Page 40 of Still the Sun

If the machines pose the questions, then they must also have the answers. If I get this tower operating again, I’ll understand what’s happening to me.

To another, the logic might be unsound. To me, it’s faultless. Fix the machines, fix myself.

I feel like Machine Four. Whole in appearance, yet internally broken.

I’m running. I know I’m running. I never knew myself as an evader. I suppose I’ve never experienced problems this deep. This ... murky. I can’t process them, so I don’t even try. I want an empty mind, so I focus on Machine Four. Focus on my work. Focus on the parts I understand.

I’m beneath her belly near the lower end, sitting on my butt, when I pause. “Oh. Youarefemale.”

There’s a large female piece in her middle. The thick chain links to its back end. But I don’t see a corresponding male counterpart, which makes no sense. But perhaps I’m looking at it wrong—

Machine Three looms before me, wider in the center than at the ends.

A cry escapes me as I whip away from Machine Four, both hands going to my skull. “Stop it,” I plead. Emotion burns the inside of my nose. “Stop it. Stop it.”

That’s not what Machine Three looks like. It’s in pieces.

The vision imprints into my brain like a scar.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I suck in a long breath, release it slowly. In, out. In, out.

It’s not right. It’s imaginary. It’s not right.

The lift takes me down to the second floor. From there, I use the ladder to reach Machine Three. It probably has a lift stop I can uncover, but it’s not worth the effort. Half the machine still litters the stone floor. But I remember a few details. Only a few, and they’re wrong.

Wrong,I tell myself as I pick up two beams and connect them with a bronze fastener.Wrong,I repeat as I snap it into place and connect wires, then an axle, then a bit shaped like a hollow trapezoid that I’ve never been able to categorize.Wrong,I say as I connect couplings the way I saw, and then step back, every part fitting where it belongs. The base begins to bow outward. The Ancients designed Machine Three thicker in the middle than at the ends.

It took you away from me.

My gut seizes, sending me to my knees.

Heartwood moves his hair over his shoulders. The mist-choked light casts shadows across the scars on his back. No, not scars. Not like the ones on my hands and knees. These are raised, branched, intricate, the skin no different from the rest. They branch out at his pale shoulders and taper at his waist, taking the shape of a tree.

I blink tears away to clear my vision. The tower room stands quiet around me. Again, stinging bile courses up my throat, but I swallow it down. Swallow, swallow, swallow, then remember to breathe.

I’m losing my sanity. I feel it. The machines are one thing; I’m learning more about them every time I come. I’m a tinkerer. Mechanics interest me. Of course my mind would make the jump to how to piece them together. Of course I’m learning their ways.

But Heartwood ... I don’t know how anything in reality or dream could conjure up something as strange as those scars on his back. I’ve never witnessed anything close. Even Arthen, with all his forge injuries, has nothing comparable.

Inhale, exhale. Long, slow.

“I’m losing it, Salki,” I whisper, wishing she were here to reassure me. But she’s not, and she wouldn’t understand if she were.Idon’t understand.

I’m losing control.

“No.No.” I force myself to my feet and retreat to the window, sucking in mist-laced air. “I am here. I am whole. They’re only machines.”

I refuse to cry over this. I’m not crazy. I ... I’m not ...

I have to know.

Does Heartwood have those strange markings on his back? If he doesn’t, then I’ve lost my mind entirely. I’m too susceptible to these machines. I’ll have to stop my work entirely and preserve what I have left. I can’t sacrifice myself for these keepers. I’m sorry, but I can’t.

But if hedoes... then the ravings of madness haven’t descended upon me. It’s something else. Something embedded within the Ancient tech I’m working on. Something connected tothem. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not madness.

I have to know. Ineedto know.

Setting my tools aside, I plan.

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