hoebe was running for her life all over again. It felt like she hadn’t stopped since they entered Mehk. She was hollow, a mere shadow of herself, as disconnected as a puppet.

They raced through Fuselage, hurdling debris and whipping around corners to flee the sparking mehkans. Startling bangs blasted as the fiends leaped in pursuit. Micah seized a leaning stack of wreckage and toppled it behind them to block the way, but the predators scampered up walls, using their piston legs to punch holes and give them purchase.

CLANG. One of the sparking monstrosities landed in front of them. It was so close that they almost slid right into its whirring grinder mouth. Micah grabbed Phoebe and yanked her into another alley. Each time her feet hit the ground, she felt heavier and heavier. Her legs threatened to buckle, but she pushed harder and harder.

“There!” he cried.

At the end of the lane stood a building with shattered windows and a fractured roof. Emblazoned on its facade was the familiar sunburst logo. The gunshot crack of their pursuers drove them toward it. They sprinted past toppled security walls and into a vast courtyard where blackened shells of war machines were strewn about like toys. The kids slammed against a battered door, but their combined weight barely budged it. Something inside was blocking the way, leaving only a narrow opening. Phoebe went first, sucking in her breath as she squeezed inside. Halfway through, her skirt snagged.

“Hurry!” Micah shouted.

The blasts were getting close—no time to free herself. With all of the force she could muster, she threw herself forward. There was a loud tearing sound as her skirt ripped, and she fell face-first into a gloomy antechamber. She picked herself off the ground, and Micah wriggled in behind her. They shoved the door closed as rocking blows crashed against it. Hideous clattering mandibles scratched at the gap, spraying sparks and singeing the kids’ arms. Panting, Phoebe and Micah rammed another desk against the makeshift barricade.

Piston legs thumped on the outer walls as the hunters searched for a way in. The kids glanced frantically around, trying to orient themselves. They were in a decimated foyer that reeked of the Foundry’s opulence. Scorched rugs lay in tatters, jagged holes pocked the wood-paneled walls, and broken furniture blocked every passage. The only escape was a winding staircase, its fractured balustrade missing posts like a broken-toothed grin.

They raced up the cracked marble steps to a massive pair of ornate doors. The kids plunged through the entryway and into the ruins of a huge chamber. The wooden floor was splintered and peppered with broken glass, and the remains of a crystal chandelier dangled like a glittering severed head. The few fragments of wall that remained showed once-cheerful colors and details of geometric silver filigree. Slender doors that led to an elegant balcony were now just melted ribbons of iron sagging over amputated ledges.

No sooner had the kids gotten their bearings than flickering sparks appeared in the dark. The grinding sounded from all sides as monsters crawled through the open roof, perching on skeletal fingers of wreckage and scuttling through cracks in the ravaged walls.

There was nowhere left to run. Micah readied his club, trying to find a target. The weapon trembled in his hand—he barely had the strength to hold it.

Phoebe’s heart boomed as the creatures advanced.

Then, out of the darkness, a shrill whistle pealed.

A pinpoint of light appeared on the ground, and the monsters hesitated. They focused their attention on the glowing spot. The nearest pawed at it as another few got low on their haunches to watch. Then one of them pounced at the light. Twittering appendages folded in to seal off their grisly grinder mouths, and the paddles atop their heads perked up and swiveled. In an instant, the swarm of fearsome beasts turned into a litter of playful puppies.

Phoebe clung to the wall, trying desperately to remain on her feet, but Micah was still on guard, scanning the room for the source of this distraction.

Lingering in the darkness was a tall, well-dressed man with willowy limbs. He was projecting the light from a lantern mounted on his head.

She froze—was it a Watchman?

The man took a loping step out of the shadows. He appeared to be dressed for the opera in an exquisite Durall ensemble consisting of tailcoat, top hat, umbrella, and crisp white gloves on waggling fingers. But despite his attire, he was anything but human. His limbs were long, flexible hoses of tarnished metal, and instead of a lantern on his head, the lantern was his head. Sprouting out from his extendable neck was a complex periscope that projected light, fanned by an array of dewy lenses that slithered on vinelike stalks.

