“Useless,” I echoed, the word a dull chime in the suffocating silence. My inner chronometer glared at `00:03:00:00`. Three days. Not enough time to even learn to knit, let alone save a dissolving soul. My vision blurred at the edges, the gas lamp’s glow momentarily fading into a memory of stark, grey rock. It was a flashback, sharp and unbidden. Not to the steam-carriage crash that started all this, but to the cave-in five years before, the one that crippled Varek and branded me with guilt. We had been exploring the abandoned ember-mines beneath the city, foolish children chasing legends. The ground had shuddered, a deep, resonant rumble, and a fault line had ripped open, not through stone, but through something shimmering, impossibly thin. A planar fracture, I now knew. It had glowed with the same unsettling light as the orb Varek now held. I remembered the cold, unnatural draft, the way the air had hummed, making my teeth ache. We’d barely crawled out, Varek already clutching his mangled legs, just before the tunnel collapsed completely. That fissure. That humming. It wasn't just a random geological anomaly. It was a wound in time itself, a scar beneath Kravika. And where was the city’s heart, its largest, most potent source of ember-coal energy, the very engine of its civic stability? The central Ember-Clock tower, its colossal brass gears driving the city’s pulse, its foundations burrowed deep into the earth. The same earth, I realized with a sudden chill in my gut, that housed that subterranean fracture. The tower wasn't just built near it; it was *anchored* to it. Its power, its very existence, must be drawing energy from that fissure, perhaps even stabilizing it. If it was a seam in the city's bedrock, then the tower itself was a massive, city-sized anchor. The answer snapped into place. “Varek,” I breathed, the name a raw whisper. He looked up, his brows furrowed in concentration on the inert orb. “The Ember-Clock tower. It’s built on that subterranean fault line, isn’t it? The same one from the old ember-mines. It’s a gigantic, city-wide anchor. We don’t need a power source for this cracked thing.” I gestured vaguely at the orb, then at the city beyond the grimy windows. “We need to tap into the *tower*.” His head snapped up, his brow jumping. He stared at me, then at the orb, then back at me, a frantic calculation playing out across his features. He didn’t question how I knew about the fault line, or the tower’s hidden purpose. He just saw the glimmer of a desperate solution. Before he could fully articulate a response, the front door burst open, not with Jolvan’s furious kick this time, but with Rolo, laden like a pack-mule. He staggered in, grunting, a woven sack bulging with brass wire, a coil of insulated conduit, a box of precision gears, and a hefty, illicit-looking accumulator salvaged from a steam-carriage’s power regulator. His small, anxious face was tear-streaked and blotchy. “Rolo? What in the blazes have you dragged in here?” I asked, my voice sharper than I intended, the adrenaline of the discovery still thrumming. He dropped his cargo with a clatter, the accumulator rolling perilously close to Varek’s feet. “Everything! Everything you could possibly need!” he wailed, wiping his nose with the back of a greasy hand. “I heard it, all of it! Jolvan’s connections… he’s telling everyone you stole the core, that you attacked him! And the Wardens are looking for you, Varek! And… and your clock, Tazien! I heard the whispers, about the flash of light on your arm!” His voice broke, a raw, heartbreaking sound. He stomped his foot, a small, defiant protest. “You two are my favorite people! You taught me to cook! You taught me to… to be brave! I won’t let you die! Not after everything!” He swallowed hard, then squared his narrow shoulders, a surprising fire in his usually timid gaze. “I told the neighborhood. The whole lower ward. All the grocers, the smiths, the chandlers. The dockworkers who hate Jolvan’s guts. I told them you need a distraction. A big one. The biggest Kravika has ever seen.” Varek and I exchanged a stunned look. Rolo, the grocer’s boy, the anxious, gossip-loving accomplice, had just orchestrated a city-wide riot. “A distraction?” Varek finally managed, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. “What kind of distraction?” Rolo puffed out his chest. “A protest! Against Jolvan’s market monopolies, against the Wardens’ favoritism, against the unfair ember-coal taxes! It’s going to be huge! A whole mob promised to join. They’re marching on the Ember-Clock tower at dawn. They’ll shut the whole district down.” He looked at me, a fierce, protective glint in his wet eyes. “It’ll buy you time, Tazien. Just tell me what to do next.” “Rolo,” I said, my voice thick with an emotion I rarely allowed myself. “You absolute, magnificent menace.” I pulled him into a brief, awkward hug, which he returned with surprising ferocity. “You stay safe, you hear? Don’t get caught in the thick of it.” He nodded, sniffling. “I won’t. I’ll be on the fringes, spreading more rumors. What’s the plan?” Varek, already sketching furiously on a scrap of parchment, pointed a grease-stained finger at the now-cracked temporal orb. “We’re not powering this core. We’re turning my chair into a mobile anchor rig. We’ll use the core as a focusing lens and tap directly into the tower’s chronal output. Its raw energy.” He looked up, his gaze locking onto mine, a fierce, desperate hope in their depths. “It’s a long shot, Tazien, but it’s our only chance. This rig… it has to be welded directly onto the chair’s frame. It’ll become part of me.” Hours bled into a blur of frantic activity. The room, once meticulously organized by my aggressive cleaning, was again a chaotic clash of metal, steam, and sparks. Varek, his brow furrowed in intense concentration, worked with a speed and precision I hadn’t seen since his pre-accident days. He dismantled sections of his wheelchair, the familiar brass frame becoming a scaffold for an array of new, intricate components. He grafted the accumulator onto the chair’s undercarriage, ran thick conduit along its armrests, and meticulously integrated the cracked orb into a brass housing directly behind the seat, aligning it with a complex network of focusing coils. The air grew thick with the acrid scent of solder and ozone, punctuated by the rhythmic hiss of his steam-powered torch. I, meanwhile, sorted Rolo’s illicit supplies, fed Varek tasteless nutrient paste, and watched the glowing numbers on my arm with a growing sense of dread. `00:02:45:12`. My movements were becoming sluggish, my head swimming with an uncharacteristic lightness. The air felt heavy, pressing down on me, making each breath a conscious effort. My usually sharp wit was dull, and even sarcasm felt like too much effort. “Need more flux, Tazien,” Varek grunted, his voice strained as he wrestled with a stubborn joint, his hands a blur of practiced motion. “And hand me the smaller gauge wire.” I bent to retrieve the items from a spilled box, but profound weakness dropped through my limbs like cold lead. My knees buckled. The world tilted, the workshop spinning into a dizzying kaleidoscope of brass and shadow. I tried to brace myself, tried to speak, but only a faint gasp escaped my lips. My vision tunneled, the gas lamp becoming a distant, fading star. I collapsed, a dead weight, onto the cold, grimy floor. The last thing I saw before darkness threatened to claim me was the bright, accusatory glow of my arm, the numbers bleeding down, `00:02:00:00`. As if on cue, a piercing, mournful wail ripped through the city, the unmistakable sound of Kravika’s central alarm sirens. Jolvan. He was out. And he was calling the Wardens.

The Saboteur's Scramble