Chapter Text

PART I

Chapter 1 - Welcome to the Manor

Tracy Reznik (serial number 10-0-01) entered the manor at approximately 7:54 in the evening on the eve of November. She knew because she checked her pocket watch the second before she knocked on the manor's imposing double door entrance. Her invitation had not given her a specific time of day to arrive, only an “at the latest” date, which she was quite early for. This had disturbed her, as she had always made a point to be exactly on time when given one, so the nebulous time frame had been more confusing for her than helpful. 7:54PM was much later than she had been hoping to arrive that day, but the cross country flights had been more troublesome than anticipated. 

She wrapped her knuckles against the dark wood of the manor's doors.

She waited.

No one answered.

She checked her watch.

7:55

She knocked.

She waited.

7:56

She pushed against the doors with more force and they creaked open, leaving nasty scratches across the ornate tiled floor.

Odd.

Tracy shoved her whole weight against the old doors, wondering when the last time anyone had opened them was considering their condition, and managed to force her way into the manor itself.

If the main doors were any indicator, the manor's interior confirmed that it had not been touched in at least a decade, if not multiple. The entrance hall was expansive and would have been beautiful at some time, but now it was covered on every surface by a layer of dust and cobwebs. The hall opened up into separate rooms at her right and left. Staircases spiraled up to a second floor at the corners of the room. Directly in front of her stood a rickety yet ornate table on which sat four objects as well as a candle, burnt almost to the quick.

Odd…So someone had been here recently enough, but clearly had not done any other touch ups to the place's functions. Tracy had assumed her invitation's sender had been the owner of this manor, but if he was he clearly didn't actually live there.

This was all very strange, but Tracy had signed herself up for strange when she had decided to pursue the mysterious letter that promised a healthy sum of money and rare mechanical components in return for her participation in a “game.” At this point, what did she have to lose?

Tracy shoved back against the door to close off the frigid outside elements with another horrible screech. She thought to herself that she would have to fix up that door if she had time between “games” as she walked over to investigate the table.

Upon closer inspection, Tracy found that the four objects were keys lined up next to each other under the candle. Attached with a frayed rope to each key were wooden tiles with room numbers as well as small metal trinkets, sort of like little monopoly pieces.

The first key's trinket was a miniature model of a pocket watch, not dissimilar to the one Tracy had in her orange jumpsuit pocket. The next trinket looked like a pair of handcuffs, which Tracy found slightly disquieting. After that was a miniature plane, then a small house.

Tracy furrowed her brows and looked around the hall again, scanning for any cameras she may have missed upon first glance.

Was this the first game? Some test of self identification? Well, this was what she had signed up for. She gingerly picked up the key with the clock trinket. No traps or alarms went off. It hadn't been some bait on an invisible pressure plate. Maybe she ought to relax a bit.

Tracy checked her actual watch.

8:02

Funny, the room number on her key was 208. Strange coincidence. 

She wondered when the other participants would arrive. How many would there be? Where would they be from? What would they be here for?

Not that it mattered much to her. She was here to fulfill her own needs and nothing else.

Tracy sent one last glance at the dilapidated wooden doors of the manor, considering her last chance to opt out and return to her workshop in Chinatown.

Her swiftly degrading workshop that was currently drowning in debt, half left over from her father, half personally accumulated by herself.

Tracy turned, readjusted her backpack to make sure he was secure, and started up one of the grand staircases.

No turning back now.

It was 1:24PM when Tracy first encountered Luca Balsa (serial number 10-0-2), though it was impossible for her to say exactly when he had arrived at the manor that day.

Tracy had spent the morning after her arrival investigating every inch of the manor she could, but guessed she had only made it a third of the way through by noon. She had started drawing up a rough map of the manor based on what she had found so far. Her discoveries were mostly mundane; dusty old books, probably priceless heirlooms dressed in cobwebs, furniture that looked like it would collapse the moment you sat on it. For her more interesting finds, such as a few broken knicknacks, she made her doll hold onto them as he followed her around the winding rooms so she could tinker with them later.

After an hour of messing around with those, Tracy finally acknowledged that she was hungry, having not eaten anything since the airline snack on the plane ride there. She had checked her watch (1:21) and left her assigned room to search the kitchen she had discovered earlier.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she turned the corner into the main kitchen and found a man standing there.

