The Steamwagon stopped with a finality that constricted Alucent's chest.
Not a smooth and careful landing, but the abrupt touchdown of something arriving precisely where it was meant to, exactly when protocol required. The engine attitude changed as soon as the machine stopped moving, dropping from transport to an idled silence, pressure vents exhaling through relief valves and the ever-present hiss that had become the soundtrack for this ride.
The undercarriage latches also released by themselves. Alucent heard the clunks resonating through the walls of the compartment—locks springing, doors swinging wide, and the hold yawning wide for whomever waited to accept delivery.
They prepared for detection. Readying simultaneously, hands reaching for arms and instruments, minds considering crisis plans that would be moot if armed guards burst into the compartment and discovered the passengers. Alucent's hands wrapped around his Runequill, although the utility of a drafting implement against trained fighters was anything but certain.
But then the compartment opened to routine.
There were no guards, no security alarms blaring, no shouting, no shouted gunfire, no planned chaos that comes when security musters against invaders.
A mere bored intake overseer scrutinizing a slate.
The man was approximately three meters away when the door opened, but he didn't so much as glance up from the tablet in his hand. Mid-forties, face etched with the lineaments of a working existence, dressed in the heavy working cloak like every other soul in the yard. His eyes remained focused on the slate in his hand as the stylus flashed against it as he checked the information on the manifest.
The ash fell like snow. That was Alucent's first impression of the intake yard as the dim light began to seep in. Not snow, but the residue of forge fire particles that fell in ceaseless drift upon every surface, imbuing the air with a dry, metallic taste. Thin layers clung to the earth, smoothed by the patterns of footsteps.
The workers had the precision of machines. Scores of them, perhaps more, in identical cloaks and head wraps which eliminated any facial features, so that each was interchangeable. The workers flowed around the Steamwagon like water around a rock, like well-oiled machines shifting around a blockage, in perfect synchrony without needing language.
Crates were dumped out of the cargo area. Wooden boxes that looked just like the ones the Harvester had shipped out of Hollow's Heart, bearing that same spiral symbol carved deeply into the wood. They were carried by workers who did not seem to notice the pleasant smell drifting from the sealed glass boxes inside.
There were no reactions to the smell. There were no reactions to the subtle movement caught through the gaps in the slats of the boxes, as the parasites stirred in their glass cells. The workers methodically lifted and carried and stacked, and proceeded to other tasks with the efficiency of deeply conditioned individuals or in deep emotional disconnection, with no concern for anything beyond purpose.
If it's on the manifest, it exists, Alucent reflected as he observed the orchestrated unloading of goods from the ship. If it's not on the manifest, then it doesn't matter.
That, it seemed, was the underlying principle. The manifest defined reality. The rest was just noise, filtered out by the system.
Which meant they had a problem.
The intake supervisor eventually looked up from his chalkboard, eyeing the unloading process with all the passion of a surgeon watching a particularly dull operating procedure. His gaze settled on the three of them crouched in the undercarriage compartment, and they definitely did not look like they belonged.
Frowning. Not quite suspicious, or alarmed. Just annoyed, as if someone had spotted a glitch in what had otherwise been a fluid system.
"Cargo mismatch," he said matter-of-factly, the frustration of bureaucracy evidenced in his tone. Not at them, just at the reality of the situation. He raised his stylus towards the slate he held, probably to record this anomaly, to initiate whatever procedure existed for these unexpected snafus.
Not people, Alucent noted. Not intruders. Not stowaways. Cargo mismatch. They were handled as though they were lost items, not human beings who shouldn't have been there.
Gryan moved before Alucent could speak, before Raya could draw her Weaveblade, before the overseer could complete the log entry. He emerged from the compartment, his metal arm whirring gently as he stood fully erect, and his voice had an inflection that Alucent had never before detected.
"Contract auxiliaries. Rerouted with priority shipment per Forge Canon amendment seven-thirteen concerning specialized labor allocation during yield variance periods."
This phrasing seemed odd. Not false, necessarily, but alien, speaking a language that sounded like something to those familiar with the system, but gibberish to others. Contract auxiliaries. Forge Canon amendments. Yield variance periods. This sounded like the language of industrial bureaucratic speak being applied to the movement of people.
Gryan knew this phrasing. He had heard it before, back in Iron Vale, before the accident and the disillusionment and the leaving. He spoke this language as if he had been fluent before, and was recalling it with an effort.
The overseer paused. His stylus was suspended above the slate, considering Gryan's words. Not because he questioned the veracity of the claim, nor did he suspect anything, but because addressing this required official forms, record-keeping, and proper channels for dealing with diverted manpower rather than just recording the receipt of cargo.
