ᴅᴇᴅᴜᴄᴛɪᴏɴꜱ - ɪᴅᴇɴᴛɪᴛʏ ᴠ x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ [ONGOING!]

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 5 | ʟᴜᴄᴋʏ ꜱᴛʀɪᴋᴇ

Tracy Reznik was so much more than just a mechanic. She was an inventor, a prodigy in the science of robotics. She was a genius with so much potential-- or, at least, that's what her father would always tell her. From the moment Mark Reznik first saw his daughter take apart and rebuild clocks as a child, he knew that she had an extraordinary talent. He couldn't have been more proud-- and couldn't have been more excited to teach her everything he knew.

As Tracy grew, so did her curiosity and knowledge. Her father wanted her to attend school, though she blatantly refused-- being around people made her anxious. The only place she felt safe in was her home at the clock shop, amongst her machines.
She became fascinated with mechanical traps and machinations, and even began to build her own-- naturally, her inventions were clever and useful, but they paled in comparison to her father's own magnum opus: a fully automated mechanical doll. He had been working on it since she was a child, and even while she was still a young adult, it wasn't fully finished. Close, but not quite. It could have been a different story, had he had more funds at his disposal.

Of course, the Rezniks weren't the wealthiest family-- manufacturing clocks only made them so much-- but that didn't bother them too badly. They had the doll, the clock shop and each other, and they were happy. Tracy was happy.

Then, in the blink of an eye, her entire life and security system burned to the ground. Literally.

The explosion that destroyed the clock shop was so unforeseen-- it happened in the middle of the night, while her father had been burning the midnight oil working on a new clock mechanism... he wasn't able to escape in time.

The amount of grief her father's death caused her was indescribable, but she knew that she couldn't afford to cry over his tragic passing. He would have wanted her to be strong, to bite back her tears, to rise above this misfortune and continue his work. And continue she did.

Tirelessly, she poured over the mechanical doll, perfecting it and altering it as her father would have wanted. Tracy thought that once the doll had been completed, it would have put her soul at ease-- though, even long after the doll had been perfected, she couldn't quell the feelings of emptiness she felt whenever she looked at it. It reminded her so much of her departed father.

Nevertheless, Tracy Reznik continued her work in solitude, tinkering with electronics and circuitry as she saw fit. Though her father's death still weighed heavily upon her, it never quelled the thirst for knowledge that he had fostered in her as a child. The desire to know and understand everything that she possibly could had become her life's ambition-- so when she received a mysterious invitation to participate in a game at Oletus Manor, the promise of financial security wasn't what compelled her to pack her things and go.

For the longest time, there had been odd rumours surrounding Oletus Manor and it's architecture; namely, all of the secret gadgets hidden within its walls. Tracy couldn't pass up the opportunity to see all of that in action-- besides, as a mechanic, she needed inspiration, not money.

But when she got to the manor, she didn't find inspiration. In fact, she couldn't find any evidence of any gadgetry at all. There were only the other survivors (who offered their condolences) and a leather-bound diary in her designated room.

She had been tricked.

Tracy had felt so stupid for blindly trusting in the Manor Owner's promises-- but, despite this shortcoming, she always kept an eye out for anything suspicious in the manor, hoping to one day find some hint of what was promised to her in her invitation. Though, she never found what she was looking for-- not until that fateful day she encountered the observer.

The observer was a curious piece of machinery, used by one particular hunter to spy on survivors as they decoded. They had always intrigued Tracy as much as they scared her, but this particular observer was seemingly inactive. Half-buried in the ground, almost as if it had abruptly crashed.