperwork you need. Nobody will complain," Vickers said, tapping his quill against the desk.

I had a list in my mind already, had been making it ever since I'd known what it was I was tracking down. I sincerely doubted his promise of no complaints would stick, especially once I gave him the list, but I kept that to myself. Leave it to the last second before I dropped that on him. I stood and he did the same. I reached out my hand and we shook on it. He had a strong grip, not a clerk's at all. "You have me," I said. "Give me a couple of days to sort my life out and I'll be ready to start." More like sort my life away. I thought about the people I'd be leaving behind, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to feel as sad as I should have been. "I'll see you soon Vickers."

"See you soon Elias," he replied using my first name, and I didn't feel the need to correct him. I walked out of the hidden study, out past the rows of maps and reports on the table that the Alliance and their shadowy ally had gathered around, and knew I'd be back soon enough. On the way out it felt like every stone in the hall was speaking as I passed, and they all said the same thing.

Welcome back.