I heard a man's cough. Sounded like it was distorted, coming through a phone speaker. I followed the sound — something about it intrigued me. I found its source: a dying man, or at least a man's head. The rest of him had been converted into a living machine. Just a man on an iron body. He was lying against a cracked wall in the depths of Spanner's Coil, right where the steam vents dumped their exhaust. Alone. Hurt.

His head creaked up. When he saw me, his lips twitched into something that might have been a smile. It was hard to tell with half his jaw missing.

"You... from outside," he rasped.

"How could you tell I'm from outside?" I asked.

"You got... eyes left. Real ones."

He hacked, something thick and dark slipping from the hole in his face. His body jolted, a mechanical seizure rattling his limbs. I stepped forward, seeing if I could try and help him. He waved me off with a shaking piece of metal.

"No saving me, kid. My gears are locking up."

I didn't know what to say. I didn't know why I stayed. But then he leaned forward, metal joints screeching, and hissed something into the smog between us:

"They stopped us. Stopped the good work. Banned it. Controlled it. Strangled it out of our world... You got a choice, outsider. You can be part of their herd... or you can wind your own damn spring."

His fingers fumbled at a rusted pouch tied to his belt. He shoved a scrap of paper into my hands, trembling. An address and a name written in oil and blood.

"Go there... Dig on the name. Take it... make it yours..."

His eyes locked on mine.

"Remember what it means to create."

Then his body seized. The gears in his chest locked. His eyes lost their color. He slumped forward, smoke curling from his mouth like a final prayer.

I didn't understand why he chose me. Maybe he was mad. Maybe he was desperate. Maybe he saw something in me that even I didn't. But I couldn't ignore a dying man's wish.

That night, I found the place. A graveyard swallowed by fog and the rusted bones of abandoned factories. Names on headstones blurred by rain and neglect. No mourners. No lights. Just the creak of old fences and the hiss of steam bleeding from broken pipes.

I found the grave, just like he said.

"Maria DeMarco."

The only gravestone that was clean, with a bouquet of metal flowers laid out for her.

I began to dig. The soil was wet and heavy, clinging to the shovel. My cigarette burned down to the filter between my teeth. Finally, I heard a thud — a coffin, denting inward with age. I pried it open.

Inside, there was no body.

Just notebooks, sealed in oilcloth, and a black iron case with two latches shaped like snarling wolves.

I cracked the latches.

Inside... blueprints. Sketches. Things from a genius's imagination.

And nestled among them, a piece of history: something that seemed like a biomechanical core.

It smelled of the tar in my cigarettes.

I picked it up and felt a throb. Dropped it from horror. Something alive after all these years. Waiting.

I packed everything up and ran to my warehouse immediately.

I got back and unpacked everything.

The new machines groaned to life around me — presses, welders, mills, all cobbled together with the parts I'd bought from Spanner's Coil.

I spread the blueprints across my desk. Reading. Obsessing.

All signed with the same signature in the top right:

DeMarco.

This man was truly a genius.

Ideas poured through me faster than I could write them down.

My fingers twitching, scrawling designs into my own notebook. A thousand inventions, impossible and beautiful. They all had something in common: the core.

I started laughing. Screaming. Remembering all my previous failures. The broken machines. The faces of the people watching my creations destroy their works. The fear.

I dropped my pen.

Stared at my shaking hands.

"Not again," I whispered.

Not another mistake.

Not another failure.

I can't handle another one this time.

But what if.

What if I made it right this time?

What if I became what others couldn't?

I wiped the sweat from my brow and took the core out. Beating faster than when I found it.

And then I coughed, breathing through my tar-stained lungs. And then I thought of it:

A pair of lungs that would allow me to keep the tar in me more efficiently.

I began sketching.

I called it:

"The Smoker's Core."

It wasn't just a replacement. It was going to be the foundation for my future.

A new system.

A new life.

For once, the smoke wouldn't just be a crutch.

It would be the engine.

I built a surgical rig from DeMarco's designs.

Mechanical arms fitted with scalpels, suture lines, nanite injectors. No surgeon in Navaris would touch a machine like this. I didn't blame them. But this core wasn't meant for caution. It was a gamble with my soul.

I strapped myself into the frame, the leather biting into my shoulders.

Injected myself with an anesthetic.

Bit down on a belt.

And hit the ignition.

Pain like nothing I'd ever known tore through me.

Machines cut and burned and stitched. I watched my lungs rise out of my chest.

The new ones looked like an art piece.

Welded together with wire and tar.

Placed into my chest, hissing with each breath.

I felt them searing into me.

The smoke rising up my throat.

The machine cut and added grates, vents into the sides of my neck.

I gasped. Choked. And screamed.

As the last nerve and vessel fused, something deeper cracked open in my mind.

The world vanished.

There was only darkness.

And then I heard a hum.

A pulse.

A heartbeat made of smoke and fire.

A chain rising from the darkness, forged between flesh and machine.

A bond older than the city.

Somewhere deep in the marrow of my soul, something was calling.

A link is formed…

3 Links connected…

Pairing…

Connection found…

All 3 hosts have been paired.