The second the door swung open, Rose knew something was wrong. The Institute was eerily quiet, even for midnight. There was no sound of Phoebe doing the dishes, her mother singing to the cliché love songs in Chinese, or any other normal sound she should have heard. There was only an unnatural faint wailing sound and some clanking. Rose stiffened and listened more closely. Just as she thought she was hearing it, the sound ceased abruptly as if cut.
Warily, Rose stepped inside, gripping her seraph blade. She nearly tripped over a body sprawled beneath the door. Rose recognized her immediately. This was the body of Juliet, a parlor maid with the Sight. She had a deep gash in her chest, blood blossoming from a fresh wound.
Rose knelt, but didn't drop her blade. Juliet had a pulse, though it was weak. She turned to Rose. "The Institute… was attacked by creatures," she managed to say.
"Demons?" asked Rose anxiously.
Juliet shook her head. "Creatures the Clave… has never… seen before. We were outnumbered." She looked about to explain more, but she coughed into her sleeve. It came away with blood. "You should leave, Miss Wakefield. There's no one… left. Escape while you can." With that, her eyes dulled.
Rose held her hand until the end. "Wo me hui zai jian (We will meet again)," she whispered.
Heeding Juliet's advice, she rose to her feet, dashed up the stairs and ducked into her room. Hurriedly, she changed and packed necessities into a spare suitcase and darted out. One the way to the door, she picked up bits of gear along with other mechanical parts. Perhaps Henry Branwell can help identify its source, she thought.
Rose was now dressed to blend it: another red qipao, but with the classic designs of birds and flowers. Silk slippers adorned her feet and she wore a burgundy cloak to conceal her weapons belt. She liked her choice of weapons: twin seraph blades, a whip (coiled up her leg), a silver dagger, and a stele. Of course her accessories had hidden weapons as well; her diamond pendant had a sharpened facet, the pins in her hair could be used as darts, and her hair itself was long enough to be a whip. On top of that, she had a cane with a hidden blade given to her by her father's friend. Rose was prepared for travel overseas.
The problem was no port was open in the middle of the night, and returning to the Institute was impossible. Rose began the tedious walk to the nearest port: Keelong Port.
The moment she turns the corner, a figure cloaked in black blocked her path. She steps aside, expecting them to pass her, but they match her step to block her again and pulled back their hood. It was a woman.
"Qing ni rang wo guo chu, hao ma?" Rose asked in Mandarin. There was no reply; only a pair of bulging eyes staring back at her. Figuring she did not understand Mandarin, Rose tried again in English. "May I pass please?"
At this, the woman responded as if a switch inside her had been thrown on. "Give me your family ring." She spoke in flat monotone.
Rose was startled. The woman was not likely to be a thief judging by her groomed features, but her straightforwardness unnerved her. "Why do you want it? How do you know my family ring?"
"It is a ring of great importance. It has more power than other rings," the woman said as if reciting from a source. She took a step toward Rose, her gait unsteady.
Rose snapped into action. She released the blade from her staff with a shout. Her voice echoed loudly in the silent night, and she winced. She would be punished for attacking if this were a mundane, but Rose knew better. The voice sounded like a recorded robot and that limp couldn't possibly be human. On top of it all, she could have sworn she'd seen flashes of metal in the woman's mouth as she talked.
With a swipe of her cane, the blade shot out and Rose severed the woman's leg. Instead of seeing blood, she saw gears.
Gears! She thought with realization. The woman was an automaton. She had to be part of the group that attacked the Taipei Institute. Rose stopped at nothing, the cane's blade slicing over the automaton. It fell backward with a sickening crunch of metal.
No sooner that Rose defeated it, whirring sounded behind her. Fearing the wrost, she turned. Sure enough, a massive crowd of automatons were advancing quickly. Knowing that she couldn't single-handedly fight them all, she whirled and ran.
Clicking into motion, they caught up faster than she expected. Sparing a glance behind her, Rose gasped. These automatons were different from the woman earlier. Where the woman actually had hands, theses had sharp blades and other weapons. Also, they had no eyes—or even sockets—except one. He had a single eye intact, perhaps as a leader. The other was a socket with a spring protruding out of it, leering.
Keeping this horrifying image of approaching, armed automatons in mind, Rose ducked into the nearest alley and pulled out her stele. Desperately hoping automatons couldn't detect or see past glamour, she hastily scrawled the rune on her forearm.
It took effect just as the automatons appeared around the corner. Almost at once, they stopped and seemed to converge with one another if such a thing was possible. Then, one by one, they grew motionless. Even the leader's moving eye ceased.
Rose held her breath in the sudden silence. She carefully crept along to wall, side-stepping the rubbish people had cast on the ground. Occasionally, she glanced back at the crowd of automatons to see if they noticed her move. They hadn't standing still as statues. So the glamour had worked.
Momentarily distracted by her relief, Rose kicked a metal flask against the side wall. It clanged and she cringed. Surely those automatons heard it. Her thoughts were confirmed when she heard another sound: metal clicking into place, snapping the creatures alert. Panic and dread rose to her heart. She ran.
Unfortunately, Rose realized half a second too late that she had picked a closed alley, trapping herself between solid walls and surging metal creatures. Thinking fast, Rose pressed herself against one side, and began to climb the cement. It wasn't an easy task with a cane in one hand, but if it meant survival, she would not complain.
Meanwhile, the automatons glided past under her, reaching the end of the alley and stopping abruptly again. They seemed a little confused.
Rose continued up the wall with agility. About six feet up, her foot slipped and sent crumbling cement down into the alley. She clung on with weakening fingers and looked at the automatons to see if they noticed. The single eye stared back, directly at her.
(A/N: Don't you just love cliffhangers? ;) Review please! Let me know how I'm doing so far and if I should continue…)