And not just any man. This man was dressed in a black and white striped prison jumpsuit and had a robust metal collar hanging from his neck that connected to a chain that looked like it had been snapped off from something. His dark brown hair was tied back in an optimistic ponytail that failed to capture all the loose tangles of hair that escaped it and his left eye looked badly bruised or something, as the lid was half closed and had a nasty looking purple tinge to it. He carried what seemed like electrical or mechanical gear in pouches at his hips and both his hands were covered by thick electrician’s gloves, hands that were currently fiddling with one of the loose cupboards below the sink.

Nearly everything about this man’s appearance screamed “danger” and the animal part of Tracy’s brain almost made her turn and run there and then, but the strange man finally noticed her and smiled after a brief expression of surprise.

“Oh! Hello there! I was wondering if anyone else had arrived here before me,” He spoke with an awfully scratchy voice like a smoker’s, if the smoker had started smoking at the ripe age of two weeks old.

The man sounded friendly enough aside from that, which may have been the only thing keeping Tracy from running, but she still said nothing as her eyes darted nervously across his condemning attire.

He followed her gaze and looked down at his own prison jumpsuit and chains like he had forgotten they were there.

“Ah, I see you are put off by my conspicuous appearance,” He said, still wearing an easy smile, though it kept twitching slightly like it was barely being held back from turning into a maniacal grin. “I can’t blame you there. Yes, it is true I arrived here directly from a detention facility, but I am just a participant in this game, same as you, I presume. I swear, I mean you no harm, Miss…?”

He looked at her expectantly with those unsettling mismatched eyes. Tracy was severely thrown off by the dissonance between his frightening appearance and the sophisticated way he spoke to her. Who was this man? She supposed she wouldn’t get any answers if she remained silent.

“Reznik,” She mumbled, then spoke louder, “My name is Tracy Reznik. I’m a mechanic.”

His face split into a grin revealing terribly sharp canines that did not make Tracy feel any better.

“It is nice to meet you, Miss Reznik! My name is Luca Balsa, and I am an inventor myself! Before all this happened, of course,” He said, vaguely gesturing to his attire. He quickly turned away from her and started looking around the dilapidated kitchen. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to know if there was any food around here, would you, Miss Reznik?”

Tracy shook herself out of her fearful daze and they began poking around the kitchen in search of any form of nutrients. The kitchen was massive, clearly one meant for multitudes of servants to work in, not one for home cooking. After some time they were able to discover a glass bread box with a loaf of bread inside. Tracy was afraid it would be little more than a block of mold at this point, considering the state of the manor, but it was only slightly stale. The fact that it was edible disturbed Tracy even more than if it had been moldy.

The two of them ate their stale bread in shared silence at the dusty yet grand dining room table. The man named Luca sat two chairs away from her across the table, not close enough to make her uncomfortable, but not far enough to establish an agreement of distance. His eyes trailed over the decor of the dining room, lost in his own thoughts. Tracy had been cautiously keeping an eye on him, but after some time she relaxed and let her own thoughts drift.

Had the “game” already started? Or were they waiting for more participants to show up? If so, how many more? What exactly would they be expected to do with each other?

Tracy flinched when Luca’s chair scraped noisily across the floor as he stood up. She had completely zoned out, which wasn’t very smart considering the stranger sitting across from her.

“Alright,” He said, picking up his cleared plate, “I think I will go take a look around this strange manor now, but you are free to join me at any time.” Tracy remained silent as Luca walked past her, politely picking up her empty plate along the way. “I hope to see you around, Miss Reznik.”

Tracy couldn’t quite agree.

Tracy had figured out what unsettled her so much about this manor. It was the lack of sense around its place in time.

The place was clearly quite old and had not been cared for in a long time, yet the owner had definitely been here to prepare it for her and the other participants. Its architecture was also fairly modern, all things considered. Tracy would have guessed it had been built no earlier than the beginning of the 1900s and seemed to have been decently lived in for a while after that, so how long exactly had it been abandoned? And the bread. The bread freaked her out. It must have been placed in the kitchen for their game, otherwise it would have become a home for all sorts of bacteria a long time ago, and yet it had still been quite old and stale, despite Tracy thinking she had arrived early. So when had the manor’s owner been here? When did he leave? Did he leave?

None of it made any sense. It was like time was a bunch of grains of sand that had escaped their hourglass and were now spilling all over the place at random. It was driving Tracy mad.

On her second full day at the manor, Tracy had spotted an old clock hanging off the wall of one of the long hallways while she continued sketching her map of the manor. The clock was set at the time 7:54, which did not seem right to Tracy. She checked her own pocket watch to confirm.

