Content Warning: Minor Body Horror
There was a flurry of motion. A clean warehouse in the outskirts of Detroit was receiving several cars. Overlooking the scene was a tower gleaming silver in the night, with a broad window with a full view of the sight. Beside the compound was a set of railroad tracks, no longer in use but kept in good shape. A garbage truck, a car hauler fully loaded, and a packed semi-trailer arrived. Many people came out to greet them in the quiet night, shattered by ruckus. The garbage truck parked aside; its sole purpose gone. The car hauler parked at the far end of the facility near the parking lot, and several workers began to unload numerous cheap and identical cars with modified headlights. The semi-trailer met the rest of the society organized at the bay. It pulled up and the driver stepped out and around to the back and opened the bay door. A number of people began to stream out to meet and join the crowd, chattering indistinctly with each other as friends met up.
The back of the semi-trailer was full of locked crates, and a large man was sliding one of the boxes forward along a set of rails to the bay of the truck, fire axe in his other hand. As he reached the aperture, he let go of the box, allowing it to rest in place. He shook out his outercoat, protecting him from the cold of the evening. His right shoulder connection chafed as metal met flesh in the nearly freezing temperatures. He would bear it before going in the heated building for only a little while longer, he had to speak.
The man turned towards the crowd, and the private conversations ceased. His voice was loud, clear, and commanding. Puffs of vapor were expelled from him with each word in the cool night's air.
"We have found success! Soon, our God will be upon us!"
Raucous cheering erupted forward, some whistling and others shouting, all clapping.
"We must all give our gratitude towards the excellent planners of the operation! Without their efforts, the executors of the vision would not have had such success. And such success we had! We were able to seize an entire truck of Man's Gifts for God with neither detection nor shed blood!"
The crowd cheered once more, while the people who had mingled in from the semi-trailer concealed their knowledge. With a wave of his hand, the leader continued once more,
"We can conceive the New God and bring about the Fifth Industrial Revolution. From coal, to gas, to nuclear power, to digitalization, to the Gifts of Man. We have procured the first of the gifts today, and the first among first is here!"
He raised the axe above his head and brought it crashing down upon the lock holding the crate shut. A spray of sparks flew as the lock split, and he twisted the remnants off of the brackets holding it to the wood. He opened the crate and paused a moment to gaze upon it, before lifting the item out of the packing material it rested in.
As he turned around, upon his arm was a large gauntlet, weathered inscriptions surrounding the arm and frayed wires running around it. The two fingers were constructed haphazardly, terminating in an uneven two-fingered claw. He made a show, placing the whole of the crowd between the pincers of the claw in his view, such that the claw highlighted his face.
"This will be the First Gift! I spoke at length with, someone, about its many wonderous uses! We shall utilize it to great extent, and its ability will aid the Vision greatly."
He gingerly placed it back within the crate, never activating the grip of the claw. Returning his attention to the crowd, he began to preach once more,
"Now the beginning of a new era has begun, the name of my Church of Steel and the name of every individual will be carved beneath it into gold to carry the legacy of our work into the future."
He gestured to himself, pride now poured through his speech at his personal vision finally being fulfilled,
"Eli Whitney, Henry Ford, and now, Eric Moghadam. My name will be carried forward on the shoulders of all those who worked so hard and sacrificed so much to help me. Without you, the workers, nothing I do would be possible. You are the executors of what I saw so many years ago."
Now reminiscing more than preaching, Moghadam's followers were too devoted to him to even care that the tone had shifted. They saw glory in all their futures.
"The Church I was in was full of fools trying so, so hard to resurrect their God. I was then among their number. The God had been shattered long ago in a battle with flesh. But, time marched forward. I realized that their God was not shattered, but dead. A God had died in battle with the forces of flesh. I realized, a revelation, something within my mind clicked. Who runs the world of man, but man? What if instead of the Gods ruling man, man ruled the Gods? And that is when The Vision came forth. We shall build our own God and push the force of progress. Progress and using machines as our beasts of burden, we could drive the future of mankind forward, into a bright future! Our political efforts and economic efforts have been twisting our machinations in the shadow of society, and now we finally found a true Gift. We shall have some of our workers begin working to procure more, some shall find uses for this Gift, and some shall categorize the rest of the loot. But before all, let us celebrate this night, the night in which we gaze into the Arc of the Covenant!"
