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"Greetings, Garrett. Thou art expected, though not precisely… welcome."
Garrett was already bolting for the door. He'd flipped the phonograph switch idly as he slipped past, feet silent on suspiciously soft ornate carpets. The sound of his name had stopped him in his tracks, and now he moved. Too late.
He'd noticed the odd groove in the doorframe as he walked past it, but thought nothing of it. Angelwatch Tower was rife with strange designs and stranger machinery built into the walls itself — for the lights, for the air, for the odd contraptions.
And one of those contraptions was a mouse trap.
Even as he turned on his heel, he watched a portcullis drop from the groove and sink into the floor.
Garrett made the dive anyway. Not fast enough. The portcullis was polished steel, grating as thick as his thumb, and it slammed down before he reached it. He grasped at it and pulled, but it was like pulling at a stone wall with his fingertips. All he could do was clutch at it in vain.
Garrett gave up on that, and caught his breath, and took stock of things. From the phonograph, Karras's voice rambled on. Only gloating. No clues he was letting slip. Nothing useful.
His tools. The single explosive arrow he still had in his arsenal would do nothing against a grate this thick, and only draw attention. Moss arrows? A scouting orb? What a joke.
One moment for sheer, useless self-recrimination. Just one.
When had he become so reckless? The Keepers had taught him better than that. His own bloody mistakes had taught him better than that. Was it Viktoria? Seeing her again — just when he'd started to forget — it had put him off his game. (Was he being petty? Perhaps.) Or maybe it was just the same bad luck that seemed to follow her and hers. Or maybe the bad luck was entirely his. What did it matter, at this point?
Garrett's heart was pounding. He searched the doorway and the walls for a hidden switch, anything useful. A hidden button beneath the desk slid the painting aside, revealing the schematics he'd been looking for, but no way of escape. He stuffed them into his pockets anyway. He'd come here for a reason.
A reason other than getting himself killed, anyway.
Garrett forced down the odd surge of lightheadedness welling up like nausea. Panic was beneath him. He'd gotten out of worse scrapes than this. Marginally. What else could he use?
His racing thoughts were cut short by footsteps from the hallway. Heavy — too heavy to belong to anything human. He knew those clanging sounds too well by now.
Garrett ducked behind the desk as the Child of Karras stomped into view. There'd been no sign of the massive combat machine as he'd done his recon of this floor. Where had it come from? Had it, too, been concealed until activation? Sitting in an alcove somewhere, dormant, until a switch was flipped?
It stared into the room through the portcullis, its golden face implacable and its cannon at the ready. The aiming lens over its eye shifted minutely, roving over the room for targets. Garrett barely dared move a muscle. The place was painfully well-lit, and the heavy wooden desk was the only real cover he had.
That thing would blow him to smithereens if it so much as caught a glimpse. Or try, anyway. He was light on his feet. But even he wasn't slick enough to bait this thing into destroying the grate without taking him out with it.
And yet…
The massive decorative cogs in the wall weren't the only gears turning. A flicker of a different mad idea took shape and germinated into a plan in half a breath. Garrett reached for his bow and tested the contents of his quiver gingerly with his fingertips. He'd need at least two water arrows, and a few broadheads, or maybe the explosive… he'd seen the way those machines explode when damaged. If anything could put a dent in that portcullis, it was that.
His heart was pounding in excitement now, though he still felt off. What were the chances? Just as Karras had lured him into this trap, had he also given him the tools he needed to escape it? Could he truly be so lucky?
But there was a hitch. The vulnerable access to the steam boilers was in the back. He'd need it to break its stare on the room and turn around. If he shot at the metal frame of the opposite doorway, maybe the noise would—
Another bout of lightheadedness, followed by a wracking cough he could barely hide against his sleeve.
Something was wrong.
Karras's pre-recorded voice had been droning on, then trailed off with another cackle, and now it finally ended with a click of the device. In the sudden silence, the faint hiss of air somewhere in the room was now impossible to miss.
His attention fell on the ventilation shafts on either side of the phonograph, and in the wall opposite. His organic eye had trouble focusing, but he already knew for sure.
Gas was pouring into the room. Maybe they had more plans for this mouse trap than blasting him to smithereens.
It was a thought that brought the heart-pounding fear of seeing the trap slam shut on him back to the fore, but already, his responses were wrong. His heart was slowing down, his eyelids heavy…
Dread was the last thing he remembered.
But not for long.
Pain. And heat.
Time stretches past him — a fly in honey, drowning, barely able to breathe. Limbs lethargic, heavy. There are bouts of consciousness — brief, horrifying, and reluctant. Best forgotten. The furnace has to be a fever dream. The moving parts…
A voice he's heard from many phonographs and mechanical creations, and once, in person. Soft and mild-mannered. A visceral terror in him, at how close it is.
A different terror, at how little he remembers. He should remember more. He must remember more. If they will let him—
His breath is laboured. Something smothers him.
A mask.
There is no face on him but gold. There are no limbs on him but those that belong to his Father. His will is to serve.
At times, his fingers trace the edges of the mask, idly, but they find no purchase.
A fly caught in honey. A city creature lost in an expanse of green.
It is dark here. Why have his Father and his Siblings brought him here?
A voice he's heard before. In person, many times. Soft and mild-mannered. Comforting.
A visceral terror wakes in him at the sound of it, still. Inexplicable.
But his limbs obey him now, and they are weapons. They will serve the Builder well. They will serve his Father well.
"Thou art foolish, Pagan abomination. It be very bad manners to send uninvited guests into my home — Viktoria, was it? But much like the useless and the destitute, the dregs of society that I have cleansed and repurposed in the greatness of my vision, so, too, shalt the thieves and the brigands find a place among my Children where they can yield their minds and bodies to our cause, and help us forge a better future. But this one, dear Viktoria, he is special. A special guest deserves a place of honour in my numbers, dost thou not agree? Come see what he is capable of, thou and thy wretched friends. Come see!"
His limbs are weapons. There is fire at his fingertips, and all the green must burn.