3:15

She stood and watched the wall clock while keeping one eye on her own watch. After her watch clicked to 3:16 and the wall clock remained still she confirmed the clock was not only set at the wrong time, but was frozen entirely.

Enough was enough. She was a watchmaker, damnit! She could at least attempt to pick up the scattered pieces of sand and shove them back into some semblance of order by fixing this damn clock.

Tracy stomped up to the wall, shoving aside its peeling wallpaper to try and grab at the clock. Her finger brushed against it slightly, but she wasn’t quite tall enough to grab it off the wall herself. She didn’t want to accidentally break it further, so she looked around the hall and dragged a squishy armchair over, grunting loudly with effort.

She pushed the chair against the wall she stepped onto it, grabbing the wall for balance as the half disintegrated stuffing shifted around under her feet. Once she felt stable she slipped the clock off its hook on the wall—a bent nail that Tracy noted would need fixing, too—and stepped off the chair to start her work.

She laid the clock face down on the wooden floor and began peeling off the back panel with the screwdriver she pulled out of one of her pockets.

“What time is it?”
The sudden scratchy voice from behind her made Tracy jump. She looked over her shoulder from her hunched position on the floor to see Luca Balsa standing in one of the doorways leading into the hall, looking down at her quizzically. She hadn’t seen him all morning and briefly wondered how he’d found her, then figured she hadn’t exactly been quiet with her furniture rearrangements.

“Um…” Tracy checked her pocket watch. “It is 3:21.”

It occurred to her that if the rest of clocks in the manor were busted, Luca probably hadn't had any way to tell the time since he arrived yesterday morning. That seemed like a distressing way to live, so his inquiry was understandable. Tracy returned to her work, fully prying the back off the clock and peering inside, trying to make sense of its mechanisms. She wasn’t totally familiar with this exact layout as it must have been made by some company foreign to her, but clocks could only differ so much on the inside.

At least a minute passed and Tracy had not heard Luca move so she looked back up at him. He was still standing in that same spot, gazing at her thoughtfully. Tracy found that sort of unsettling but gave him the benefit of the doubt that it was just simple curiosity, not unlike that of the kids who used to stop by her and her dad’s workshop in the mornings to watch them work.

“I am a watchmaker,” She explained patiently, “I’m trying to fix this clock. From the looks of it there could be two problems with it: either its battery needs replacing or it needs a full rewinding. I’ve invented plenty of components that could help with either issue over the years. Given the age of this manor, I’m expecting its battery is dead, but I should have some to replace it. I will need to rewind it either way because the time is off, though.”

He frowned at that and started muttering to himself, looking between her and the clock and the bent nail in the wall.

“What? Is something wrong?” His behavior was really starting to get on Tracy’s nerves. He was as hard to follow as the time around here.

Luca’s eyes fell back on her and he paused to think for a moment before saying, “Forgive me if this comes off as rude, but to be entirely honest I would not use the word ‘invention’ to describe components that only prolong the life of a pre-existing device.”

Tracy stared at him. That did kind of irk her as rude, but she didn’t see why the semantics of her phrasing would be such a big issue.

“If you wish to talk about inventions,” He continued, “there are much more permanent solutions than replaced batteries or adjusted parts.”
Tracy frowned at him and shifted her posture on the floor so she didn’t have to bend so much to see him. “Permanent solutions? I don’t think so. No matter how well designed and well maintained a clock or any machine is, all things have some expiration point of use.”

Luca’s mouth did that twitching thing again, like he was thinking of a funny joke but was declining to share it with her, and his mismatched eyes glittered with a wild energy.

“Not necessarily,” He said with a conspiratorial tone. “Imagine a clock that could carry on its movement forever, never freezing, never going off time, never needing to be tuned up or replaced entirely. Now imagine that potential applied to systems of production!” Luca spread his hands dramatically, no longer looking at her but addressing some imaginary audience that was much more engaged than she was. “Unlimited energy! Homes and businesses could be fully maintained free of charge and free from using up the planet’s natural resources! The whole world could be saved!”

Tracy let out a half-hearted scoff and turned back to her work, pulling out the fried batteries and snapping some new ones in. “Sounds like I’d be out of a job.” She knew what he was alluding to. Unlimited energy. Perpetual motion. Lovely ideas that existed solely in the realm of dazed imagination, nothing that any serious engineer would bother themselves with. There was a time when Tracy would’ve been giddy at the thought of such a grand invention, fully aware of its impossibility and only further enamored by it, but that girl was gone now. Tracy didn’t have time for childish fantasies these days. She had real world problems that needed real world solutions. Maybe she would question Luca more about his theories once they were out of the manor, but she wasn’t in the mood right now.