The crowd gave a rousing applause and filtered into the warehouse where planners had already laid out a celebratory communal meal. Someone had ordered catering at their own expense and the lower levels of the church celebrated what they thought was the beginning of their organization new Gifts. As the crowd moved inside, a fraction remained in the cold, waiting for the rest to no longer realize their absence. With that, Moghadam walked around to one of the vehicles unloaded from the car hauler.
Opening the trunk, he grabbed a chain and dragged out a man stripped of all his clothing, half frozen and disoriented. He was bound by the wrists and practically dragged over the gravel lot, only kept on his feet by a desire to keep away from the bitterly cold ground. A gouge on the back of his neck still bled. He was dragged away towards a cellar entrance, padlocked with a round man standing as guard. The man stepped aside as Moghadam walked up. The cellar door was pulled open, revealing a descending staircase. Moghadam dragged the chain with the man not far behind, the rest of the higher ups descending into the dirt. After what seemed like an eternity of walking, the stairway opened out into a large room that more resembled a cavern than anything manmade.
Marching along, the crowd made their way to a hallway of prison cells, a long line of rusted cages mounted to the floor with bars too high to climb and slick with moisture. A cutout near the floor allowed food and water to be slid in, and a bucket for waste to be slid out. The air was stagnant with the scent of decay and metal. The only comforts given were old blankets that in combination with the earth around them could stave off the coldest of nights.
A door of several bars fused together was roughly pulled open, and the chained man was thrown in hastily as the rest of the group moved on. Only the leader stayed behind, ordering the rest to begin preparations for and wait for him ahead.
Moghadam leaned close to the bars as the prisoner looked up miserably at his face, shrouded in shadows. He was backlit by dim fluorescents that were clouded by a thin smog of unknown origin. His tone was low and dark, but even. His voice boomed in the quiet chamber.
"I'm going to start by being honest with you, as what you think of me no longer means anything. I am now your lord, your master, and perhaps, your savior. I am also the judge, the jury, and the executioner. It would do you well to understand that in these halls, I am omnipotent."
He pulled back for a moment, pulling a large cigar out from under his coat, singeing it with some unknown lighter within his hand. He smoked a deep drag from the cigar and blew a ring of Hell's smoke into the cage before continuing.
"Now, you've been handed down a death sentence here. But, I am willing to lighten the load. I'll cut you deals, cut that horrible sentence down a bit. There are things that you can do for me, that I want you to do for me. If you do those, then perhaps we could start by bringing you down to just a life sentence. Maybe we'll get you some food with taste in it, maybe blankets with less holes in them. The first thing I want you to do is get accustomed to your time down here, meet the neighbors, and spend a week or so. Then we'll see how willing you are to talk to me. I'm cold, not cruel."
Moghadam reached around to pat the back of his neck, reminding the prisoner of his injury, "And don't worry about when they'll come and get you out. We sent your partner far, far away to lead the goose chase, and your implant itself was cut out. Any friends that may be searching for you would be looking for red herring. Rest well."
With that, he blew another ring of smoke, wafting around him in the stagnant air. He stood to his full height, towering a foot over the hunched prisoner. After he straightened his overcoat, he turned and rapped his hand against the bars, the thunderous sound of metal against metal clanged throughout the cavern. He strolled away leisurely to the rest of his followers.
He was left alone and in thick shadows as the leader of the group walked away. He crawled over to the corner and dragged the scraps of fabric out of the puddle they were lying in. He covered his sensitivities to protect himself from a lack of decency and the worst of the cold. The cavernous prison he was stuck in was already beginning to wear at the corners of his mind.
With the others having left, the room grew silent. And from the silence, every little noise rang like a gunshot even to his deafened ears. A drip of water fell somewhere in the distance, muffled through distance and the blood still pooled in his ear canals, tickling away the corners of his panicking mind. Something rumbled in groaning pipes over him. Every now and then, the cage itself would shudder, crying out into the darkness around him. He plugged his fingers into his ears, tears flowing from his eyes like water through the mud around him. He could hear his teeth chatter, he could hear every stretch of cloth shift. His skin was growing numb. He could have been there for hours, he could have been there for one.
