The Gadgeteer

Chapter 3

ARABETH FOUGHT THE urge to head straight back out and find the automaton as Sanders fled to his cell, but Marble's tracker showed she was waiting outside now. The automaton was gone. Or boring to her now.

Behind the counter, a raven-haired clerk tossed a fresh set of handcuffs to an officer walking a wildly gibbering man to lock up. The parade of arrests was nearly non-stop, and soon over-crowding the holding cell.

"Mel, what's going on?" Arabeth whispered to the clerk, hoping her position as police clerk gave her insight.

Mel shook her head.

"Honestly Abby, there must be something in the drinking water. People are starting fights with strangers and friends alike, and when they stop – if they stop - they don't know why they started."

Arabeth suspected that whomever sent the automaton was behind this as well. The timing was too perfect.

"It's like people have collectively gone mad." Melanie leaned across the counter to whisper. "Today started with reports of a beast. They say it's eight feet tall and horrifically disfigured. No one wants to go look for it, so they're all pretending to be doing other important things. Around lunch time this started."

"It's not a beast, but it certainly qualifies as a monster. A mechanical one," Arabeth replied, half to herself. "If Hicks asks after me, please tell him we can talk later."

"A mechanical beast? Have you seen it?" Melanie whispered back. "They're saying people go mental if they look at it."

Arabeth nodded, eager to leave, but the look on Melanie's face made her pause.

"Are they right? Is it a massive terror?"

"It's definitely something out of a nightmare. Man-made, but that's all I know for now." It should be simple to figure out. Dangerous, but simple. Automatons were rare, and their makers were rarer still. She wanted to see this thing up close. She knew every maker in Blastborn and their favourite technologies. She could probably identify the maker just by the automaton's internal parts.

Melanie's complexion paled. "You're not going after it, are you?"

Arabeth scanned the main area of the detachment, watching the controlled chaos. "I want to know who built it, and these guys seem busy enough." She rapped her knuckles on the counter twice. "So, I'll talk later." She smiled as she turned to leave.

A creation that size... especially a lumbering automaton... would definitely leave a trail. She could probably follow it blindfolded. With Marble running ahead, she was guaranteed to find it, but why take the risk?

If there was an element of bear to it, that would explain Marble's lack of fear. She could out-manoeuvre a bear any day. Large cats and predatory birds made her more nervous.

Why a bear, though? Were they thinking that would scare the few who reported the thing badly enough that they'd give poor information? If that was the case, it was working.

She spotted it a few streets away from where she'd seen it last. At least eight feet tall, it had lost none of its dread-inducing stature in standing still. At this moment, it stood in one of the smaller town squares, head swivelling in unnatural circles, like it was searching for something. Or someone, she realized.

Arabeth inched closer, moving slowly enough to get a quizzical look from Marble. The fox sat and waited, unworried, watching her person acting somewhat like a predator but still within the scope of her normal behaviour.

The square was vacant except for the automaton.

Who was controlling it? Arabeth wondered. It wasn't big enough to house a person, unless they were smaller than a child. It had to be run by radio waves. Radar wasn't specific enough to send images, so this wasn't reconnaissance.