Chapter 15: Eyes of Darkness and the Pulse of Iron
[I. The Bio-Mechanical Ghost] Alexander awoke in the makeshift clinic beneath the city. His body felt as if it had been crushed by a falling mountain, and his right arm remained a heavy, leaden weight.
Dr. Hoffman, a grizzled surgeon with a penchant for gin and a steady hand, was examining the puncture wound on Alexander's shoulder through a magnifying glass.
"Clinical precision," the doctor muttered, wiping sweat from his brow. "The needle entered and exited without tearing a single capillary. It struck the brachial nerve with microscopic accuracy. The payload wasn't a common toxin—it's a cocktail of tetrodotoxin and a synthetic anesthetic I've never seen before."
Alexander flexed his fingers; they responded with an agonizing slowness. "How long?"
"Two days for mobility. A week for strength," Hoffman replied.
Alexander sat up, ignoring the doctor's protests. "I don't have a week. This monster is a scalpel, and we are the flesh. He will excise us one by one." He looked at Silas and Sokolov. "Bring the Three Blind Seers. Now."
[II. The Secret of 'Zero-One'] In the map room, the three blind men were no longer calm. They twitched, their heads darting left and right as if tracking an invisible swarm of insects.
"The Void is hungry," the first one rasped. "It doesn't occupy space... it consumes it," the second added.
Alexander sat before them. "You see what I cannot. Why has he no aura? Why is there no color in him?"
The third seer reached out, his calloused fingers tracing the contours of Alexander's face. "Because an aura is the reflection of the soul, my boy. And light does not reflect off a vacuum."
"Is he dead?"
"No... he is worse. He is amputated." The first seer explained in a gravelly voice. "Every human is born with a 'spark.' This man... he underwent something that tore the spark out and replaced it with something... cold. Something that ticks."
"Ticks?" Alexander frowned.
"Yes..." The second seer tilted his ear. "Listen closely. Beneath the silence of his heart, there is a rhythm. Tick... tick... tick... Like a watch. Like a bomb."
Sokolov's eyes widened with a sudden, horrifying realization. "Project Iron Soul."
The old lawyer pulled a tattered, decaying file from his satchel—a relic from the final years of Alexander's father's reign. "Near the end, there were scientists obsessed with merging man and machine. They wanted the perfect soldier—indatigable, fearless, absolute in obedience. The experiments failed; every subject died... except for one child."
He opened the file. A yellowed photograph showed a pale, hairless boy, his eyelids held open by metal clamps. Subject 01. Sebastian.
"They replaced parts of his nervous system with gold and silver wiring to increase reaction speed," Sokolov whispered. "And they replaced his heart valves with miniature mechanical pumps to ensure his pulse never spiked under pressure."
Alexander realized the truth. His enemy was the first Primitive Cyborg—a monster birthed from the cursed ambition of the Industrial Revolution. Machines do not dream, and they do not leave auras.
[III. The Sound of the Bell] "If he is a machine," Alexander said, his voice dropping to a low snarl, "then he has a frequency. He relies on patterns and data." He turned to the map. "I cannot see him with my eyes, but the Seers hear his pulse. We need a place where sound is the master."
"The old water treatment plant," Silas suggested. "Massive empty reservoirs and miles of copper piping. If a drop of water falls there, it echoes three streets away."
Alexander smiled—a predator's grin. "We will turn him from a ghost... into a bell."
[IV. The Oil and the Lightning] Information was leaked through Elena's secret channels: Alexander, desperate and weakened, would meet a contact at the water plant to trade the Aurelius Documentsfor his life.
The plant was a cavern of rust and stagnant water. Alexander stood in the center of a suspended metal bridge over a deep, empty vat. He looked vulnerable, unarmed. Silas and his men were hidden, but not behind walls. They had coated themselves in thick mud and grease to dampen any sound, remaining perfectly still.
Alexander closed his eyes. Don't look for color... look for the tick.
Plip... plop... The rhythm of water. Whoosh... The wind in the pipes. And then... Tick... tick... tick...
A mechanical rhythm, faster than a human heart, terrifyingly precise. It came from above.
"You are on time, Sebastian," Alexander said without looking up.
The Hangman descended from the darkness like a white spider on a silken cord, landing soundlessly ten meters away.
"Emotion is a malfunction," Sebastian said in his dead, melodic voice. "You come to surrender, yet your heart rate is stable. You are lying. This is a trap."
"Correct," Alexander opened his eyes. "But you've already stepped into the calculation."
Sebastian scanned the room. "Your men are too far. No snipers. The distance between us is covered in 1.2 seconds. You will be dead before they can raise their iron."
Sebastian blurred into motion. He was lightning in a white coat.
But Alexander didn't draw a gun. He pressed a small remote in his hand.
CLANG!
Massive valves in the ceiling groaned open. It wasn't water that poured out. It was thick, black engine oil, mixed with thousands of fine iron filings.
Sebastian's boots hit the sludge. His perfect balance—calculated by gears and gyroscopes—failed for the first time. The oil coated the bridge, making traction impossible.
"NOW!" Alexander roared.
Silas emerged, not with a gun, but with a massive industrial power grid cable attached to a weighted metal net. He hurled it with all his strength.
The net draped over Sebastian, who was struggling to stand in the conductive oil.
"VOLTAGE!" Alexander screamed.
Thomas threw the switch on the heavy industrial generator.
BZZZZZZZT!
Ten thousand volts surged through the net, through the oil, and directly into Sebastian's reinforced nervous system.
Sebastian convulsed. For the first time, a human sound escaped him—a scream of agony, but it was warped, distorted by the screech of grinding gears. The devices inside him began to short-circuit. His heart pump began to rattle frantically. Tick-tick-crrr-tick!
Alexander approached, holding a rubber-insulated iron rod. He stood over the "Iron Soul" as smoke rose from the Hangman's joints and from beneath his mask.
"Your calculations were for biological prey, Sebastian," Alexander said coldly. "But you forgot. Machines... they break."
Alexander raised the rod and slammed it into the center of Sebastian's chest, shattering the mechanical pump that served as his heart.
CRASH!
The ticking stopped.
Sebastian slumped into the black oil, his blue eye-lights flickering once, twice, and then extinguishing into total darkness.
[V. The Distraction] Alexander exhaled, his lungs burning. Silas approached, looking at the carcass in horror. "We killed the devil."
"No, Silas," Alexander said, wiping oil from his face. "We killed a tool. The man who sent it... Inspector Victor... he is the devil."
Alexander searched Sebastian's scorched pockets. He found a single item that hadn't burned. A small photograph.
It wasn't of Alexander. It was of Elena Vostok. There was a red circle drawn around her face.
Alexander froze. The blood drained from his face.
"I wasn't the target..." Alexander whispered in terror. "I was the distraction."
He looked at Silas, his eyes wide. "Sebastian was sent here to fight me... but Victor sent his real squad to the Opera. Elena is in danger!"