Eventually his thoughts grew numb too. He had heard stories of travelers through the Yukon slowly feeling the warmth drain from their body, only to die and be swallowed by the snow. It was not that cold here, and yet those stories were all that flowed through his mind. He began to drift off towards sleep, his awareness of the world drifting away from around him.
The grogginess was swiftly dashed from his mind as he heard a shuffling sound somewhere around him. The cavernous nature of the room broadcasted it from every corner around him, and yet it was still muffled and distant. The sound of sloshing mud and fabric being rustled met his ears, his captors must be returning. He backed into a corner as he wanted nothing to do with them. He shivered in the corner, his movement had eroded away the pocket of warm air surrounding him. Then, a hand from the cell over reached between the bars and prodded his shoulder.
He screamed.
A distantly feminine voice shrank back, "Good lord you sound like a little girl. It's me, your neighbor."
He turned around slowly and saw that someone was locked up in the cage adjacent to his. He could barely make out her features in the poor lighting, but clearly something terrible had happened to her. Things seemed to worm around her skin, thin and wiry. She was wrapped in fabric similar to him, though she was granted far more than he was. The only trait he could see clearly was that she had both of her eyes removed and replaced with malfunctioning headlights. They glowed dimly but focused on nothing and pointed in different directions, betraying her blindness.
As she spoke, her voice sounded distorted, as though she were speaking into a fan. She sounded only tangentially human.
"Calm down, calm down. I want to help you."
"Can you speak up? I'm recently hard of hearing, who are you?!"
She raised her voice somewhat, though the effort seemed to strain her.
"I'm your neighbor, I think I said that."
"I can barely hear you, and I meant your name."
She chuckled, the odd sound vibrating his ears and leaving an uncomfortable chill to run up his spine.
"My name? That's one of the first things you lose here."
"And that seems really cryptic for no good reason."
She paused, as if in thought.
"Yeah, you're right. I'm just trying to make light of a pretty shitty situation. My name is Margaret, although I haven't had need of it in ages. They never used my name and the others down here lost their voices a long time ago. You're the first new body down here in some amount of time. What did you do? What's your name? What's your story?"
"My name's Mack Guffen, but just call me Mack. So, yeah, I had a run in with this group when they attacked a truck I was driving. Huge flash of blinding lights, and then a load of gunfire. Then they dropped some kind of sonic grenade that blew out the windshield and concussed me. I'm honestly surprised I'm not completely deaf. What got you in here?"
She seemed to recoil at the account she had just heard, and debated with herself for a brief moment.
"Well, I guess that explains what Eric meant when he talked about your people not going to be able to find you."
"Who?"
"Your people, I assume whoever you were driving a truck for."
"No, who's Eric?"
"Oh. He's the guy who leads this place, we usually called him The Prophet or The Founder in conversation, but me and him personally used to be on a first name basis. Him and I, we used to be so close, you know."
"Oh, that's, interesting. So, you're like a warden for him, then."
"No, no. I spoke out against him, told him we were going too fast in his plans. I was high up in his circle, and he was working himself up again. He wanted to steal something, and I had developed Gifted Lights for him. You could pick an area in front of you and anyone standing in it would be completely blinded by my light, even if they were looking away. Of course, he loved the Gifts I made and emboldened him. I told him they wouldn't be useful without a snare, they couldn't trap someone. You needed a barrel for the fish. I perhaps spoke too harshly, and now I'm here."
He considered what she had just told him, and while he wasn't very high in The Foundation, he could tell that she clearly would be a Person of Interest, and probably an anomalous inventor of some sort. He couldn't be certain, but she had been involved in the planning of the heist that landed him here, but was canned early in the process. She probably held some lingering bitterness about the ordeal, maybe he could work with her to try and leverage an escape.
"I see, I'm sorry to hear that. He seems pretty fucking bonkers, huh?"
"What? No! He's the best hope for our future there is, this is just a temporary setback. I spoke out of line, then I was punished. He won't forget me, not once I've served my due."
"Oh yeah, our future. I get what you mean."