Even in her stupor, Phoebe recognized this unusual face. He was an Omnicam. Or rather, this mehkan’s people were hunted for their heads, which were used to make high-tech security cameras like the ones in the Foundry.

The elegant figure whipped his head to the side, and his spotlight zipped out of a hole in the wall. Several of the frisky mongrels bounded after it in pursuit. Another shrill whistle sounded as a squat form emerged from behind a pile of rubble, a rusty pipe clutched in his thick mitt. The sight of the stranger’s weapon made Micah grasp his own club tighter. But instead of threatening them, the stout figure hurled his pipe out a window, and the remaining mutts hopped after it with a joyful screech of gears.

The whistler was a fat little mehkan, shorter even than Micah, with knobby brown hide and a wild explosion of quills on his head, bunched into bushy muttonchops and eyebrows. He had a lumpy, potato-shaped face and beady eyes that moved independently, like a cast-iron chameleon. A disk with dozens of holes of various sizes sat where his nose should have been, and he wore a shaggy overcoat of overlapping metal fiber flaps, fronted by an outrageous green-striped necktie.

The tall mehkan’s spotlight bloomed to a warm glow. He focused his luminous eye on Phoebe and Micah, blinking rows of horizontal shutters like a signal lamp. The squat one bowed low, a gear-toothed grin of tarnished gold twisting his wide mouth wider.

Phoebe felt herself fading. Her lips were moving, but she couldn’t weave the words together in her muddled head.

“You all right?” Micah whispered nervously. “You don’t look so hot.”

She offered a vague nod.

“Jubilations and salutations,” growled the fat mehkan. They were surprised to hear his gravelly baritone speak their language. “The pleasure be thoroughly ours, little acquaintances. We mean you not a modicum of harm.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Micah demanded. “Who you callin’ little?”

“Oh, me most humblest apologies. How unforgivably boorish.” The fat mehkan licked his hand with a black tongue and flattened down his bushel of spiny hair. “Mr. Pynch, at yer gentle service. And this be me esteemed associate, the Marquis.” The debonair mehkan tipped his top hat and bowed.

“We coulda handled them monsters,” Micah said.

“The sparkies?” Mr. Pynch let out a grating rasp of a laugh. “Rambunctious mayhaps, but not monsters. Mere scavengers, rapacious for ore long expired. Purely pusillanimous they be, I most suredly assure you.”

Micah stared blankly, baffled by his jumble of big words.

The fat mehkan looked up sharply. His disc-shaped nose rotated, spinning like the cylinder of a revolver. It whirred and clicked into place, and he sniffed the air.

“Me nozzle tells me we got company,” Mr. Pynch growled to the Marquis. His bizarre nose spun again, this time lingering at a larger nostril hole. “Anomalous…Can’t identify it. Quick!” he barked at the kids. “On yer guard!”

Micah dropped into a defensive stance with his club.

Phoebe had no fight left in her.

They heard something plodding up the stairs.

Mr. Pynch held his breath and blew as hard as he could, ballooning up and popping out an arsenal of spines from under the flaps of his coat. The steps were getting closer. The Marquis snapped the shutters of his signal lamp head closed, while his lenses stood on end. He drew his umbrella like a rapier and took a few swipes like a fencer preparing for a duel.

Phoebe’s breath was coming in short, ragged gasps. Blood pounded in her ears, and her vision was blurry. The world went dark around the edges. She felt like she was watching herself at the end of a tunnel.

The doors crashed open. A horde rushed in.

Sparkies.

They all had wiggling objects clenched in their stubborn jaws. Behind them staggered a familiar figure.

“Dollop!” Micah cried.

“Th-there you are!” he warbled, stumbling in and trying to wrestle his limbs away from the sparkies.

“You know this mehkie?” Mr. Pynch asked, confused.

“S-s-sorry, I g-g-got a little t-turned around. Gimme that b-back!” He swatted at a critter that refused to let go of his detachable arm. “I mean, I w-was trying to t-t-talk to the langyls when—Phoebe!”

She had held on as long as she could. The unrelenting terror, the agonizing hunger and thirst—it was all too much. Her body failed. That last burst of frantic energy had drained her dry. A dizzying wave of nausea took her, and she swooned. It felt like she was falling forever, falling into nothing.

If she hit the ground, she didn’t feel a thing.