30 DAYS. 2 HOURS. 34 MINUTES.
The next morning I was up before the outside lights turned yellow, and I could barely stop yawning the entire trip to the garage. I wanted to open up shop before I left for the Dome; IoN could take any orders and messages for me. The business couldn’t really afford to shut for Seren knew how long this meeting would take. A day of work lost was a potential new customer not gained. We couldn’t lose those right now.
Newspaper in hand, I unlocked the cogged doors with the brass key I kept around my neck and dragged my feet into the kitchenette in the back room at the ass-crack of dawn—much to the surprise of IoN.
“What are you doing here so early, El?”
“Wanna open up shop before the meeting,” I mumbled around a cup of steaming toffee as I threw the paper on the side. The headline read New Zimeon Invention Takes Convention by Storm.
IoN whizzed around the kitchen, making me some boiled eggs for breakfast by the looks of it.
“You don’t have to make me?—”
“It will do you some good.” IoN whirled around to face me. “You need to eat three meals a day to remain healthy. And eggs are good for a human’s serotonin levels.”
“Yes, Dad.” He was always like this, trying to get me to eat more, sleep more, smile more. I guessed IoN...cared. That fact alone started the usual line of questioning: How could IoN care? What kind of strange internal cogwork did he have to make him able to learn? No steambot could learn; they could only do what you tell them to do. No steambot, that was, except IoN. Dad had made him when I was a child, and although I’d fixed his external parts as needed over the years, he wouldn’t let me fiddle with his internals. Steambots had no rights, since they were not capable of emotion, but every one of them had to be registered with official paperwork; since Dad didn’t want anyone knowing about IoN’s differences, he is, technically, illegal.
So I kept IoN in the garage where he could cause the least amount of suspicion. The last thing I needed was an illegal bot who showed signs of advanced technology on the premises. They’d shut the garage down for good—no questions asked.
“Keep an eye on everything for me today. Take any orders, answer the radio, and take messages.” I steeled myself as I prepared myself to say the next thing. “And remember, act like a regular assist bot. None of”—I gestured to the way he was watching himself in the mirror, curious—“this.”
“Yes, El. I know.” He spun around as the eggs finally boiled. “I know how much this garage means to you. I will not be in the way. Promise.”
“I also don’t want you to be taken away, IoN. You’re important too.” No matter how many times I told him, it never stuck.
At least this time he didn’t bother answering. He just peeled my eggs, plated them up, and handed them over. “Here. Eat.”
Breakfast was...well, it was breakfast. Eggs were the cream of the crop down here, and the only reason I got to eat them was because Old Mags kept a small farm of chickens in her house. She gave eggs to me, but they were only allowed in the garage because she didn’t like Phyllis and the girls eating them. Safe to say Mags wasn’t a Phyllis fan.
I spent the next hour doing some basic calculations for the garage and wondering how the hell we were going to even pay the 650-coin rent this month, much less afford to eat. If Phyllis could stop taking so much for her stupid spa days and the girls’ ridiculous wardrobes, we wouldn’t be struggling so much. Mags paid me a good one hundred coins yesterday, which needed to go toward paying the rent, but other than that, we didn’t have anything else right now.
If I didn’t get any more work this month, we were screwed.
I was just about to start work on an old project—an old steambot previously used for picking apples back when we got enough sunlight down here to grow them—when a light knock on the garage door stole me from my mind.
A faint “Help” sounded, followed by a “Please.”
I rushed to the door and yanked it open, but I wasn’t prepared for the beauty standing in front of me. Long black hair in carefully waved tresses flowed over an elegant turquoise dress with various intricate layers of lace and beading decorating the bodice. Even her face was an immaculate presentation of golden skin, green eyes, red lips, and eyelashes longer than any I’d seen. Not that I usually spent so long staring at a woman’s eyes. This one was just breathtaking.
“Thank you,” the girl said, hand on her chest as she took several rapid, raspy breaths.