“Look, if you want to be helpful you can replace that nail in the wall for me,” Tracy continued as she started fiddling with the hands of the clock. “You have a hammer in your belt, right?”

Tracy looked back up at Luca and saw that his distant gaze had snapped onto something over her head and down the hall. She turned to see where he was looking and saw at the end of the hall the limping form of some…thing. She could distantly hear the wiring of machinery coming from it as it dragged its egg-like shape across the wooden floors into some other hall perpendicular to theirs.

Tracy and Luca met each others’ eyes and wordless came to an agreement.

Tracy quietly pushed aside her half finished project and stood. She and Luca crept silently down the hall as the odd robot disappeared behind the corner. They awkwardly squished next to each other as they both peaked around the corner, watching as the robot lugged itself a few steps towards a large metal door at the end of the hall before stuttering to a complete stop.

Tracy and Luca waited for a while, watching to see if the robot would move. They were so close to each other that Tracy could use the uneasy rising and falling of Luca’s breath at her back to keep time. After many minutes, Luca abruptly pushed off the wall they were hidden behind and started walking towards the robot.

Tracy tensed at his brazenness, but nothing shot out at him once he was out in the open so she followed after him, tiptoeing with much more caution.

She looked over the robot as Luca started tapping at it. It was made with dark metal and almost resembled a penguin with its oval shape and golden feet and beak. It had two gold discs on its face that may have been eyes but they were currently completely dark with no sign of life. The most odd thing about its appearance was how it was “dressed up” with a comically large metal top hat atop its round head and red fabric bow tie somehow fastened to its front. Someone had clearly put effort into this being’s appearance—or perhaps it had dressed itself up like that?

Aside from all that there were other obvious issues with the robot, as its right arm was hanging out of its socket by a braid of exposed wires and had consequently been dragged across the floor, damaging some of its finger joints.

Reassuring herself that the robot would continue to remain still, Tracy moved over to the damaged arm and started inspecting the wires, trying to determine how she could reconnect the arm.

Luca moved behind the robot and began to remove a panel on the back of its head with his own screwdriver that he pulled out of his hip pouch, which Tracy approved of.

Luca hummed thoughtfully to himself as he observed the robot’s insides. “It seems like it runs on some sort of electricity,” He noted.

Tracy pulled down her magnification goggles from her forehead and adjusted the lenses so she could see into the inside of the robot’s arm socket, which made her eyes look both huge and lopsided. It seemed like there was something pushing out the wires. “Hmm, can you tell if it’s being piloted or if it’s running autonomously? Is there some sort of receptor that could be getting signals from an outside source?” She asked as she tried to pick at the offending object with some pliers from her pocket.

Luca started to say something then glanced over at her and choked on a laugh.

She squinted up at him, though he was badly distorted by her mismatched magnified lenses. 

“What? I know how robots work, that wasn’t a foolish statement-”

“No no,” Luca waved his hands reassuringly, or at least that’s what Tracy thought his blurry shape was doing, “It wasn’t that, it’s…Nothing. That is a good guess,” Luca composed himself and poked at something within the robot, “But it’s actually some sort of circuitry system, so I’m guessing it's on autonomous programming. A small chunk of it has cracked off, though. I can’t fully replace it with the tools I have here but maybe I can at least reconnect these wires…” He carried on muttering to himself as he began fiddling around with the circuit board in the bot’s head.

Tracy didn’t mind the muttering this time, it became simple background noise as she managed to yank out the piece of metal that was blocking the wires and began carefully sliding the arm back into place. His sounds became something like the comforting ticking of a well made clock.

They continued on like that in near silence for at least an hour, each working on their respective tasks, only occasionally speaking up to ask the other for a specific tool on the off chance they didn’t have it in their own stash.

Tracy did the final adjustments on the finger joints to make sure they could move smoothly and checked her watch.

4:47

They had been at it for a while. Tracy lifted her goggles and looked up at Luca. He was still bent over the robot’s inner workings, his brows furrowed and his tongue sticking out slightly between his teeth in concentration, which Tracy thought was an unexpectedly endearing habit.

She was just about to ask how his progress was going when he stepped back and threw his hands in the air, cheering, “AHA!”

Tracy raised her eyebrows, “I suppose that means you fixed it?”

“Yes!” Luca shrugged, “Well, probably. We will have to test it and it still needs to jump started with some electricity.”

