OREGON, PRESENT
I check the rearview mirror again, searching for headlights against the dark road. Beside me, the damaged man called Peter—not a man, some kind of a machine—leans his long frame across the passenger seat of the black Charger, head tilted back as he struggles to get a hand into his jacket pocket. Incredibly tall and lean, he barely fits in the car, even with the seat pushed all the way back.
My fingers clench on the steering wheel, knuckles brightening as I wonder if he’s about to pull a weapon.
Instead, his fingers emerge clasping a pocket watch.
I exhale.
“A pocket watch?” I ask.
Peter frowns, ignoring me as he cradles the golden artifact in his hands, popping it open like a clamshell. He reads a dial hidden inside, protected by the metal casing. Glancing out the window, he frowns.
“Perfect,” I say to myself, turning back to the dark road. Stars are out over the conveyor belt of towering pines. “Just perfect.”
The clockwork man carries a clockwork watch.
Lit by the glow of dashboard lights, something familiar strikes me about the splayed metal leaves that protect the body of the pocket watch.
“That’s a trench watch,” I say. “World War One. Where’d you get it?”
Peter looks over at me, eyebrows raised, then back at the watch. Gently, he begins to wind the knob on top.
“Oh, right,” I mutter.
The tires thrum over Peter’s silence. Most ancient artifacts I examine don’t walk and talk. None of them have tried to kill each other with antique swords. The reality of this situation is failing to register, my mind continuously jumping away and trying to substitute normality for madness.
“Why didn’t Talus shoot you?” I ask. “Why swords?”
“I do not think he wants to kill me,” Peter says, with a trace of a Russian accent. “He wants to beat me. Always has.”
“And the swords?” I ask.
“We must keep driving,” he responds. “Things will move very quickly, now that the relic has resurfaced. I have a contact in Seattle who can repair me.”
“Another…one of you?”
“Avtomat, yes,” he says. “These days, most of us operate alone or in small groups. But some have acquired domains. His is one of the last.”
“And this person is your friend?”
“He was, once. Now, I do not know,” says Peter. “The rules are splintering. Few of us are left, and the last of the avtomat are hunting one another—cannibalizing one another to extend their own life spans. The artifact you hold is key to stopping this slaughter. I hope my friend will see that.”
“So, what? You’re planning to just take the relic from me and go?”
“No, the relic is yours. I have no desire to possess it again. We will go together, and you will remain under my protection.”
“Your protection?” I ask, voice wavering with disbelief.
“I will allow no harm to come to you.”
“Oh, kind of like a hostage? Nice.”
As he winds the watch, Peter’s fingers begin to shake. The lump of metal slithers out of his hands and thumps to the floorboard. From his slow, deliberate movements I can tell he is hurt much worse than he let on.
“What makes you think I need you to protect me?” I ask. “I could dump you right now and go.”
Head lolling on his neck, Peter faces me.
“And die. You have become visible to the avtomat. They will hunt you for the relic and for what you know about them. These creatures have survived for centuries. They are desperate. Too many have already reached the end of their power reservoirs and expired. They will kill you for the slightest hope of prolonging their own survival.”
“And you’re different?” I ask, leaning across the seat. Reaching down, I scoop the watch off the floorboard.
“Each of us serves his own…purpose,” he says. “Mine does not include killing the innocent. I believe you can help us, June.”
The pocket watch feels dense and warm in my hand. It seems to be vibrating, a buzz that travels up my arm and grows louder in my ears. The complex pattern of humming and clicking swells, somehow drowning out the road noise.
Blinking hard, I toss the watch onto Peter’s lap.
“What—what is that thing?” I ask.
“Avtomat technology,” he says, lifting the device. “It can determine the distance and direction to others. Sometimes.”
“Why does it look like a pocket watch?”
Peter shrugs. “A disguise, for the period in which it was built.”
“It’s a hundred-year-old pocket watch…” I say, trailing off.
Peter turns to me with the watch in his hand, the angles of his injured face smoldering in the dashboard lights. Under his mustache, I see a dimple forming in his cheek as he half smiles.
“So, June,” Peter says. “Now you begin to understand.”