Instead of asking if she was okay, however, I continued to stare dumbfoundedly at her, wondering what someone so noble was doing here on floor zero, let alone at my garage.
“Hello?”
Crap. She’d caught me staring. My pale skin blushed like a tomato, and I ducked out of her sight, waved her inside with a “Come on in,” and walked into the kitchen to brew a cup of toffee. I threw an intense glare at IoN, who bobbed up and down—his best attempt at a nod—in understanding: Act like a normal bot.
We didn’t know who this girl was.
She followed me into the kitchen, and I spun to meet her piercing green gaze. “You’re welcome,” I said. “It can be a long walk from the elevator station.”
“Yes, well . . . I probably should not be this far down, anyway.”
Just as I’d thought: She was from a higher level. Did she know what the sun looked like? This was my chance to ask.
“Hey, do you know what the?—”
“Where am I?” she interrupted with curious eyes as she examined her surroundings.
I’d never really cared before, but I was suddenly ashamed of all the dirt and grime this room contained, and I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d cleaned. IoN had probably cleaned it at some point. Right? “Er...” I mumbled, “sorry about the mess.” I grabbed a spare chair from under the table and gestured to it. “Here.” I plopped down in the one next to hers. “You’re in the Tinker Hut. Were you not searching for an engineer?”
Her eyes widened as she sipped her toffee. She looked down at the liquid in her mug and frowned but quickly replaced it with a stone-wall expression. I knew that expression; it was the one I used on Phyllis when I didn’t want anyone knowing how I really felt. She didn’t like the toffee.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “You’re probably used to better stuff.” I didn’t know what level she was from, but she wore things I’d never seen, like bracelets in a golden material and her shimmery cloak I still didn’t understand. Plus, her skin was golden, and you only got that from regular exposure to sunlight.
“It is quite all right.” She coughed into a handkerchief she had pulled from her cloak pocket and didn’t stop for a good thirty seconds, and I swear her golden skin paled. She waved my concern away and said, “Just a little dusty down here.”
I asked IoN for a glass of water, and he whizzed back moments later with a clean glass of water for our guest.
She took it with a thank you aimed at me, and I hid the scowl that tried to form. I was so used to treating IoN as a person, it irked me when someone treated him like some regular machine.
Not the time, El. So not the time.
“If you don’t mind, miss. What are you doing down here?”
She raised her eyebrows at me.
I laughed. “It’s obvious you’re not from here.”
She frowned. “I put on my worst clothes and everything.” She frowned, genuinely upset about her failings.
“Whatever material your cloak is made from, I’ve never seen it before. Nor whatever that golden stuff your bracelet is made of.”
She raised her eyebrows in amazement. “You’ve never seen silk before? Or gold?” She fiddled with the small, delicate thing dangling around her wrist and the key that joined it together in a complicated clasp.
I shook my head and shrugged. “Sorry.”
She chuckled under her breath and apologized. “Sorry, that was terribly rude of me. I am just laughing at my failure to know the people of this city.” She looked me straight in the eyes. “I promise I was not laughing at you.”
I waved away her concern. She clearly hadn’t ever ventured lower than floor ten before, so who was I to judge. I’d be just as out of place at the top.
“El,” IoN said as he floated near my head. “Your nine a.m. appointment on floor eighteen at the Dome is in one hour.”
“Thank you, IoN.”
He floated away again.
“I am sorry for intruding.” She stood up and went to leave but clutched her chest tight as she wobbled on her feet.
I grabbed her by the waist and sat her back down. “It’s okay.” I needed to make that meeting, but I couldn’t just kick her out. “If you promise not to steal anything, you can stay here while I’m out.”
Her eyes widened. “I couldn’t possibly?—”
“You’re in no condition to be going anywhere. Is there someone I can get for you while I’m out? It’s the only chance I’ll have to leave floor zero.” I looked at the ground, not wanting to admit how embarrassed that fact made me.
She shook her head. “I’m here looking for someone. It’s important.”