Tracy stood and stepped away from the robot anxiously, “Are you sure it’s a good idea to get it running again? We don’t even know what it’s programmed to do…”

Luca looked at her, that wild, electric look once again present in his eyes. “Come on, Miss Reznik, we just put this guy back together but you’re too afraid to turn it on?”

Tracy chewed her lip and frowned at him, then at the robot, then back at him.

“Fine. I think I have an electric cable in my bag back in my room somewhere.”

“No need,” Luca grinned that maniacal grin. “Maybe step back a bit.”

Tracy did so without objection as Luca pulled off one of his thick gloves, revealing pale, bony fingers. He reached inside the open panel of the robot’s head with his bare hand and pinched two wires between his fingers. Immediately there was a bright spark and the robot jolted back to life.

Both Tracy and Luca stumbled back behind the corner of the wall as the lights flickered back on in the robot’s eyes and its head started twisting around like it was looking for something.

A staticy voice warbled out from some hidden voice box in the robot, “Nice to meet you, Bang Bang!”

Tracy and Luca shared wide eyed looks of astonishment from their hiding place. Luca had a big, self-satisfied grin on his face and Tracy felt the disturbing urge to respond with a smile of her own, but the impulse was quickly stifled by the sound of the metal door at the end of the hall creaking open.

The two of them shrunk further behind the wall as a man stumbled out of the doorframe.

“26, there you are, you misbehaving rascal!” The man grunted. He looked like a big man but most of his height was lost by him leaning heavily on some mechanical staff with steam billowing from its top. He was completely bald except for white sideburns sprouting from his cheeks and his pale skin was speckled with blemishes of old age. He wore only a leather apron of a smith and some beat up pants that covered one flesh leg and one metal one. From the looks of it, his right arm was metal as well, and both his eyes were covered with thick goggles that connected to some wiring device on his back.

Tracy was simultaneously intrigued and terrified by this man.

He bent further down to inspect the penguin-shaped robot he had referred to as “26” while it continued to spin its head around, sending the light from its eyes across the walls like a searchlight.

He grunted, “Hmph, you sure messed yourself up pretty badly. I’m gonna have to reprogram you all over again!” He shook his head and banged the end of his staff against 26’s head, making a loud clanging sound. “You were supposed to make my job easier, not harder, damn robot…” The man grumbled to himself as he turned and stomped unevenly back into wherever the metal door led to. 26 obediently followed its master into the room, grabbed the heavy metal door with its newly repaired hand, then forcefully slammed the door shut with an audible “click” of the lock.

Tracy and Luca stayed frozen there for some stunned seconds before quietly slinking back into the separate hallway they had been in before.

When they returned to the hallway they were still silent, both lost in their own thoughts. Luca scratched at his chin with his still bared hand and eventually said, “So, it appears we are not alone in this manor.”

“No,” Tracy agreed, as she wasn’t sure what else to add to that very obvious statement. More seconds of silence passed before Tracy spoke up again, “Good work with 26.”

“Hmm? Oh, the robot. Yes, thank you. You fixed up that arm nicely in record time, as well,” Luca said cordially.

Tracy’s gaze fell on the broken clock she had discarded on the floor. She walked over and picked it up, studying its face. It had resumed its ticking but was still many hours off.

“...There is more to this manor than meets the eye,” She finally said.

Luca hummed in agreement but said nothing more, so she continued, “We were both invited here for some game, but we don’t even know what this game is, or where we are, or who invited us or who that just was…I get the feeling there are secrets here that require unveiling.”

Luca hummed again, waiting for her to get to her point. Tracy threw the clock down on the old armchair, it was hardly a priority now. She looked back at Luca, meeting his strange, dark eyes. “I don’t think such an investigation would be best to do alone. To be honest, I think you’re a bit odd, Mr. Balsa, but you’re clearly quite smart. I think we would both benefit from establishing a partnership in our investigation.”

Luca’s ideas may be unorthodox, unrealistic, even, but these were starting to feel like unrealistic circumstances. In the face of this unpredictability, Tracy felt she could use someone who could extend his imagination past the ordinary where she could not.

She stepped closer to him. “What do you say, inventor?”

Luca’s scarred face split into a grin and he held out his bare hand. “I would be honored to work with you, watchmaker.”

Tracy hesitated, looking suspiciously at his hand that seemed to have just single handedly jump-started an electrical robot.

Luca blinked and said, “Oh!” and switched his outstretched hand to the gloved one.

Tracy took that one and they firmly shook hands.

“All right then,” Tracy said, “Let the game begin.”