The paperwork took time. Time decreased efficiency. The only thing that mattered was efficiency.
The overseer's scowl intensified, his calculation obvious. How much was he willing to work for this task? How invested was he in ensuring three men redirected for their own good when the other option was expending the remainder of the evening in paperwork, defending choices to bosses who mattered less than he did.
"Intake hall three," he finally answered, jerking his head toward a side corridor beyond the main yard. "Get issued. Report for floor assignment by shift bell or you'll be noted deficient."
Then he turned away, his attention already focused again on his slate, on the tasks that really mattered, according to his documentation. The three unexpected bodies had been sorted, labeled, and dispatched to wherever they were meant to go. Problem solved via path of least resistance.
They moved quickly, following the indicated passage before he could change his mind or before someone who cared more about process pointed out the anomaly. The side hall was narrow, enough for only two people to walk abreast, and covered in streaks of soot. Steam pipes hung from the ceiling, dripping condensation that gathered on the floor.
The hall led to a storage room, reeking of machine oil and dirty fabric. The walls were lined with racks containing identical gear in different stages of repair. The heavy working cloaks were made from stiff water-resistant fabric. The face wraps protected one from particulate inhalation, though they seemed in need of replacement. The blank badges featured numeric codes likely for tracking system purposes.
A younger employee was waiting there, his eyes dead and his movements precise like those of the overseer, gestureing silently to the racks and to the piles of equipment waiting to be distributed.
They were issued what they needed without questions being asked. No names, no verification necessary. Just practical equipment to blend them in with the environment of work, to make irregulars acceptable in the operation of the machinery.
Alucent wrapped the heavy cloak around his shoulders, the weight felt awkward on him. The material was coarse, made for endurance rather than comfort, and stank from use by dozens of other men before him, none of whom had washed it thoroughly enough. The face wrap was worse, clammy from the saliva and sweat of a previous wearer, though he tied it in place because failing to do so indicated lack of compliance.
Raya examined the badge in her hand, the numeric stamping on it didn't mean anything to her, but to whatever networks were monitoring the movement of the workers. Her face was neutral, but Alucent detected the strain in her jaw.
"This isn't infiltration," she whispered, barely heard over the din of the facility. "This is absorption."
She was right. They hadn't snuck in. They hadn't outmaneuvered security or dodged defenses. They had simply been processed. Sorted and labeled and inventoried and equipped for incorporation into the labor pool like any new merchandise.
The Iron Vale does not inquire about your identity, Alucent thought, readjusting the face wrap. It inquires about your functionality.
And if you could function, then you were useful. And if you were useful, then you existed. And anything else didn't matter; it could all be ignored by the system without it ever getting investigated.
The storage room worker gestured toward another passageway, which led upward—to assignment on the floors. Where they'd be separated and assigned to work at varying points according to where their efficiency potential was greatest relative to their skills.
They marched in a single file, going up metal stairs that clanked with each step. Then the cacophony built into a perfect industrial symphony: hammering, grinding, steam hisses, metal clangs, and shouted voices that screamed without intended meaning to the listeners.
The corridor opened onto a processing floor that made Alucent pause to take it all in.
The area was vast. Easily two hundred meters wide, with a roof that faded into smoke and darkness. A couple of assembly pits occupied the floor, dug several meters below, surrounded by laborers and equipment in a choreography of random teamwork. Hot air billowed from the assembly pits, rippling the surrounding atmosphere, which would be toxic if unprotected.
Activity all around. Workers wandering from station to station, carrying resources, equipment, parts that Alucent couldn't even name. Machines interfacing, pistons firing, power being repurposed for the assembly line. Everyone had a job, but no one had anything to say, all acting out their choreographed role.
A supervisor appeared, an older man, with a badge symbolizing higher authority. His eyes swept over them with expert scrutiny, rating their skills and allocating them to tasks in ways that eluded her understanding.
Gryan was drawn aside even as the supervisor was still evaluating him. Someone had noticed him, realized that that mechanical arm was not wonder but utility. He was led towards the assembly pit without words, absorbed by the labor force and at work in an instant.
Raya was tasked with perimeter security, crates to be moved, tracking movement flow patterns to identify bottlenecks. And fading into the endless flow of movement. She gave Alucent a final glance before being reassigned elsewhere, but her hand instinctively brushed against the hilt of her Weaveblade, acknowledging they were on their own.
This left Alucent lingering in an area with no purpose, which was not good, as lingering meant being stationary, and being stationary meant being non-functional, and non-functional objects were removed by the prevailing waste and efficiency processes.
