The Bottlesocket factory smelled different that day when she entered. Almost… wrong.
It wasn’t the usual scent of brass shavings mixed with machine oil and hot iron that clung to most of Sambar’s workshops. She tilted her head as she searched for the source. Something acrid, too bitter. She rubbed at her sleeve, trying to wipe away the streak of black, sooty residue that had settled there the moment she had squeezed herself between the thermal bridge and the furnace. The air in here was heavy, the pipes above the platform of the first station rattling harder than they should.
She adjusted her goggles and leaned into the gear assembly which she’d first try and calibrate. The steady tick-tack of her tool was almost lost in the hiss of the steam all about. To her the Bottlesocket factory was like a creature with a hundred throats and limbs, each of them either eating coal, spitting out smoke, or pounding and spinning about. Each one louder than the next. Today, however, one of those throats had begun to choke.
“Line Three’s jammed!” one of her gnome stepbrothers shouted across the clamor. The voice was half-swallowed by the machines, but she heard him. A few heads turned her way.
Of course. She was the specialist at this.
“I’m on it!” She set her tools in their case, slung it over her shoulder as she mumbled to herself. “Eventually I would have went there anyways.”
There was a sound. High pitched. She hurried in that direction. Line Three alrighty. The station loomed ahead, with great belts thrumming, gears turning, a steel framework humming with power. Only it wasn’t humming right. The rhythm was broken, the belts jerking, the gears grinding as though teeth were splintering.
“Don’t get close!” warned a gnomish foreman, standing well clear of the line. “If it seizes—”
She was already climbing the scaffolding. Her leather boots slipped on oil-slick planks, her hands stung from hot brass, but she moved like someone who knew the dangers and ignored them anyway. After all, she’s done this work before. She even educated people about it. Quickly she wedged a lever back into place, hammered at a stubborn latch, pulled a magical sparking wire free before it kissed steel. The machinery groaned but steadied.
If only for a moment.
There was that sound again.
Along with a deep, twisting shudder from somewhere beneath the line, much lower than the gears, way deeper than all the pipes. It rumbled through the scaffolding, through the soles of her boots, into her bones. Not mechanical, not really. It sounded almost alive. Was that…?
She froze at first. Then, she shouted. “Earthquakes!!”
The foreman below swore under his breath. “It affects the main core,” he shouted back, voice gone tight. “If that fails…with this pressure…!”
It would not be just weeks of production gone, or orders lost. The Bottlesocket name may be wiped out when this factory exploded. She understood all too well what was at stake, or thought she did.
Rapidly she climbed down and ducked beneath the scaffolding, following the crawlspace that led toward the core. The air grew hotter the deeper she went, close and stifling, the reek of copper and ash now thick on her tongue. Hot air hissed from openings and cracks in pipes above her head, dripping burning condensation down her neck. As everything around her shuddered she squeezed sideways through a passage too narrow for comfort, boots splashing through runoff. The deeper she went, the more the factory’s roar changed—less like the machina, more like a groan, like breath dragged through broken lungs.
Her heart pounded.
She reached the end of the crawl and pulled herself up into the chamber of the core. The noise was deafening here, a rattle and shriek that set her teeth on edge. Her goggles fogged, and she wiped them clear with shaking hands. Where was the valve of that damn flow regulator??
She stepped forward, hands blindly catching on something that felt like twisted metal, on shapes that didn’t belong. Her breath caught. The tool in her hand slipped, clattering against the grating. It.. it was broken?? She went down on her knees in order to find and pick it up in this thick machine fog.
And then her hands touched something else. A scrape of cloth, and a… a…
Her mouth opened, but no words came. Only a scream, rising raw from her chest, swallowed whole by the roar of the factory.
Until all the sounds were gone.
