Chapter Text
Chapter 3 - Kinetic Friction
Assuming Tracy had kept accurate time of the days since her arrival at the manor, which she almost certainly had, they were now within the timeframe that the owner of the manor expected them all to be present. Tracy therefore expected that this “game” would begin soon but, from what she and the others could tell, nothing had changed in their immediate environment. The owner of the manor certainly didn’t show their face. Tracy found herself stewing in anticipation, waiting for the shoe to drop and the “game” to show its true colors.
She busied herself with looking for the mysterious old man and his robot. If they were fellow participants Tracy wanted them to team up. If they were not, then she wanted to learn what they knew about the manor.
Luca often followed her on these investigations. They resumed their usual casual exchanges. Luca shared a bit more about his past education in physics which partially explained why he acted so sophisticated despite his ragged appearance. Tracy explained parts of her family clockmaking business in turn, but kept out the more tragic details. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to tell him in particular, but she had just grown so used to never mentioning it in all these years that it did not occur to her as relevant information to share. They were only here to survive, after all, there was no need to get into the gritty details of their lives.
Tracy only saw Charles in brief passing. He never seemed to want to stay in the room long after she entered it. Tracy tried to not let this bother her, she wasn’t exactly a social butterfly either, but her anxiety over the game wouldn’t let her heart rest.
Tracy was avoiding one of these panic spirals one evening by re-tuning another neglected clock in the parlor when the subject of her musing strayed right into her path.
At 4:57PM, the uneven clank of footsteps and metal against wood made her look up from her project to find the old man standing in the entryway.
She startled in the sagging armchair she occupied. He looked exactly the same as when she and Luca had first seen him in that hallway. Dirty overalls, heavy goggles, metal prosthetics, and a large mechanical staff.
Tracy didn’t know what to do now that he was right in front of her. She glanced over at her bot as if he could offer any assistance. He, of course, did nothing other than stare blankly ahead. The old man relieved her of this stress by stepping forward into the room and addressing her in a deep, guttural voice, “Tracy Reznik.”
Tracy tried to swallow but found her mouth had gone dry. Why was she suddenly so overcome with fear?
“That’s right,” She said, managing to keep the tremors out of her voice.
The man stepped closer, his staff echoing around the rotted walls of the parlor.
“Why so tense?” The man chuckled, though it sounded more like a hacking cough. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Had she been so obvious in her snooping? Well, she couldn’t pass up this opportunity.
“...Are you another participant in this game?” She asked tentatively.
The man coughed out a laugh again. “You could say that. Are you looking forward to it?”
Tracy frowned. “The game? Hasn’t it started already?”
“Oh-ho. No. But almost.” The man’s thin lips split to reveal yellowing teeth. “And when it does, do you think your alliances will weather the storm?”
Tracy was starting to feel preyed upon sitting on the chair while the man towered over her, so she stood, but this didn’t provide her much more height compared to him. “I don’t know what you mean,” She said defiantly, though she had a feeling she did.
The man sniffed. “You’re a smarter girl than that. Or so I heard from your father.”
The ground might as well have dissolved into sand below her. Tracy sucked in a gasp of breath so quickly she thought she might have blacked out for a second. Her father? What was he talking about? No. He was lying. If he knew anything about this game then he must have known why she was here. He must just be using that against her. No one knew her father. They weren’t allowed to. Not after she had moved far away and cut ties with anyone who knew her from before. She made certain to never interact with anyone who knew him after the incident. There was a time when he was alive, and there was a time when he was no longer there. She would not mess with that timeline by speaking to someone who spoke about him in the past tense. It wasn’t right.
Tracy found herself gripping the doll’s arm tightly, holding onto it like a life preserver.
“That’s right,” The man grunted, his voice a bit softer now than it had been before, “I knew your dad. Before…You know.”
She knew.
“It’s not like we were pals,” the man continued. “Jus’ business correspondents. Same field, that’s all. Same with your mom.”