I got her to her feet and rested her on the sofa in the back room. “Well, who are you looking for? Maybe I can help?” I ruffled the ends of my dress straight. “I’ve lived here my whole life. I know everyone on this floor.”
As her body convulsed into another coughing fit, I winced. This girl wasn’t well. Was that why she was down here on floor zero?
“I’m looking for a legendary engineer. I used to hear stories about him when I was little.” She blushed. “It could just be a fairy tale, but I...I’m out of options.” Her eyes met mine, and those green orbs struck something inside me.
This girl needed help, and IoN was right, I wanted to assist her. My father had always said, “If not you, then who?” He had helped anyone who needed it, and he did his best for them—a lot like Old Mags in a way. I couldn’t watch this clearly very ill girl be tossed to the curb.
I gestured for her to continue.
“There is this bedtime story my mother told me about an engineer who worked on floor zero, but he worked for anyone who asked, and he had legendary skills. Rumor had it he could give steambots personalities.” She coughed again, her hand clenching her side. “Preston.”
I blanched and choked on my toffee. Dad. She was talking about Dad. But he wasn’t some kind of legend. Was he? Not that I’d heard of, anyway.
“Have you heard of anyone like him?” She looked at me with such conviction. “I am a little desperate.”
“I’m sorry, but Preston died five years ago.”
She gasped as tears slid down her face. “But, but, but...” The few tears quickly turned into small streams and those into rivers as they ran off her chin and onto her beautiful cloak. “This is so unfair!”
I was going to regret asking this, but I couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out. “Is there anything I can do to help? I’m El, Preston’s daughter, and the person now running his garage.”
She shot up from the dingy sofa and had to pause to cough once again. “You...you’re the daughter of the legendary engineer?” Her eyes widened with disbelief.
“He was just a good engineer to me. I don’t know about all that other stuff.” I helped her lie back down. “Sure, he had customers from some of the higher floors, but that’s just ’cause he was good at his job. He wasn’t some magical engineer capable of advanced technology like that.” As I said it, my eyes flitted to IoN with suspicion. Maybe there might have been some truth to the legend. But I couldn’t risk telling her that. Who knew who she really was? “Is there anything I can help with?”
The girl looked to her wrist, where her lifeclock was covered by some shiny yellow cloth. “I was wondering if you know how to fix a broken...lifeclock.”
I hissed as I threw a hand over her mouth. “You can’t just ask that down here!” I inched my hand from her mouth, making sure she wouldn’t ask again. “We’re disposable. If one of us went missing, no one would notice.”
“Hence why I looked down here.” She grabbed my arm in a vice-like grip. “I can pay you. As much money as you’d like. So long as you keep silent.”
I yanked my arm out of her grip and frowned in her direction. “Messing with a person’s lifeclock is grounds for execution, or at the least, permanent imprisonment.”
“I know.” Her green eyes pleaded with me, and I fully looked her up and down. Her body was thin, wasted, and she looked...sick. “Please. I will pay you anything. Get you and your family living on a higher floor. Anything you want.”
“Anything?”
Her eyes widened and she smiled. “Anything.”
“Think you can get me into engineering school on a fast track program?”
Her laugh deepened, and she had to catch her breath. “That is all you want?”
I shrugged. “It’s really all I need.” It was far from all I needed, but I wasn’t about to tell a stranger of my financial situation.
“Then, we have a deal.” She pulled her hand out of her cloak and offered it to me.
I shook her hand and grabbed my multi-tool from the workshop. “Let me have a look, then.”
She unwrapped her unusually colored piece of—silk, was it?—and handed me her wrist, wincing as I touched the sensitive skin wrapped around the edges of the mechanism buried in the body. The brass cogs turned at the edges, going deeper than my eye could see, and the clock slowly ticked her heartbeat. However, it was the clockfaces in the center that gave me pause, because their hands pointed in directions not often seen in someone so young. We were taught how to read the hands at a young age. Three clockfaces, each representing a different figure, ticked like a regular clock with a series of numbers around the edges: The first was for years, the numbers around the edges extending up to 120; the second for days, the numbers extending up to 365; and the final for hours, with only twenty-four available on every clock.
