Chapter 114: Flowing Metal |
Jonas’s fingernails dug deeply into his palm, the scorching gear-shaped badge branding tooth marks beneath his skin. Moonlight skimmed across the silver-white tiny letters inside the badge, those liquid-metal-like inscriptions seeming to flow, each stroke exuding a chilling pressure. When the seventh gear stops turning, the Abyss will open its eyes—this sentence coiled around his nerves like a venomous snake, making cold sweat break out on the back of his neck.
His thumb unconsciously rubbed the back of the badge, the raised patterns digging painfully into his skin. Suddenly, a certain angle of moonlight distorted the shadows of the patterns; the originally chaotic protrusions pieced together into half a map. Jonas held his breath, his pupils contracting sharply—at the map’s lower right corner, a coordinate was seeping out a ghostly blue light, glowing like a will-o’-the-wisp drifting in the deep sea, eerie and bewitching.
“Jonas!” A sharp shout shattered the silence.
Anna sprinted over, holding a tactical flashlight. The black slime on her bulletproof vest gleamed oily under the strong light, dripping continuously with her movements, corroding sizzling pits into the ground. Her chest heaved violently against the velcro of the tactical vest, producing crackling friction sounds, like some colossal beast grinding its teeth.
“All monitors show a black shadow diving into the prototype just before the explosion!” Anna’s voice trembled metallically. The flashlight beam swept across Jonas’s pale face, casting heavy shadows under his eyes. “What’s stranger is, all the gear mechanisms in Sector Seven are now rotating counterclockwise.”
Jonas’s Adam’s apple rolled as he passed the badge over. The moment Anna’s fingertips touched the edge, the ground suddenly emitted a buzzing sound of gears meshing. Countless web-like glowing lines spread out from the two of them, as if ancient runes were awakening. Tiny gears crawled out of the cracks, interlocking and spinning rapidly; the sharp screech of metal grinding made their eardrums ache.
A giant clock three meters in diameter slowly formed on the ground, its bronze face engraved with twisted runes. The central hand spun frantically counterclockwise, the countdown numbers glowing blood-red: 03:59:59. With each tick, Jonas felt the vibrations under his feet grow stronger, as if some colossal creature was awakening beneath the earth.
“This matches the words on the badge…” Jonas’s voice was drowned out by the roaring gears. Anna had already taken out a tactical tablet, tapping the screen swiftly. The cold white light illuminated her tense profile; sweat slid down her jawline into her vest collar.
“All gear devices in Sector Seven are showing abnormal data fluctuations.” Anna suddenly turned the tablet toward him; the data streams on the screen twisted into strange spirals. “Look at this—the gear groups that were supposed to stay synchronized now have speed differences expanding exponentially.”
“Listen!” Anna suddenly grabbed his shoulder. A thunderous ringing like a church bell echoed from afar, but with a sharp metallic tearing aftersound. Sector Seven’s iconic steam tower was spewing black smoke, which condensed into massive gear-shaped clouds drifting slowly, blocking the moonlight.
Jonas’s communicator suddenly emitted a piercing buzz; encrypted channel broken shouts came intermittently: “...Abyss...gear...escape...” The electrical noise mixed with brittle bone-cracking sounds, followed by eerie swallowing noises. Anna’s face turned deathly pale; she exchanged a glance with Jonas—this voice was unmistakably their direct superior, Dr. William.
The giant clock’s countdown jumped to 03:58:00; the ground began trembling violently. Black liquid seeped from the cracks—this corrosive slime emitted purple smoke upon contact with air. Jonas noticed the slime on Anna’s vest glowing, ghostly green light dots converging along the fabric’s pattern, forming a gear emblem over her chest.
“The badge’s map…” Anna suddenly tore open her collar, revealing a tattoo on her collarbone—that was the missing half of the map. The ghostly blue coordinate light resonated with her tattoo, creating a luminous bridge between them. Countless memory fragments flooded Jonas’s mind: secret meetings in the midnight lab, Dr. William’s mysterious visitors, encrypted files marked “Abyss Project”…
The countdown hit 03:57:00; the giant clock’s face suddenly flipped, revealing a star chart on the back. Jonas was shocked to find the star trajectories perfectly aligned with the badge map. Even more terrifying, a vortex was forming at the star chart’s center, as if some existence beyond comprehension was peering through a spacetime rift at them.