"No you don't, don't bullshit me. I said I wanted to help you, and I was serious. Do what he says, and we'll be kind to you. I'm proof, I cooperated with the vessel project for The Vision, and I got more clothes and better food. He's very kind and he'll help you if you help him."
"Oh, I see."
He retreated to the center of the cage, considering his options. He had so much to think about, and the room was so very cold. His only companion was a zealot who didn't even realize she was truly imprisoned. The room was so cold. He needed tools at least to even attempt a breakout. The room was cold. He couldn't escape.
The cold got to his thoughts, he decided to cooperate with his captors. Sleep overtook him as his eyelids grew too heavy to keep open. His dreams were vividly plagued by explorers traversing the Yukon.
J. Jackson was sitting at his desk watching a fight. The stress of his newer responsibilities was getting to him. He had so much to do now! He had to watch the monitor and report it to site command if anything significant happened. He had to watch it all the time, it was ridiculous. He preferred to just watch his fights and mind his own business.
The room around him had gone to waste as he performed his duties. Trash filled cans around him, a pervasive smell of sweat and feet invaded the room. The fluorescent light at the top of the room had broken, but he never bothered to report it to maintenance.
A knock came at the door and it creaked open to reveal two people. Smith and Bateson were repulsed by a wave of smell passing over them and blinked their eyes to adjust to the darkened room.
Smith quickly aired his disgust, "Jesus Christ dude, the site has hygiene standards."
J. Jackson turned around with an air of aloofness, "Hey guys. What can I do for you?"
Bateson shifted small piles of trash which accumulated on an unoccupied desk, shaking the mouse to wake up the monitor. The screen slowly awakened.
Smith continued to speak now through his coat pulled over his nose, "We just came by to ask you about the security breach. The radiation report, we think our copy got lost in the mail, so to speak."
"Oh that's odd, usually the director is good about informing people. She should've talked to you guys about it like a week before the security breach happened."
Both Smith and Bateson perked up at the reply but continued on with their mission.
"Yep, she never made it by. Here, in the future, can you send it to us directly? It would make it a lot faster and more direct, less likely to lose things in the middle."
"Uh, yeah. Sure, I think I can do that."
Bateson accessed the terminal as the other two continued their conversation. He was uninterested in most of it. Evidently, the monitor who normally manned it had been removed from the post months ago as some anomaly was neutralized, unimportant. The fact that he could access it was a stroke of luck, evidently J. Jackson had been using it for watching less than appropriate videos in the workplace; probably to avoid disciplinary action by pinning it on the other sucker.
He skimmed through the file directory before coming to the common folder for the monitors. He reviewed the room's security logs, flicking back to a video from the date that J. Jackson had indicated. He kept the audio off so that Smith would be able to keep J. Jackson's attention away, their investigation had to be kept away from the Director's ears.
The tape was scratchy, showing the room they were in now. It was much cleaner and probably didn't smell anywhere near as bad as it did now. J. Jackson was watching one of his screens before jumping up and running out of the room, presumably to make his report. The rolling graph on the monitor was visible even from the camera, showing a large spike in the readings. What he had said just now was true; the break in the chain of communication was not with him but the Site Director. They would have to dig deeper. Something was clearly wrong, and J. Jackson had basically disintegrated as a person in a brief period of time. Something was up with him and they couldn't risk him giving away their plan.
Smith was continuing pointless bureaucratic talk.
"We do, however, want those reports double spaced and in Times New Roman. Makes it easier for us to make written notes."
"Uh, aren't all documents in Times New Roman?"
"Yes, but I want you to double triple check."
As Bateson closed out of his tabs and began to circle back around the room, Smith took notice and began to bring the conversation to a close. He had played his part, and now his partner had completed his.
"Well, alright. In any case, it's good that we got this communication breakdown sorted out. We wouldn't want something like this to threaten site security or public normalcy, you never know with these anomalies."
"Yeah, yeah. It's good to get things done."
"Take care and have a good evening."
With that, the pair of researchers hastily left the room. The stench was becoming unbearable. Once outside, they walked back to their office with faces of neutrality for all else to see. As soon as the door to their office closed, they dropped the act.
Bateson turned to Smith, "Alright, so when I checked the logs for the room, it turned out he really was telling us the truth. He did inform the Director."