Tracy shook her head. No. Not her mother. No one knew her mother. Her dad hadn’t even known her mother. She just wasn’t there. She was in a drawer, under some newspapers. She had gone in that fire.
“Why…” Tracy choked out. She wasn’t sure what she was asking. She just knew she couldn’t contend with the information he was giving her right now. She needed a better explanation, because this one wasn’t working.
“I didn’t mean to upset you, girl,” The man said, “Forget I said anything. It doesn’t matter now, anyhow.”
It didn’t matter. Tracy nodded. It didn’t matter. They weren’t here. So it wasn’t relevant. She tightened her grip on her doll.
“Why…What are you hoping to get from me?” She asked, staring down at the floor, unable to meet his eyes even hidden behind the goggles.
“That’s an interesting question.” The man scraped at the rug on the floor with his staff. “There’s a couple answers to it, but I guess the most important one is that I’m going to give you some advice.”
Tracy reluctantly looked back up at him. It was hard to read his expression behind those dark goggles. “Advice?” Tracy neglected to point out that wasn’t really an answer to her question in the first place.
The man grunted in confirmation. “Jus’ generally. I wanted to warn you against placing all your bets on your allyship with those other kids to save you.”
Tracy furrowed her brows. This again? “I’m not counting on them to save me.”
He shrugged. “I dunno—if you’re jus’ hoping that everything will go well as long as you all get along good enough, I think that sounds a lot like putting your life in their hands. You really think those kids will be responsible with it?”
“...Everyone’s here for their own reasons,” Tracy said.
“Exactly.” The man dug his staff further into the ground. “And the lord of the manor’s got his own reason for you being here. Friendship won’t be enough to get you through it, even if you did all stick together.” The man bared his yellow teeth again, shameless of the mirth that slipped into his tone.
“What is this game going to be?” Tracy asked.
The man tilted his head, grinning. “How should I know?”
Tracy glared at him.
“Now, now. I just don’t want to see Mark’s bright little girl lose a fight she could easily win on her own because she insisted on relying on others.” The held his hand up and turned to leave, dragging his staff across the rug.
“Hey!” Tracy tried to move to stop him, but her mind had gone fuzzy from him bringing up her father again and she nearly tripped on the crinkled up rug on the floor.
She stumbled back to catch herself, and when she looked up she saw the two great doors of the parlor slam shut in front of her.
She regained her footing and ran over to the doors, shoving against them then yanking them hard to no avail. What the hell? She didn’t even know these doors had locks. Or maybe, given the state of the manor, they had actually just gotten themselves stuck. Damnit.
Tracy was stomping over to her doll to see if she could finagle some device to force the doors open when she looked down at the disheveled rug on the floor.
Between the old man’s fiddling with his staff and Tracy tripping over it, the old musty rug had become quite askew across the wooden floor. A part of the floor that had previously been hidden now revealed deep grooves in the wood that outlined what almost looked like a trap door.
Experimentally, Tracy knelt down and tugged at a deeper looking indent in the wood. It stuck fast at first, but was clearly wiggling enough that it should open. Tracy stepped back and used her controller to direct her bot to pull it open. Even the bot had to yank hard, but the hatch eventually loosened abruptly and the bot almost toppled over from the sudden change in momentum. Tracy caught it before it could fall but then had to double over to cough from the smell of must that blasted out from the newly exposed opening.
While Tracy cleared the bile from her lungs her bot pulled the hatch the rest of the way open, letting it drop down loudly against the floor on the other side of the opening.
Tracy rubbed her sore throat and peeked into the opening. It was roughly two meters wide on each side with stone steps descending into more stone that dissolved into darkness deeper below.
Tracy flicked on her pocket flashlight and tried to see further down, but her light only illuminated the edges of what looked like a table and some shelves with walls close on either side..