“They’ve known all along.” Anna’s voice came as if from far away. “From the day they recruited us, we’ve been the keys to the activation ritual.” She raised her tactical flashlight; the beam cut through the smoke toward the sky. The black gear-shaped cloud masses began descending, each meter fallen intensifying the ground’s tremors.
Jonas clenched the badge; the burning metal made his palm go numb. Suddenly, he recalled the oil painting in Dr. William’s office—a figure wearing a gear mask raised a scepter, beneath him countless turning gears and howling human faces. At this moment, those images were replaying in reality.
The countdown hit 03:56:00; the giant clock’s gears began disassembling counterclockwise. Each gear that fell away cracked the ground deeper. More human face reliefs surfaced in the black slime; they stretched out twisted arms, grabbing at Jonas and Anna’s ankles.
“Run!” Anna grabbed him, turning and sprinting. Behind them, the steam tower collapsed with a thunderous crash, dust revealing a massive gear-shaped outline. It was some entity beyond machinery, each tooth embedded with human bones, hollow eye sockets burning ghostly blue flames.
Jonas glanced once more at the badge in his hand; the silver-white text was disappearing, replaced by rapidly flowing star charts. He suddenly understood: when the seventh gear stops turning, it’s not that the Abyss opens its eyes—it is the Abyss itself, this ceaseless gear mechanism.
The countdown continued: 03:55:00. The sound of gears meshing came from the darkness, growing nearer and louder.
Anna’s tactical boots slipped on the trembling ground; she suddenly yanked off an electromagnetic pulse grenade from her waist and hurled it at the twisted gear outline behind them. Blue-purple electric arcs exploded; in the brief flash, Jonas saw that the creature’s gear teeth were filled with bones, and one eye slowly opened, streaming liquid metal.
“Run to the old subway tunnel!” Anna’s voice was torn to pieces by the pulse’s roar. They forced open a rusted safety door, greeted by a stench of rot and mold. Black slime dripped continuously from overhead pipes, sizzling pits smoking where it struck the floor. Jonas’s communicator suddenly lit up, projecting Dr. William’s final hologram—the man’s skin was being eaten away by silver metal, yet a strange smile lingered at his lips.
“You think you can escape the gear’s fate?” The hologram’s voice squeezed through countless gear gaps. “Every tile, every steel beam in Sector Seven is a tentacle of the Abyss.” The image suddenly twisted into a blur of gear-shaped static; Jonas’s badge flared intensely, burning tooth marks into his palm.
From deep within the subway tunnel came a buzzing of turning gears; countless tiny mechanical spiders crawled out from under the tracks. Their shells were engraved with the same runes as the badge; ruby-like compound eyes formed a blood-red web in the darkness. Anna quickly shifted the tactical flashlight’s frequency; the blinding blue light swept over the spiders, which emitted high-pitched screams as their shells began to crack.
“These aren’t ordinary machines!” Jonas kicked away a mechanical spider lunging at him; silver liquid oozed from the broken joint before quickly reforming new limbs. “They’re devouring the surrounding metal!” Before he finished, the ventilation pipe overhead crashed down, exposing a dense gear array inside, transforming the tunnel’s steel frame into a bizarre mechanical life form.
Anna suddenly grabbed Jonas, rolling into a nearby maintenance passage. The wall tiles peeled off, revealing bronze plates engraved with star charts. Jonas’s badge automatically adhered to the plate; ghostly blue light spread along the star map’s veins. The bronze plate slowly lifted, revealing a spiral staircase descending downward. Wall lamps lit on both sides, the light filled with countless miniature gears, circling around them like fireflies.
“This is the Abyss’s core.” Anna’s voice trembled with unprecedented fear. The end of the staircase emitted a heartbeat-like rumble; every vibration rippled the air. When they stepped into the bottom hall, the entire wall of machinery suddenly activated; countless gears meshed together, assembling a dynamic star chart—exactly the pattern from the giant clock’s back.