"Ok, so we should ask the Director to inform us next time about these reports, at least, if they go to her. It doesn't hurt to have communication redundancies."
"That's not the point. Remember, there was a battery camera set up before the attack to record in case the power went down, and now we know for certain that she knew beforehand."
Smith asked nervously, "Are you implying… treason? That she allowed a facility to be assaulted without preparation? Jesus Christ that's a hefty accusation."
Trying to calm Smith down, Bateson replied, "No, not yet. We need more evidence. But remember how the breach was cleaned up?"
Smith answered, "Yeah, Alpha-9, her new pet project. Do you think that she could have allowed a hostile entity to breach security so that she could test her anomaly squad?"
"It's an unpopular idea already, it would improve their image if they responded to a breach of their own accord. The Director was already an ambitious woman, I mean. This could be a power play."
Smith was now beginning to sweat. He had no clue what they might've gotten themselves wrapped up in. For all he knew, they could be on the chopping block next. The horrors the Foundation had in containment were nothing compared to the horrors of the Foundation's office politics.
"A power play that's gotten Foundation members killed. Look, man. We can't go around saying this to anyone. We need to look into this more and not say a word to anyone. She's already swapped out a majority of the staff here from the previous administration."
"Yes. Let's not stress over it, yet. We should look into this before we make accusations. Hell, I don't even know who we could make accusations to, if it turns out to be true. That sort of shit is somewhat commonplace past the line in upper admin."
Smith sighed, "I was really hoping it was just a clerical error."
"You'll be briefed on the road, this way."
Sharpe was leading the team slowly out through the main entrance of the facility. He wanted to make a good impression. He had pressed his suit. He had combed his hair twice over. He had even trimmed his prized moustache down. He was the picture of professionalism.
He had just recently been promoted at the behest of the Site Director here, she said she had seen something special in him. He wanted to show that he was worthy of the new title. He had plenty of experience in the field, he was not green by any measure. But still, he now was the lead of a team for the first time, and with a very special MTF to boot. He would do whatever was asked to prove himself worthy of the title of Captain.
The team was being marched forward. As they stepped foot on the site of their first battle together, they were all taken for pause except for Iris. She continued to follow Sharpe past the gates.
Han turned his body towards Cactusman's face from the perch on his shoulder, "So, I guess that was both our first times in hand-to-hand combat, huh."
Cactusman pursed his face, "Yeah, it was. In the moment it felt incredible, ecstatic. But now, I'm not so sure. Did I really almost kill Iris? I mean, even if I didn't, she certainly seems to think so. I don't know what I did wrong."
"It happens, sometimes you have to make difficult choices. That's part of being a hero, don't ever thumb your nose at it."
"What have you ever had to do that was so hard?"
"I mean, look at me. I'm a walking hand. I had to come from somewhere, and in doing so I hurt someone real bad. I don't regret it in the slightest, though, and if he were still around, I'd give him the finger."
"Do you really have a pun for everything?"
"No, but I try."
Alexei was breathing in the air of the arena. It was still being painted over, the furniture had been replaced and the doors had been reaffixed to their hinges. But still, the scent of burning fuel and the slightest tinge of old flesh still carried in the room. He had stopped being a soldier years ago, the memories of failure still haunted him. He had spent his time speaking to a doctor, making amends with his failures. But, he was a soldier at heart. Trained since birth, a killer, he possessed no face but the one grafted on as he entered the brotherhood of the military. Perhaps fighting for a good cause might assuage those tendencies he had. He held no pleasant memories of his past, but some part of him yearned to return to the fight.
As the group moved on, no one noticed the Vessel standing off to the side, moving their arms as though holding a blade in the air and slicing forward. They wielded the dream nail as they had done with the dream warriors and disturbed something in the air. A weight felt by none present but the vessel lurched and disturbed a great body of energy, absorbing it. Then, satisfied with their action, rejoined the group.
The group walked out as the dawn sun rose. Cool mist wafted off the morning dew and birds sang, just out of sight. The air was clean, cool, and new.
