“Filthy goddamn wolves,” the man roared, letting off another shot at Willow.

The ground around her almost seemed to explode as the shot thundered into the ground by her paws. Willow leapt backwards, and howled.

“I’m not scared of no wolf!” the man shouted, now running towards her. “Get off me land!” He fired again, the air around Willow exploding with another BANG and flash of light.

Willow snarled at him, her snout rolling back to reveal her teeth. She didn’t want to hurt him. Not a man – a human.

Then when the man was just feet from her, she looked upon his face, and now it was his turn to look shocked.

“So they were right,” he gasped, raising his gun again. “They tried to tell us that those stories about the giant wolf appearing in London were just lies. They tried to kid us about the videos on the Net being fakes – but I knew there was something to it. Too many people saw...” before he had finished, he fired again.

Willow scrambled around, her long, white tail knocking the shotgun from the farmer’s hands. He cried out in shock, not through pain, as Willow bounded away across the field. As she went, the night lit up again and again as the farmer fired at her retreating figure. With plumes of white breath coiling from between her jaws and her heart racing, she reached the edge of the valley and the wooded area. Looking back, she could see the outline of the farmer against the moonlight. Turning, she made her way back into the woods, and then stopped.

There was another. He stepped from between the trees. Willow scuttled backwards on her giant paws and snarled at him. This human seemed unafraid of her as he stood before her. There was a smell about him too – a smell that she couldn’t help but recognise.

Then, looking into her eyes, the man took another step closer and said, “If you want to carry on living, Noxas, you had better come with me.”

Chapter Four

William–the-wolf-Weaver lowered the man they had found out in the desert against the wall of the rocky overhang, where they had decided to take shelter. Neanna crawled into the furthest corner and pulled her tattered cloak about herself. As she lay curled on her side, all that was visible were her bright blue eyes shining out of the gloom. The floor of the overhang was littered with the dusty skeletons of creatures that either had been eaten, or had fallen down dead and rotted away. Just enough daylight seeped in through the gap of the rocks to show them that nothing living, other than them, lurked in the shadows.

Feeling quite safe, Captain Bom’s armour clinked and clacked as he sat crossed-legged against the far wall and continued to suck thoughtfully on his empty pipe. He stared at the odd-looking man, which Zach and William were now studying.

“I don’t think he is a man at all,” Zach said, leaning in close and studying the odd-looking skin which covered the man’s face. He gingerly touched the skin with his fingertips and it felt cold and leathery.

“I think the ‘on-off’ switch sticking out of his neck gave that away,” William woofed, as he too crouched down so he could take a better look.

“It’s not just the switch,” Zach breathed, carefully pulling back the man’s face from beneath his chin. “Take a look at this!”

“Whoa,” William gasped, and stroked the long straggly hair which dangled from beneath his chin. With his bulbous glasses just inches from the man’s face, he added, “What’s with all the cogs and pistons?”

Zach looked at the intricate mass of tiny cogs, pistons, and levers which were attached to the man’s skull. “I think he is like some kind of mechanical man – like a robot or something.”

“What’s a robot?” William asked, glancing at Zach through his telescopic glasses.

“It’s a machine that does things,” Zach tried to explain, but couldn’t find the right words.

“Like that train you took us on back in your world?” William asked him.

“Kinda, I guess,” Zach said. “Robots are more like humans. But I’ve never seen one before. They don’t really exist in my world.”

“Like werewolves and vampires don’t really exist in your world, yet really they do,” William reminded him.

“It’s different,” Zach breathed, lowering the skin back over the man’s face. “We have robots, but they are really basic. They can’t think for themselves. They do simple things. They don’t have skin, hair, eyes, and hands, nor do they sit up on their own.”

“But they have on and off switches, right?” William woofed, reaching behind the man’s head again.

“No, don’t do that...” Bom suddenly shouted.

But his warning came too late and William flipped the switch with one of his claws. The man lurched forward again, and out of the wind, Zach and William could hear the sound of the tiny pistons and cogs whizzing and whirring beneath his fake-looking skin. The man blinked as if coming out of a dream, and fixed Zach and William with his dead, black eyes.