Tracy glanced back up at the locked doors to the parlor. She should’ve probably focused on getting those doors open and finding Luca before she explored any further, but… It wasn’t like she needed his help in investigating. Two eyes were usually better than one when it came to exploring the manor, but this looked like a small room, and she couldn’t be sure what she’d find. It was probably a good habit to check anything mysterious out on her own first before sharing it with anyone else, in case it ended up being something she didn’t want them to see.
Tracy turned to her doll and quickly calibrated it to hold the hatch open and alert her controller if anyone came within close enough proximity to the room. Then she held up her flashlight and, choosing not to take a deep breath due to the horrible smell, descended down the stairs.
Tracy’s footsteps thunked dully against the stone steps as she navigated their uneven surfaces to the solid concrete floor of the basement. The smell of dust and mold was even worse down there and she had to breathe through her mouth, which made her feel even more light headed than she already did.
Tracy shined her meager flashlight around the room. She had been right, it was quite small, only about twice the size of her bedroom in the manor. The concrete walls and floor were stained and scratched and there seemed to be no light source present except for some half melted candles on a wooden desk to Tracy’s left.
Tracy got a closer look at the desk and found a scattering of papers covered in graphs and scribbled notes. Her heart soared for a moment, wondering if she’d found another clue to the nature of their game, but a quick skim showed her they wouldn’t be of any use. The notes all seemed to be about some chemical combinations, maybe some medicine? Either way, it was a subject completely beyond Tracy’s expertise. It was possible one of the others would be able to understand it, but…
Tracy tucked some of the folded papers into the various pockets over her overalls and moved on.
Next to the desk was a wooden and glass medicine cabinet, though the glass lay mostly shattered at her feet. Tracy carefully stepped over the broken glass scattering the floor, grateful for her thick boots, and pulled open the doors to the cabinet to get a better look.
Inside were a handful of empty and broken vials. None of them seemed particularly notable so Tracy turned around to get a better look at the room.
That’s when she got a better look at the stretcher in the center of the room and noticed that there were leather straps belted to it. Tracy swung her flashlight around the rest of the room and found a chair next to the bed with matching straps, and both objects were spattered with a dark brown substance Tracy had assumed was mud but now looked a lot more like dried blood.
A shiver went through Tracy’s entire body. Just what exactly had she walked into? Why did this abandoned manor have a hidden basement set up for some sort of human experimentation?
Tracy felt her imagine crawling away from her and quickly grabbed it and settled herself back into reality. Yes, this was creepy, but it clearly had not been used in a long time. Also, none of the diaries she and Luca had read had mentioned anything about a weird basement lab in their games. And no matter how bad this looked, it was better now that she knew about it.
Tracy tried to steady her breathing without inhaling too much of the nasty smell and decided to take a second look at the medicine cabinet.
This time, when she turned to look inside, she noticed a few vials with liquid still inside. That was odd, how had she missed that before? She inspected them closer and found they each had labels with symbols taped over them, some more smudged than others. Most of the symbols meant nothing to her except one caught her eye. A vial containing a small amount of white liquid bore a symbol identical to the swirling sun pattern she and Luca had found on the bookshelf in the study.
Tracy considered opening the vial to get a better look, but thought better of it. She looked over to the other intact vials and found a dusty note tucked into the corner of the cabinet. She pulled it out and unfolded it to find a table with symbols corresponding to the ones on the vials on it. The table contained more chemical ingredients that were lost on her, but there were some slanted notes that looked to be written in a new pen in different handwriting under some of the symbols. So someone else had been here after this place was abandoned?
Tracy tried to make out the cramped and smudged handwriting and was fairly certain she read “hallucinations” under one and “sleep” under another. Under the swirling pattern Tray read clearly “memory loss.”
Tracy’s heartbeat thumped in her ears. The vial in her other hand was some sort of medicine-induced amnesia? Did it affect short term or long term memory? There were no more details on the note that could’ve provided her that information.
For a brief, desperate moment, Tracy was tempted to take a drop of the liquid and test it for herself, but she quickly shoved the thought away. If it was the short-term memory it smothered, she couldn’t risk forgetting anything about this room or the game in general. Besides, she didn’t know the proper amounts of dosage and could accidentally overdose herself.