Hers didn’t take as long to read, though, because the first clockface was obsolete.
She only had thirty days and one hour to live.
“Please,” the girl with the raven-black hair begged. Her voice cracked with emotion as tears leaked from her eyes. “Please, fix it.”
“Fix what?” I asked. “It’s not broken.” Everything looked functional. Hell, the insides were shiny.
Her polite resolve snapped, and her sculpted facial expression spun into one of agony and anger, her lips downturned and her brow furrowed. “It must be broken!” she screamed. “I can’t die in thirty days!” She fisted her hands as they shook and she wobbled on her feet. “Please...”
“What you’re asking,” I said as I guided her back to the sofa, “isn’t possible.” I sat next to her and grabbed her hand in mine. “It’s not possible to alter a person’s internal clockwork, and even if you try, it never affects the number shown or experienced. Plus, opening a lifeclock and trying to alter one is forbidden by the Temple of Seren.”
It was steambotics rule number one: Never interfere with a lifeclock. This girl, this dying, sick girl, was begging me to do so nonetheless.
“I’m sorry.” I put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I can’t help you.”
Her shoulders shook as she sobbed. Leaning into me, she rested her head on my shoulder. “It is not fair.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“Cinderella!” Phyllis called from the workshop.
“Crap,” I cursed. “Please”—I turned to the crying girl in my arms—“stay here. Don’t be seen.” I plastered on what I hoped was a reassuring smile and sprinted into the workshop.
Phyllis could not get wind of me keeping a stray in the garage. Seren only knew what she’d do to me as punishment.
“Cinderella! Look at you!” Phyllis ranted at the state of my coveralls after having potted about in the dusty garage this morning. “You’re a mess.” She yanked a kink out of my hair and dusted me off. “Get dressed, for Seren’s sake. The meeting’s in an hour.”
Phyllis looked around the workshop disapprovingly. Her gray hair—“it’s supposed to look like that”—shined with fake vigor and her corset locked her curves into place in a way that couldn’t be comfortable. The brown and gray dress she’d chosen was her finest casual outfit—I knew, because I’d been there when she’d spent the entire month’s earnings on it. It cinched her waist in the right places, fell in the right waving, tufted way her dresses always did, and trailed at the back to give her a more noble appearance. She’d even had her hair done—somehow.
She didn’t sit anywhere, just looked at me expectantly.
I rushed to throw my dress on—a simple gray and white piece that fell to the floor in pleats and bunched at the waist, leaving me looking haggard and underweight. I threw a comb through my hair and did my best to get the knots and dirt and grime out, but I was pretty sure I was just moving it all around.
“Move aside,” Phyllis said and yanked the comb out of my hands.
My mother used to do my hair for me, style it into beautiful golden locks that made me feel like a princess, but this was nothing like those long-lost times. Phyllis tugged, pulled, and scraped until my locks obeyed her every demand and sat in a loose bun on top of my head.
Phyllis chucked a pair of earrings at me. “Put those in.”
The earrings in question were one of my stepsister’s, Lapis, and I knew that because she’d scalded me with a hot pan the day I looked at them a second too long. Back in those days, her jewelry collection was her prized possession that I was not to look at, touch, or go near.
I took a deep breath and shoved them into my ears, letting the white cogs dangle from my lobes. Lapis was going to flay me alive later, and Phyllis was going to do nothing about it—as usual.
“IoN,” Phyllis shouted into the echoing room, “come along.”
He whizzed out of the back room and into the workshop. “Yes.” He beeped. “Following mode activated.”
Great. Now I had to leave that girl all alone in my garage with no way of keeping an eye on her. She could die or leave and let looters steal everything.
This was going to bite me in the ass, wasn’t it?