“Who are you?” he asked again, as if the time it had taken William to carry him from the desert to beneath the rocky overhang had never existed. It was like this man was still caught halfway through the conversation he had been having with them some time ago.

“Who are you?” Zach asked right back and stood up, creating some space between him and the mechanical man.

“I’m Doctor Faraday, model one” he said, and his voice still sounded flat and synthesised. Faraday’s voice seemed to lack any kind of feeling or emotion. It was monotone.

“What do you mean ‘model?’” Zach asked him, his fingertips never too far from his crossbows. “Are there more of you?”

“That is correct,” Faraday said back, his blank eyes staring straight ahead.

“Oh, great,” Bom grumbled from the far side of the overhang.

Ignoring him, William asked, “Are you a man or a machine?”

“I’m mechanical,” Faraday said flatly.

“Is there a difference?” William asked, glancing back at Zach.

Zach shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t think so.”

“What are you?” Neanna suddenly spoke up from beneath her cloak.

”I am the result of what happens when advanced technology falls into the hands of those who really don’t know how to use it,” Faraday said, jumping up with a speed not expected from a man constructed of cogs, pistons, and levers.

Faraday looked at Zachary, who now stood with his crossbows drawn and clenched in each fist. He turned his black eyes on William, who now had his loaded catapult drawn.

“What technology? Whose hands?” Zachary pushed, his crossbows aimed at Faraday’s head.

“Human technology in the Mechanical Man’s hands,” he replied, seemingly unmoved that he had weapons aimed at him.

“But you’re the mechanical man, right?” William asked, as some of the branches in the fire gave off snapping sounds, sending a flurry of sparks upwards.

“That’s what I have been trying to tell you – there are more like me,” Faraday said, his pale, leathery skin and dead, black eyes reflecting the firelight. “I didn’t make myself or the others – we were made by a human. It was he who was called the Mechanical Man.”

“So where is this man now?” Zachary asked.

“Dead,” Faraday said, his synthesised voice showing no emotion. He then began to brush the sand and dirt from the sleeves of his flight suit. As he worked, the sound of whizzing and whirring could be heard.

“So you’re definitely not human?” Zach asked him, unable to believe that this man – machine – could look so lifelike, move with such speed and precision.

“I might have been once,” Faraday said, and again he showed no emotion in his voice. He sounded like he didn’t care, or that it didn’t matter. It was as if he had no feelings.

“But you’re different from us,” Bom cut in.

“And you’re different from me – but not that different,” Faraday said back, now kicking the dust from his boots, and brushing it from the grooves and folds of the flight suit he was wearing.

“Well, at least we have faces,” William barked.

The man touched the cloth that covered his face and said, “My face doesn’t always look like this. In fact, when properly maintained, it’s just like yours. It was what happened in Clockwork City that did this to me.”

“So it does exist then?” Neanna asked from the shadows. I watched her pale blue eyes flicker from Faraday to me.

The stranger took his hand away from his face. “Yes,” he said flatly. “But before I explain what happened there, please lower your weapons. You couldn’t kill me, even if you tried.”

Chapter Five

The Delf shuffled up the spiral staircase to the top of the Splinter. The stone steps seemed unending, and several times she stopped, lent against the wall, and mopped the sweat away which streamed from her wrinkled brow and down the sides of her face. As she gasped for air, maggots oozed from her nostrils and crawled from the corners of her puckered mouth. The Delf knocked them away, and they dropped onto the steps where they wriggled away into the shadows.

With her bag of potions and charts, she continued upwards, her breath laboured until she reached the top of the Splinter. At the top, she pushed open the door and shuffled into the Queen’s chamber. Much of the room was cast in shadow. Candles, which were attached to black iron spikes, barely lit the room, and the Delf peered around, in search of her brother. Unable to see him, the witch stepped further into the room and stood at the foot of the Queen’s bed. The Delf looked down upon the fragile figure. The Queen looked young, no more than a teenager, and the Delf despised her youth and beauty. She was like the girl, Anna Black, but like her, she would soon be dead. The Queen’s skin was so very pale, almost translucent. Her long hair was fine like cotton, and the Delf had expected the Queen to have looked emaciated and drawn – near death – not as if she were simply asleep.