It was just generally a bad idea. Tracy shook her head to clear it. To say the nerves were getting to her would be an understatement. Still…
Tracy carefully tucked the vial with the swirl pattern into one of her pockets along with the note with the different symbols labeled on it. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to get back into this room again without the others noticing.
She checked her watch.
5:32
She needed to go back up and start working on the doors to the parlor. She didn’t feel like sleeping in here all night.
Giving the creepy basement one last scan with her light, Tracy started up the stone steps and emerged back in the parlor. Squinting in the relative light of the dingy room, Tracy looked around to find with a start that the doors to the parlor were completely open.
Had someone unlocked it? But she hadn’t gotten a proximity alert from her bot, and a quick check of its log confirmed it hadn’t sent one at all, whether or not she would have been able to receive it in the basement. And if anyone had come by to unlock the doors, why hadn’t they noticed the very obvious open hatch in the middle of the floor and gone down to find her?
Tracy hated feeling uncertain of her own reality like this, and hate was not a term she used lightly. This day had just been too overwhelming already.
She looked down at the open hatch and chewed her lip. She wasn’t quite sure how she wanted to proceed with this new information yet, she needed more time. So she ordered the bot to gently lower the hatch back down and carefully dragged the musty rug back over it, concealing it completely.
She would deal with this another day. Right now all she wanted to do was collapse in her room and take something apart.
“So, what were you up to last night?”
Tracy looked up at Luca with a start. They had appropriated one of the uninhabited bedrooms on the second floor to host their makeshift shared workroom. Luca sat cross-legged in the center of a pile of mismatched parts scattered across the floor while Tracy perched herself on a stool, poking at her bot’s proximity monitor to make sure it was still working. They had both sort of drifted to this room naturally and as their unfinished project started accumulating it became the unspoken agreement that this would be where they would work together.
Tracy had woken up that morning at an unsatisfactory 5:06 in the morning feeling inexplicably anxious and in need of familiar company. For once her doll wasn’t enough to calm her nerves so she had taken a chance on the work room and, almost unsurprisingly, had found Luca hacking away at some device as if he had been there all night.
Upon further question; he had definitely been there all night, but Tracy was too consumed in her own concerns to chide him for this, and she really didn’t have a leg to stand on anyway.
His company had been rather comforting in the familiar and casual way it had become for her, until he had to ask her that, of course.
“What?” She asked shakily.
“Was it last night…?” Luca muttered to himself. “I can’t follow the time around here…But I kind of lost track of you sometime in the afternoon yesterday.”
Tracy stared down deliberately at her disassembled monitor. “I didn’t realize you were tracking me.”
“Ok,” Luca rolled his eyes, though he didn’t actually have much fine motion left in his face so he just sort of jerked his head to the side in a way that Tracy learned equated rolling his eyes, “I’m not literally tracking you, silly. But I do try to have a general sense about what’s going on around here, especially since the new guy showed up.”
Tracy sighed but she didn’t question him about his opinion of Charles further.
If you're just hoping that everything will go well as long as you all get along, that sounds a lot like putting your life in their hands.
“Were you looking for that old man, again?” Luca questioned.
Tracy snipped a wire with more force than was probably necessary. Her mind slipped back to that vial, tucked away securely in her room. She wasn’t sure why she was so hesitant to share the information she had found last night, except that it felt extremely dangerous. Those weren’t personal diaries, they were chemical combinations that seemed to produce dangerous effects in its recipients. She couldn’t just share those without consideration.
Then, why didn’t she just destroy them?
“Yeah,” She responded softly, as if lying quietly would somehow make her less guilty.
Luca hummed and slotted something into the device he was working on. “So, did you find him?”
“No,” Tracy traced her fingers across the lines of the monitor, trying to ground herself. “Maybe he left…Or something,”
“Hmph,” Luca grunted, “Lucky him.”