Sharpe turned about and faced the group, everyone stopping suddenly at his abrupt motion. He waved his hand to show off a fancy truck. The morning sun gleamed over the clean and fresh paintjob. Every pipe was gleaming with polish, no stain nor smear defaced it anywhere. The black paint job was marked only by a small logo with three arrows pointing inside a circle. Anyone who didn't know what it was would assume it was an artifact of college days long gone.
"This is my personal truck, it will be used to haul all of you. Due to some of your, less than human appearances, we won't be risking normalcy. You'll be riding caboose."
He moved his hand to indicate a trailer just to the side of the truck. It was clearly designed for horses and the smell of shit suddenly filled the air. A tattered swath of cloth covered the windows.
"Yeah, apologies for this. I wanted to keep a low profile, and generally nosy people don't like to poke their noses in uh, manure. The smell is real, just don't sit in the piles."
Iris rolled her eyes, her attention never leaving the briefcase that Agent Sharpe was carrying, before climbing into the trailer and taking one of the only clean spots available. Han counted his blessings for not having a nose and Cactusman held his breath before climbing in himself. Alexei moved into the trailer with little concern for the condition of the trailer, he had ridden worse. The whole trailer leaned back with his weight and the hitch groaned slightly. The Vessel reminisced the scent for a moment, it reminding them of the Waterways back in Hallownest. They wondered how Ogrim faired. They quickly mounted they trailer, rounding out the last of the team.
They all stared out the back as Sharpe walked up to the doors. He pointed out a small speaker poking out of the corner with a microphone right below it.
"That is how we'll be communicating. Push the button and speak into the mic, and I'll hear you. I'll keep you all updated on traffic and our ETA. Once we're on the road, I'll begin to brief you all. Any questions?"
Cactusman spoke up, "Can we stop for food along the way? I don't remember the last time I ate anything that wasn't from a cafeteria."
"Yes, we'll stop for food, and when the restroom becomes a necessity, let me know in advance so I can pull off to an isolated area. I will not stop at a gas station for you all nor on the shoulder of a freeway."
No one else spoke up, and the Agent concluded.
"Let's hit the road, we've got a long drive ahead of us."
He pushed the doors of the trailer shut and locked in the deadbolt over the exit.
Eric Moghadam was getting exasperated. He had organized the upper ranks of the Church to begin organizing the Gifts they had seized from the raid. However, nothing among them was immediately of interest. He was told by Mrs. Carter specifically that there would be something of great power and importance and yet he saw nothing. Mr. Dark wasn't even present, just a useless video feed of some silent silhouette. He might as well have spared his own time.
Pairs of hands were shifting around crates and carefully prying them open with crowbars. At least, every package thus far was relatively safe. Only a few were actually labelled as such, but they had been assured that nothing would blow up their face if not operated or interacted with.
A shout rang out up towards the catwalk he stood on, "Sir, do you think we could use these?"
"What are those?"
"They might be fake, but uh, judging by the smell, it's fourteen flayed human skins. They're clean and everything but like, you know. There's a bottle of something called 'RWT4' next to them for preservation, according to the label."
"Return the skins, move the bottle to the chemical department."
With a nod of his head, the underling moved with haste. Moghadam began to strut down a set of metal stairs into the pit of activity. He figured that ordering around those beneath him may soothe his nerves. Someone was trying to unfold a sheet of paper containing puzzles but couldn't seem to find the edges of the paper, it just kept unfolding. Someone else was handling a section of PVC pipe with an arrow painted along it. Someone else was poking around the massive gauntlet that Moghadam had used in his earlier speech. They did not wear it, but were trying to decipher the weathered inscription on it and ascertain the purpose of some of the wiring and fluid channels.
All in all, it was organized chaos. Despite that, he could practically taste the progress in the air. He had finally gotten their hands on proper Gifts to utilize for his goals. Moghadam and several of his elites had Gifted Enhancements, but they were mostly personal effects and not for the explicit purpose of the greater good. He flexed his arm, a thin creaking sound escaping. No, now was the time for action. They finally could begin to branch out. He then reached the great hall's floor.
As he strolled through the crowd sifting through items, he commanded, "While we catalog everything we have taken, I want any items that alter space or time to be brought directly to me! The body of the engine is nearly complete, we just need a rift in reality to begin to power it!"