The supervisor scowled at him, stylus hanging in mid-air. He calculated what Alucent might belong to, what purpose he might fill in order to warrant his being there.
"Rune-work?" the supervisor repeated, the flat efficiency of his voice not requiring an actual answer, only information for categorizing.
"Yes," Alucent replied, "Thread 3."
The supervisor noted this. "Control alcove seven. Pressure stabilization monitoring. Then report immediately."
He moved on, the three of them already forgotten in the face of more pressing tasks. Alucent was pointed towards a raised platform above one of the pits, reachable via a restored metal ladder. The control alcove is small, only three meters to a side, with metal walls and a narrow window into the pit.
In the control alcove, the panel of instruments hummed with data and systems Alucent did not immediately interpret.
But the runes were there. Etched around each of the gauges, incorporated into the paneling with the same locked-purpose feel he had detected before on the Steamwagon. Coppermark-simple designs, the type of thing they covered in their first-year courses before getting on to something intricate. None of it was, of course, expressive. Or adaptive. Or responsive. It simply responded to thresholds. The plain, simple states of acceptable or unacceptable, working or not working, caring not one whit for efficiency or beauty, merely for staying within limits.
This was rune work for people who don't think, and the implications made his stomach turn. This is Runeforce usage for when comprehension is not necessary and only obedience counts.
And he had to pretend to be among them. Monitor gauges, nudge flow as values drift high or low, do so without questioning why, without curiosity, without expressing anything other than perfect functionality.
The operation was simple. Monitor the dials. As pressure approached redline, make adjustments to the valve to reroute the flow and stabilize it. Simple cause-and-effect cycle, something that even a novice worker could do with elementary training.
Below, in the pressure chamber, the workers moved through the heat waves and steam, placing large pieces of metal around nodes of pressure, most likely for testing under stress or other intensive processing. Their activity was synchronized as if they had no need for communication, each knowing what their task was and were performing it flawlessly.
However, one of them timed a move badly. Perhaps it was only to be expected. He reached for a valve just as he had a thousand times before, only this time his move compounded a rising spike.
The sound was the same Gryan had described: not a scream, but the sudden, brutal instance when the human body gives way to pressure. Pressure, shock, silence.
The bell rang. It was not an alarm, nor a cry for aid, but a warning of a kind of transition, a shift in the workers' actions. Two men walked towards the wreckage and hauled what was left towards a disposal chute. Not horror, not sorrow, just the elimination of something no longer of use.
The gauge reset itself. The pressure normalized. The worker who should have been manning the station was replaced in a matter of seconds, and the shift continued.
Alucent stood in the control alcove, his hand poised over a valve he had been on the verge of turning, the mind behind him reeling from what he had just witnessed. Not the actual death, that had happened before, and it had happened because of his own mistakes. It was the response to the event that had just happened that left him speechless.
Another gauge was drifting into the red. Alucent's hand preceded the movement of his brain, twisting the valve to recirculate the flow, stabilizing it. It was an obedience rewarded not in appreciation, but in functionality. To be allowed to continue as the useful part of the machinery that it was.
He was terrified. Not because he was being forced to participate, but because some part of him had already adapted. His analytical mind had mastered the system and was already executing the responses independent of any volition.
How long before adaptation turned to acceptance? How long before he ceased to consider these changes as strategies of survival and looked at them as simply the way things are?
The bell ringing for the shift was different, its sound conveying something else. He certainly did not know what, but the effect was the same as before: the entire floor moved in synch. No pause, just transition.
Alucent looked out into the Forge-District through the narrow window of his alcove, and he saw the pits, the heat, the motion. He saw the workers moving like cogs in a machine, carrying out their functions without understanding or compassion.
He saw the systems in which suffering was considered tolerable damage, systems which had designed out compassion and humanity.
They had made it through entry, processed into the system without anybody realizing they didn't belong. Infiltration had succeeded, as it would with a machine dedicated to efficiency, with no reason to protect itself against the impossible.
Now they had to live through the phase of being useful. To remain useful as they gathered intel, to be a part of the machine as they searched for its weakness, to be one among many as they managed to maintain the distance required to recall what brought them to this point.
Alucent changed another gauge, his actions choreographed after only one shift of observation.
The system processed his change without remark, integrating it into its calculations, proceeding with a mechanical impassiveness.
He was Useful now. What that meant was that he Existed.
Which meant that he could continue to exist so long as he remained Useful and did not ask questions or display any curiosity or any other characteristic beyond simple obedience.
Yet, it was terrifying to realize how natural all this already felt.