Tracy hummed in agreement and the silence stretched on, but the silence didn’t feel as comfortable as it usually did. It felt imposing, like there were eyes staring down Tracy’s back and waiting for her to do something.
“What are you working on?” She asked casually.
“An Electromagnetic Pulse,” Luca said.
Tracy stared over her shoulder at him. “Why?”
Luca held up his gloved hands in a shrug. “Just in case? Who knows what or who we’ll have to go up against in this game? I just want to be prepared.”
Tracy frowned. “Right, but won’t an EMP also affect our electronics? And my bot?”
Luca fiddled with some dial on the side of the device. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t do that.”
Tracy’s frown deepened. She did not find that answer satisfactory. “What prompted this?”
Luca flashed his fanged smile at her. “I was digging around in the breaker for this place yesterday. It’s ancient, but I have a theory that if they throw some electrical-based barriers at us, and if I am able to find the right frequency, I could be able to short circuit their devices in a way that breaks them so we can escape!”
“Those are a lot of assumptions,” Tracy pointed out.
“Sometimes you need to make some assumptions in order to move forward.” Luca shrugged.
Tracy shook her head. “And what if frying the system ends up trapping us in here even more?”
“Well, there’s no way we can be more trapped anywhere,” Luca said, “And I will make it so it detects which one is correct, I will just need to find the main power system again once the game starts.”
“That’ll never work,” Tracy said.
Luca leaned back and peered at her. “Those are words I hear a lot.”
“I’m serious,” Tracy said, “We don’t know enough about this game. We don’t know if it’ll take place here, at the manor, or if it’s even started or not yet. And there’s no way to guarantee you’ll be able to calibrate your device perfectly once it does start. There’s too many variables.”
Luca sighed. “Well, yeah, but I can’t do much about that.”
“Then it isn’t worth the risk.”
“We don’t know what’s going on here,” Luca threw up his hands, “We have no idea what the risk is right now or what will make it better or worse. If you ask me, the biggest risk is just doing nothing to prepare and hoping everyone plays nice.”
Tracy frowned again, “I’m not doing nothing.”
“I did not say you were,” Luca tossed the device around in his hands loosely, which did not help Tracy’s growing nerves. “But, I mean, I do not want to plan assuming that Holt doesn’t sell us out for his own good.”
Tracy sighed. “Is this about Mr. Holt, again? I’m not saying I trust him but now you’re just planning with the expectation that he’s plotting against you or something.”
Luca waved his hand dismissively. “This is all about Holt, I just don’t want to be caught unprepared in this game.”
“I understand that,” Tracy picked absently at her machine, “Really, I do. But storming ahead without a plan or even a target just because you feel restless isn’t necessarily better than the alternative.”
“If the alternative is hoping that it all works out because we all get along then I think I would rather plan blindly,” Luca said pointedly.
Tracy looked back at him. His expression once again lacked the easy warmth that she had grown accustomed to.
Those words dug at her brain. That’s what he had said, too. That wasn’t what she was doing…right? She just wanted to know what she was up against before she started building bombs.
Tracy stood abruptly, scooping her half finished monitor up in her hands.
“As it stands,” Tracy said tightly, “You are the only one who is plotting against any of us, and you can’t even guarantee your plans will work. Maybe you just need to get your head out of the clouds and start living in reality for once.”
Before she had to bear seeing his reaction, Tracy turned and quickly left the room, not sure where she was going, only certain that she needed to escape.
Tracy’s mind was clouded with such fog that she ran straight into Charles Holt as he was exiting the kitchen. He was such a solid force that he didn’t move at all, but Tracy was practically thrown backwards. Charles tried to reach out and catch her, but couldn't quite get a grip on her, so she still ended up falling on her ass.
“Oh! Sorry,” Charles grunted and leaned down to offer her a hand.
Tracy rubbed her side and hesitantly took his hand. He pulled her up with such force she almost fell the opposite direction, but she managed to catch her footing this time.