A crate was tipped over, a label reading "2453 – Euclid" peeled off and was crumpled into a ball. A pile of pregnancy tests scattered over the surface. The two people peering over it seemed confused, disregarding the label, and resealing them back into the crate. Neither could comprehend the need to ship such a thing under such heavy guard.
Moghadam continued to walk the aisle between the rows of tables. Workers were hunched over as he stood at his full height, presiding over them. This position was where he was meant to be, and soon, it would be far grander than a dingy complex in a decaying city. The world renewed beyond the aging structures of the modern day, and his name etched permanently into the halls of history as savior. He would be remembered in perpetuity.
As he moved towards the end of the hall, he approached another stairway up. Ascending, he moved onto a catwalk into a manager's outlook overseeing two great halls. The hall he left was hectic with activity as the haul was sorted and sifted through. It, however, was dwarfed in comparison to the great machines roaring with life in the next hall over. He stepped out onto a new set of path suspended over a manufactory from the glass box sitting atop the dividing wall.
Great furnaces heated various metals to a molten state before combining them into alloys carried off in great buckets, sparks occasionally flying out. Great layers of pipes flew around the walls, embedded under grates in the floor, and wrapped around every faculty of the site. Steam, smog, and fumes billowed from vents and the orifices of the steel surrounding the area. Great pistons beat with the rhythmic intensity of a heart at work. And through it all, like blood, workers who composed the lower classes of the Church tended to every function. They pulled the levers, they carried the loads, and they offered prayers to the cogs they wore around their necks.
Moghadam breathed in deep, the plate in his neck venting out the particles in the air. With an exhale, a smile returned to his face. He stood over the scene, soaking in the praise he knew was directed at him from those many prayers. The glow of the machines and fire cast arcs of shadows up through the catwalk and guard rails, casting him in thin shadows.
A shout came from behind him, and as he turned, he saw one of the elite workers had run up the catwalk towards him. She was waving a PVC pipe and shouting something drowned out by the roar of the machinery. The worker paused inside the manager's outlook. Moghadam stepped inside, pulling the door to the pathway shut behind him. The sound of machinery was muted but still shaking the building.
"What is it?"
"It's small, but it's what you asked."
She held the pipe up in front of her face to present to her leader.
"This arrow, I don't know how it works, but it has some sort of time traveling effect."
She pulled a pen out of her pocket and pulled it up to the pipe. She pushed it into the pipe. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the pen came out of the other end of the pipe and held still, despite her hand not having moved in that second. She began to jostle the pen around, and the end at the other side followed her motions, but lagging behind by a second. She pulled it out, and for a brief moment the end of the pen could be seen at the opposite side of the pipe and fully removed. She then rolled the pipe in her hand so that the arrow on it faced the other direction. She began to move the pen towards it, and the tip of the pen poked out of the opposite side just a moment before it was even inserted. She separated the two and handed the pipe to Moghadam.
"See? I think that qualifies as what you were looking for."
"Very well. I will see that you are given fair compensation, return and see if you cannot discover anything else."
With a nod, she practically ran down the stairs to continue looking for more treasures.
Moghadam turned back to the manufactory. He twisted the pipe in his fleshly palm. It was an unassuming object. Unbeknownst to him, its original owner simply used it as a tool for counterfeiting, unaware of the potential that a hairline fracture in reality could bring. But now, it was his key. He twisted the pipe once more before passing it off to his other arm. He narrowed his eyes, and a rising and falling industrial alarm played once from somewhere in his bicep before he began to crush it in his grip. A fracture appeared running the length of the pipe, the small popping sound signaling his grip to loosen. His smile ran from ear to ear.
Soon enough, he would introduce his lower workers to the many Gifts that could be found in the world, and he would bring them all up to speed. Once he could determine how to insert the key into the engine, all would be well. They were almost devoted enough to give up their normal lives from before, and soon they would be fully loyal. But not yet. Soon, but not yet.
Moghadam strolled at a leisurely pace to the window, pressing his palm against it. His eyes gazed over something being constructed on the center of the factory floor. An enormous steel chassis was being lowered onto tracks via rollers and a harness crane. The wheels of the body were finally affixed, and the train was coming together.