At the star chart’s center hovered the seventh gear. Unlike the others, it was covered in flesh-like textures, with a pulsating mechanical heart embedded in its center. The countdown showed 03:00:00; the heart suddenly burst with dazzling light, and the entire hall began rotating backward. Jonas felt his body being dismantled by some force, an illusion of gears turning beneath his skin.
“So we are the seventh gear.” Anna tore open her collar, the tattoo on her collarbone liquefying into metal, flowing along her veins toward the heart. “William and the others implanted fragments of the Abyss’s consciousness inside us.” Her pupils gradually turned gear-shaped as she raised her gun, aiming at Jonas.
At the critical moment, Jonas yanked off the necklace at his neck—that was an old pocket watch left by his mother. The watch’s internal gears resonated with the hall’s machinery, producing a clear chime. Anna’s gun barrel shifted slightly; the mechanical heart’s beating rhythm became chaotic. The countdown dropped to 02:59:00; gears fell from the watch, clinking lightly on the floor.
This subtle sound was like opening Pandora’s box. All the gears in the hall began rotating backward; cracks appeared on the mechanical heart’s surface. Jonas seized the opportunity to embed the badge into the heart’s fissure; the liquid metal text transformed into chains, binding the frenzied mechanical life form. Anna’s pupils cleared; she quickly stuffed an electromagnetic pulse grenade into the crack. “Thirty seconds to detonation!”
The two turned and ran wildly; behind them came the roar of breaking gears. When they burst onto the surface, a massive energy vortex erupted at Sector Seven’s center, a silver mechanical torrent surging skyward, condensing into a colossal gear in the air. At the countdown’s zero moment, countless faces appeared on the gear’s surface, their expressions turning from agony to calm before dissolving into stardust that scattered across the night sky.
The first ray of dawn pierced through the clouds. Jonas found half of a pocket watch in the ruins. Inside the cover was engraved his mother’s handwriting: When the gears stop turning, time will truly flow. In the distance, the roar of rescue helicopters grew nearer, but Jonas knew this nightmare of the Abyss and gears might never truly end—somewhere unknown in the city, new gears had already begun turning again.
Three months later, Jonas stood outside the Sector Seven ruins’ perimeter. The land once filled with gear mechanisms was now overgrown with weeds; scorched steel beams twisted into eerie shapes, resembling the ribs of some colossal beast. He rubbed the partially damaged badge in his pocket; the metal surface had lost its eerie glow but still held faint vibrations.
“Jonas!” Anna’s voice came from behind. She had changed into casual clothes; the tattoo on her collarbone had completely vanished, but her eyes still held lingering vigilance. She handed him an encrypted file with a familiar gear emblem on the cover. “Headquarters found this while clearing the ruins.”
Inside were Dr. William’s unfinished manuscripts, the handwriting messy and corroded by black slime in many places. Jonas’s finger stopped on a passage: “The Abyss is not the end but a cycle. When the seventh gear shatters, a new cycle begins from the cracks in memory.” A photo was clipped between the pages, showing a group of people wearing gear masks; beneath their feet, the star chart was identical to Sector Seven’s core device.
“I received an anonymous email.” Anna lowered her voice, pulling up mysterious info on her phone. The screen showed only a string of coordinates and a gear symbol; the sender was listed as “Unknown.” Jonas’s heart suddenly raced—that coordinate was exactly the abandoned observatory his mother had last studied before she died.
Late at night, the two infiltrated the observatory. Beneath the rusted dome, a massive telescope pointed toward the southern starry sky. When Jonas placed the badge fragment on the observation platform, the entire building trembled. Ancient star charts appeared on the walls; the twinkling lights resonated with Sector Seven’s machinery. The ground cracked open, revealing a long-sealed underground laboratory.
At the lab’s center stood a gigantic gear-shaped instrument; each tooth was engraved with different names—among them, Jonas and Anna. At the top, a brand-new gear slowly took shape, its surface emitting a cold silver light. A countdown screen lit up, the numbers starting at 09:59:59.
“So we are just pawns in an even bigger game.” Anna clenched the handgun at her waist. “This time, we take the initiative.”
Jonas took a deep breath and embedded the badge fragment into the instrument’s seam. Silver light instantly enveloped the entire lab; the ancient gears began turning, roaring across time and space. They didn’t know what awaited ahead, but this time, they resolved to break the cycle and make the gears truly stop turning.