“Ah, hello, Mr. Holt. No need to apologize, I was not looking where I was going.” Tracy readjusted her helmet and goggles that had flown slightly askew. Her tailbone now ached, but the jolt of the fall had actually cleared her head a bit, like a good slap to the face.
Charles rubbed his neck anxiously as she readjusted herself. “It’s, uh, rare to see you without your robot, Ms. Reznik,” he mumbled.
Tracy checked her disassembled monitor in her front pocket to make sure it hadn’t been damaged on impact. “Hm? Oh, yeah.”
They both stood there in awkward silence for a moment. Just when Charles looked like he was about to make an excuse to leave, Tracy continued, “I built him myself.”
“Oh,” Charles said, “Um, that’s very impressive.”
Tracy frowned. She hadn’t meant it as a brag. “You built your own devices as well, right, Mr. Holt?” She pushed on.
Charles shifted uncomfortably. He always did that when she asked about his inventions. “That’s right…But it’s just my job, that’s all.”
“Your job is to build jetpacks?”
Charles shrugged. “Things of that sort. I am—was—more like…freelance?”
Tracy nodded. “I think that’s very cool.”
Charles huffed a humorless laugh. “Yeah, right, glad you think that.”
Tracy went quiet.
“Sorry,” He said, “That wasn’t meant as an insult to you. It’s just…I guess I have a hard time seeing my own work that way these days…”
Tracy hummed in sympathy. “I understand. Sometimes a project is just a project.” Tracy shifted from side to side on her feet. “...I think Luca would disagree, though.”
Charles grunted. “Yeah? I wouldn’t know. I don’t think that Mr. Balsa likes me very much.”
Tracy sighed. “Don’t worry about him. He’s just weird.”
“‘That so?” Charles tilted his shaggy head at her, “Did you two know each other before coming here, or something?”
Tracy frowned. “No? We met only a few days before you arrived.”
“Huh, I wouldn’t have guessed that. You seem to get along well.”
Tracy looked down, feeling guilt creeping into her chest from how she snapped at Luca that morning. He had a strange way of doing things, very different from hers, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was wrong.
She was letting this place get to her.
“We just…have an understanding, I guess,” Tracy muttered to herself.
“Hm,” Charles scratched at his beard. “Well, tell him I mean no harm as long as he doesn’t, either.”
“He doesn’t,” Tracy said.
She really wished she believed herself.
Tracy fiddled with the broken music box in her hands as she dragged her feet to Luca’s room. She paused in front of his door and checked her watch.
7:23PM
There was no way he was already asleep, but Tracy still tried to talk herself out of knocking. He had been working all night, after all. And she didn’t really know what to say. She would sound suspicious either way. She had tried to rehearse with her bot beforehand and knew how she sounded.
Tracy sucked in a deep breath and tried to calm her pulse with the ticking of her pocket watch.
Shifting the music box to one hand, she wrapped her knuckles against the door sparingly, and then quickly pulled her hand away.
It took Luca 7 seconds to open the door. He opened it only a crack at first, peering out over the edge of the door, then, upon seeing it was her, opened it up fully.
“Tracy!” His posture relaxed, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes as it usually did. “Did you need something?”
Tracy avoided his gaze and fiddled absentmindedly with the music box.
“Yes,” She said, trying and failing to sound casual, “This music box broke, and I can’t figure out how to fix it.” She stuck her arm out and held it up to him. “Could you take a crack at it?”
Luca took the music box from her hand and inspected it, frowning and looking back up at her a couple times. After some painful seconds of silence (12 seconds, she counted) he eventually said, “Sure, I’ll try some things.” He gave her an uncertain look. “...Want to come in?”
Tracy tried to hide her sigh of relief. “Sure,” she said with forced ease.
