“I’m happy to see you out of your room, even though you wouldn’t let your dear sister who loves you so much take a picture of you with your pretty new hair and makeup.”

“I told you, no.”

Susan pouted, grabbing a wrench from among the enormous set of tools, half of which Lane couldn’t venture to guess the name of, on the wall mount and fiddling with a bolt on the robot sitting at her workbench. The robot made little worried beeping sounds as the bolt was tightened into place.

“Are you feeling any better, at least?”

 “A little.”

 “That’s progress! Progress is good!”

 “Yeah…” Lane said, staring at their feet as they dangled from the slowly rotating office chair.

 Susan’s robot jumped up and skittered off the workbench, Susan waved as it went on its way. She dusted off her hands and picked up her bag, filling it with various tools. 

Lane tilted their head.

“Are you headed out again?”

“Yep! I’ve been sending out my little buddies to track down something that Mom stole. The signal is really strong from the clock tower, but my little buddies keep disappearing or coming back injured, the poor things. I also got a tip that the clock tower might be related to Mom somehow, so I gotta check it out for myself.”

Lane had been wondering about their mother; they and Susan had moved to Craterton partially to find out what happened to her, but Lane hadn’t really learned much about her since. 

Lane gazed down at their hands.

“If it’s related to mom, I want to come.”

Susan picked up a shiny ray gun and placed it into her bag.

“I dunno, kiddo. It could be dangerous, and you’re the one little buddy I can’t put back together.”

“I’m going!”

Lane’s hands were balled into fists as they defiantly stared down their older sister. Susan shrugged.

“Welp, can’t argue with that.”

She picked something up from off the ground and threw it to Lane.

“A baseball bat? Don’t you have anything better?”

“Listen, I may be a mad scientist, but I don’t play games with weapon safety, and I don’t have the time to give you the mandated five-day training course, so the bat is all you’re getting. It’s not like you’ll need to use it when I’m around.”

Lane frowned.

“Think of it as a placebo,” Susan said.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to think about placebos.”

Susan slipped her goggles onto her head, and rummaged around for her car keys. Lane spotted them first and handed them to her.

* * *

The setting sun cast long shadows on Craterton as Susan’s impossible chimera of a vehicle chugged down the road. In the distance, it became visible: the clock tower. It stood tall, far from the buildings the residents worked, lived and played in. It wasn’t a particularly large clock tower, but it dwarfed every other building in the town, looming above the humbler architecture like an unwanted guest that nobody dared ask to leave. Its hands were permanently stuck at four-fifty-one. 

Susan drove up the path to the clock tower, a poorly maintained road, overgrown with weeds and cracked by the exploring roots of nearby trees. She parked the car and went around back to the trunk to set up equipment, Lane following closely. At the tower’s base, the large mahogany door loomed over the pair, its decorative arch welcoming Lane’s morbid curiosity. 

Lane gazed up at the clock tower, Something about it made them feel on edge, made the hair on their arms stand on end. Despite how they felt, nothing about it was too out of the ordinary except that it looked somewhat older in architectural style than the rest of the structures in town. It seemed just subtly out of place with its surroundings, maybe a little taller than it should be and the color of the bricks were maybe a little too vivid.

With a wooden thunk, the door at the tower’s base burst open. One of Susan’s machines dashed out of it, scurrying to hide behind her leg. Susan gently patted it, sending it on its way home.

“There’s still time to turn back, Lane.”

Lane shook their head.

Susan and Lane peered through the door. Dimly lit concrete stairs spiraled endlessly upwards into darkness. Susan took a tentative step inside, holding her ray gun at the ready. Lane followed her closely. The air inside was still and dry. It was quiet, but faintly through the floor, Lane could feel a vibration, slow and rhythmic.

Susan looked up.

“My legs are gonna be sore in the morning.”

The two began their journey up the flights and flights of stairs, their footfalls on the hard concrete echoing throughout the tower. Lane looked around nervously, tightening their grip on the bat. The uneasy feeling got slightly stronger the higher they climbed.

“Suse?”

“Hm?”

“What was mom like?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I was too little, I think. I only really remember what she looked like, I remember her smiling at me.”

Susan thought for a moment.

“She was quiet, never really seemed comfortable around other people, but she occasionally showed her surprising sense of humor. She never raised her voice, but you could tell when she was mad. Apparently she was good with kids, she used to substitute occasionally for the local elementary school, not that I saw much of that side of her.”

“Also, her time as a supervillain was strange, she lacked the sense of… spectacle? She was really dry, no banter, all business. Honestly not very good marketing, especially since her inventions were quite interesting and bizarre.”

Lane looked up at Susan, trying to read her mood. It was getting darker, so Susan pulled out a pair of flashlights, handing one to Lane. She stopped.

“Do you hear that, Lane?”

Lane listened. Faintly, something ticked and thumped in a rhythmic pattern: tick thu-thump, tick thu-thump. The direction it came from was hard to place, but Lane assumed it was coming from above.

“What is that?”

“I have a feeling we’re going to find out.”

Whatever it was, it made Lane’s skin crawl. 

They climbed higher and higher, it felt like it wouldn’t end. The sound grew louder. The dread that lay in the back of Lane’s mind slowly became more pronounced, until every ounce of their mind screamed for them to turn around. Lane held onto Susan’s coat.

“We’re almost there, Lane, don’t get separated.”

The ticking sound, the thumping sound, it wasn’t coming from above, it was coming from inside Lane’s head. Lane covered their mouth.

Finally, the platform at the top of the stairs became visible. Susan picked up the pace, dragging Lane along. Catching their breath at the top of the staircase, Lane looked up.

The ceiling was an enormous ribcage, at the center of it: a beating, dripping heart. Veins protruding from it grew along the ceiling like invasive vines. Parts of the heart seemed haphazardly bolted together with sheets of metal, and stuck into its center like a thorn in an animal’s foot was an intricate little bronze clock face ticking away with horrible inevitability.

 Lane was overcome with the feeling that they were going to die.

“Oh, my poor little buddies!”

 Susan gazed at the metal scraps that littered the floor, barely recognizable as parts from her machines. She tightened her grip on her ray gun.

 “Susan,” Lane called out. “I-it hurts to be here.”

 “I know, Lane. Just bear with it for a minute.”

 Lane watched as Susan turned on a screen on the far end of the room, the high pitched whine of the CRT briefly penetrating through the sound of the tower’s heartbeat. The chunky old keyboard clacked under Susan’s fingers.

 “W-what killed your robots?”

 Susan pulled something out of the old computer and put it in her bag. 

 “What you’re hearing, turns out it’s not actually sound,” she said, pointing to her head.

 “W-what do you mean?”

 “Something here has been reaching inside our brains and fiddling around.”

 Lane’s blood ran cold.

* * *

 Lane held a pack of frozen peas against their forehead while they sprawled out on the living room couch. Susan placed a glass of water and a plate in front of Lane. The plate had a painkiller on it, Lane greedily swallowed it.

 “W-what did you find?”

 “I don’t know yet,” Susan sighed, adjusting the ice pack she stuck to her head with a headband. “I copied everything from that terminal, but most of it is encrypted. It will be a while before we know anything.”

 Lane stared at the ceiling.

 “Mom wouldn’t… make something like that, would she?”

 Susan sat at the end of the couch, Lane moved their feet.

 “I’m not sure, Lane, but she had definitely been there.”