The factory loomed like a tombstone, its chimneys belching black smoke that stained the sky. Linden followed Rue through the iron gates, his boots crunching over coal dust and shattered glass. Workers shuffled past, their faces hollow, shadows pooling at their feet like ink.
Rue nodded toward a woman hauling a crate of gears. "Watch."
The woman's shadow lagged three seconds behind her, jerking like a marionette. When she stumbled, her shadow kept walking.
"They call it shadow-sickness," Rue said. "Started last week. Boss says it's the fumes."
Linden's watch hummed against his ribs. "Ask," it hissed.
He ignored it.
Inside, the air throbbed with the clatter of conveyor belts. Women hunched over worktables, assembling clockwork components. Their shadows twitched on the walls—reaching for tools their bodies hadn't touched yet, tightening screws their hands still fumbled.
A girl no older than sixteen dropped a gear. Her shadow caught it midair.
"See?" Rue said. "Time's… slipping here."
Linden approached the girl. "How long has this been happening?"
She flinched. "Since the new foreman came. He brought the medicine."
"Medicine?"
She pulled a vial from her apron—thick, mercury-colored liquid. "One drop at shift start. Makes the work easier, he says."
The watch vibrated, hot enough to scorch his skin.
"Ask," it demanded.
Linden uncorked the vial. The smell hit him first—vanilla and gunpowder. His father's pipe tobacco.
The memory dissolved like sugar in tea.
He recoiled. "Where's the foreman?"
The girl pointed to a door marked Supervisor. "But you don't wanna—"
Linden was already moving.
The foreman's office stank of burnt hair and oil. A man in a stained waistcoat sat behind a desk, counting vials of mercury. His shadow loomed on the wall behind him—larger, sharper, holding a knife his real hand didn't carry.
"You're not supposed to be here," the foreman said, not looking up.
Linden slammed the vial on the desk. "What's in this?"
"Vitamins. For fatigue."
"Vitamins don't smell like my father's grave."
The foreman's shadow tilted its head.
"Ask," the watch urged.
Linden hesitated. The foreman smirked.
"You're Hawthorn's boy, aren't you?" He leaned forward, eyes glinting. "He used to supply us. Best gears in the city. Until he got greedy."
"Greedy how?"
The shadow raised its knife.
"He tried to stop the medicine," the foreman said. "Said it was unnatural. But we all make sacrifices, don't we?"
The shadow lunged.
Linden ducked. The knife tore through the air where his throat had been. He bolted, Rue shouting behind him as workers scattered.
The foreman's shadow pursued, unhinged and grinning, its edges fraying into smoke.
"Trade," the watch snarled. "Speed for sight."
"No!" Linden hissed.
But the watch took anyway.
Cold flooded his veins. The world blurred as his legs moved faster than thought. He careened through the factory, the shadow's laughter echoing, until he skidded into a storage room and barricaded the door.
Darkness. Silence.
Then—
A click. A match flared.
The Woundless Man sat atop a crate, his chest cavity open, clockwork beetles skittering inside.
"You're predictable," he said.
Linden gripped the watch. "What's the medicine?"
"A cocktail. Mercury, time, and a drop of them." He tapped his hollow chest. "The Tockmen."
"Why?"
"To thin the veil. Make workers… pliable." The Woundless Man stood. "Your father tried to dilute it. They drowned him for it."
Linden's breath caught. "He's dead?"
"Dead? No. Worse." He tossed Linden a gear stamped with the eye-and-cog symbol. "He's balanced."
The door splintered. The shadow surged in, knife raised—
The Woundless Man caught its wrist. The beetles in his chest swarmed, devouring the shadow until only a stain remained.
"Leave," he said. "Before they dose you too."
Rue found Linden retching behind the factory, his vision blurred at the edges.
"What happened?" she asked.
He showed her the gear.
She palmed it, her mercury eye swirling. "This symbol's on the barge crates. The Tockmen's mark."
"They're poisoning the workers."
"Poisoning?" Rue laughed bitterly. "They're farming. Every drop of that 'medicine' is a down payment on borrowed time."
Linden's watch pulsed. Four scars now etched his palm.
"What next?" he asked.
Rue nodded to the factory. "We burn it."
"And the workers?"
"They're already ghosts."
As flames engulfed the building, Linden swore he saw shadows dancing in the smoke—free, for a moment, from their bodies' strings.