He turned into his room and Tracy followed. She had looked into his room from his doorway many times, but had yet to actually set foot inside. The layout seemed mostly identical to her’s, barely larger than a closet with room only for a twin bed, dresser, and humble desk. Luca had managed to make the space even more cramped by scattering tools and eclectic parts around every free surface, which even further exacerbated the similarities between their rooms. The room was dimly lit by a yellow desk lamp, though it burned a lot brighter than the one in her room. He had probably modified it.
Luca sat himself down at his desk and started pulling off his gloves to get a better grip on the music box. Tracy looked around awkwardly and, realizing there was no other chair in the room, walked over to his bed, carefully stepping over the various objects dumped over the floor. When Luca showed no signs of objection Tracy pushed the notes and tools scattered over the sheets out of the way and sat down cross-legged on top of the mattress.
Tracy fiddled with a discarded screwdriver while Luca silently picked away at the music box, pulling off its wooden walls and inspecting the gears inside.
Usually, Tracy thought, this silence would’ve been enough for both of them, but she didn’t think that was the case anymore.
As Luca began to pull at the gears with a pair of pliers, Tracy quietly asked, “Where did you learn to do this stuff?”
Luca hesitated a bit at first, keeping his eyes on his project, then said flatly, “My father.”
Tracy perked up. “Your father was an engineer?”
“A crack inventor,” Luca said coldly, “There isn’t much to say about him. We didn’t get along. Then he died. That’s all.”
“Oh.” Tracy pressed the tip of the screwdriver into the pads of her fingers nervously, “...My dad died, too. But I liked him.”
Luca shrugged. “Well, my dad didn’t like me first. Or, at least, he liked money more.”
Tracy’s shoulders slumped. “It’s always about money…”
Luca glanced briefly up at her questioningly.
Tracy looked down at the screwdriver. “My bot…” She began uncertainly, “I built him after my dad died. My dad taught me all I know about mechanics. He always let me experiment and be creative and be myself. He even opened a studio so I could continue with my repairs and inventions behind the scenes…” Tracy’s voice stuttered as she felt her insides curl up in rejection of this topic. She wasn’t supposed to talk about her dad like this. She had never told anyone about him. This was wrong.
Tracy swallowed her own nausea. No, this was necessary and important. Tracy took a deep breath as Luca stayed patiently quiet and did her best to push on.
“Anyway…I had designed a new clock prototype that got super popular in our town and some nasty rival clockmakers wanted to buy the rights to it. My dad refused, of course, he wanted me to be able to make that decision of what to do with my inventions once I had come of age.”
Tracy chewed her lips, not wanting to continue to the next part of the story. She glanced over at Luca. The music box was held still in his hands as he watched her. His expression betrayed little emotion, just attentiveness, waiting kindly for her to continue.
She held his mismatched eyes for some seconds before looking away, unable to bear it.
“These rivals were jealous and didn’t want to wait. They were used to getting whatever they wanted by buying it. But my dad refused so they…They rigged an explosion in the shop while my dad was working late. They killed him.”
Tracy’s mouth felt unbelievably dry, like she was being cooked alive in that explosion herself.
“Still, I refused to sell the clock manufacturing process. I opened up a new shop and built my bot to run it with me, just like dad used…” Tracy finally put the screwdriver down, unsure what else to say. She looked back over at Luca.
Luca’s eyebrows were furrowed in sadness. It wasn’t an expression she had seen on him before.
“That’s awful,” he said.
Tracy shrugged. “It’s stupid. My dad was a genius craftsman and he died over some other people’s greed. Money always mattered more than the craft to most people.”
Luca laughed humorlessly. “Tell me about it…”
Tracy raised her eyebrows at him and he took the cue, picking the music box up and beginning to fiddle with it again as he continued, “After my mom died and I left my father, I started working with this famous inventor, Dr. Lorenz. It turned out he was an old colleague of my father, but I didn’t know that at the time.”
Tracy leaned forward with interest, focused more on Luca’s face than whatever he was doing with the music box.
“Dr. Lorenz was also interested in perfecting the eternal energy machine, but he was mostly relying on my father’s own manuscripts rather than his own inventions,” Luca continued, “I went down my own path and got closer to perfecting this device than he or my father ever did.” Luca’s voice quivered with poorly concealed pride, though it was an angry, spiteful form of pride. “Dr. Lorenz…He couldn’t handle this. He accused me of stealing his work…When it was really him who was trying to steal from me. He was going to cheat and lie and profit off my ideas.”
Luca’s eyes became a little unfocused and his movements over the music box slowed as he got lost in the fog of the memory. Tracy continued to watch him with quiet interest.
“...Then there was an explosion,” he said. “An explosion…And he died.” Luca reached up and brushed his scarred face with one of his bare hands, tangling some of his hair in the process.
“And I…Awoke like this. In a hospital. A prison hospital. Imprisoned. For murder.” Luca frowned in disagreement with his own history. “They said I killed him. Lorenz…I couldn’t really say much in my defense…We were arguing a lot before that explosion. Everyone in town knew about it. And everyone in town knew him better than they knew me. He was quite the charmer.” Luca shrugged, suddenly casual as the confusion fell from his face. “So, yeah, they were going to give me the old shock-chair. Ironic.” Luca flashed that crooked grin at Tracy, and Tracy stared back at him, at a loss for how to respond.
“I was awaiting my inevitable death—mostly grieving that I would never be able to complete my research that I was so close to getting right—when I got a letter with this address, offering a second chance and a whole sum of money. Which brings us to the present!”
With that, Luca cheerily returned to the project at hand, reassembling the walls of the music box with ease.
Tracy let out a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. “So…” She began reluctantly, “You went to prison for a crime you didn’t commit?”
Luca’s hands stuttered a bit and his eyes became unfocused again.
“I…Honestly…I don’t know if I did kill him or not, Tracy.” He glanced back at her with a nervous smile. “That probably doesn’t help you trust me, huh?”
Tracy shrugged, “I don’t know, I don’t trust people who believe they know everything. If you can admit that you don’t know something, then that makes me trust you more.”
Luca’s small smile hesitantly twitched into a brighter grin. He turned back to the music box and did a quick once-over before holding it out to Tracy. She reached out to take it from him. Their fingers brushed each other and Tracy felt a sharp jolt pass through them with an audible ZAP!
“Oh- Apologies!” Luca quickly pulled his exposed hand away as Tracy did the same, clutching the music box close to her chest.
Tracy waved off his apology. The shock hadn’t hurt, it only surprised her.
Experimentally, she wound up the music box and let it spin. A hauntingly beautiful medley spilled out from it, filling the silence of the small room despite its subtlety. Tracy watched the gears turn with liquid smoothness through the unusual glass top.
Of course that’s how her dad had designed it all those years ago.
They both let the music play out for some time, allowing themselves to sit in the vibration, until Tracy eventually said, “Thank you.”
Luca shrugged, not meeting her eyes.
“...I have to ask, what did you do to fix it?” She asked.
Luca looked over at the device as it continued to spout its dreamy tune. “I pulled out the old gears and re-oiled them, then fixed the weird jam in the rotor, and cleaned out the stator. Some of the screws needed replacing, too, so I did those.”
“Hm,” Tracy examined the box and, because she just couldn’t help herself, said, “There would’ve been a faster way to do it.”
“I know,” He said, “but it would have been noisy, and I wanted time to talk to you. Just like how you broke this so you could talk to me.”
He met her eyes now, and they glittered with prideful mischief. Tracy blinked, then shrugged.
“Busted.”
Luca cackled his dry laugh and Tracy felt herself breaking a small smile despite herself.
As Luca began rambling on about how he would’ve repaired the music box if he had wanted to be fast—clearly trying to goad Tracy into a debate—Tracy thought to herself that if she really wanted all of them at the manor to work together, she couldn’t continue with just telling Luca what to do all the time.
He would have his method and she would have hers, and maybe, just maybe, somewhere in that friction the key to their survival would spark.