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"Don't move."
Nora moved.
She slammed the silver heart against the floor before Inspector Samuel Grey could pull the trigger.
The heart bounced once.
The whole carriage screamed.
Metal ribs tore out of the walls. Dead lamps burst alive in a chain of blue-white flashes. A broken seat shot across the aisle and crashed into the door beside Samuel's head.
He ducked.
Nora ran.
"Stop right there!"
Sure. Great advice.
She made it three steps before brass claws dropped from the ceiling and hit the floor in front of her boots. Sparks exploded across iron. The patrol automaton's head twisted toward her, its lens burning red.
"LIVING KEY CONFIRMED."
Nora skidded to a stop.
Behind her, Samuel raised his pistol again. Two more agents pushed through the ruined doorway, coats dark with rain and soot. One carried a shock baton. The other had a chain launcher already aimed at her legs.
She looked left.
Wall.
Right.
Window. Three stories above the street.
Behind her, gun.
The silver heart thudded in her fist.
Once.
Twice.
Her own pulse answered it.
"Drop the device," Samuel said. His voice stayed flat, but his eyes didn't. They kept jumping between her face and the heart. "Now."
"You first."
The agent with the baton blinked. "What?"
"Your gun." Nora's fingers tightened around the heart. "You drop yours, I drop this. Everyone gets to be disappointed."
Samuel took one step into the carriage.
The automaton lowered its claws.
"You're under arrest for theft of a royal power cell, destruction of Crown property, and the murder of seven passengers."
Nora stared at him.
For one ugly second, the words wouldn't fit together. Then the smell of scorched leather came back. Bodies under overturned seats. A noble family crushed behind the dining compartment door.
Seven passengers.
Her stomach turned.
"I didn't kill anybody."
"Tell it to the tribunal."
"The tribunal that already sent you here with my name?"
One of the agents glanced at Samuel.
Small move. Fast. But Nora caught it.
Samuel caught it too.
His jaw tightened.
Someone had handed them the answer before they'd even found the question.
Nora backed toward the shattered window. Cold mist blew through the gap, carrying the sharp stink of river water and burning oil. Far below, people crowded the platform barriers. City workers. Dockhands. A few merchants in expensive coats who'd come to watch the royal train burn.
Too many eyes.
Good.
If they dragged her into a black wagon, she'd vanish. Nobody in the low districts came back from an Inspectorate holding room with all their teeth.
"Ask your machine."
Samuel's gaze shifted to the automaton. "What?"
"Your machine. It saw me. It saw the explosion. Ask it who took the cell."
The red lens clicked toward her.
"PRIMARY SUSPECT: NORA VENN."
A laugh broke out somewhere outside the carriage.
Nora's face went hot.
"That wasn't my question." She looked past the machine at the crowd. One of the platform lamps had been knocked loose, but enough light still spilled across the wreckage. People filmed with pocket mirrors and cheap spell-cameras. Good. Let them watch the Inspectorate put on its little show. "Ask it what I stole. Ask it where I hid the cell. Ask it how I got through a locked royal carriage with a broken shoulder and three patrol units chasing me."
"Quiet," Samuel said.
"No."
The word came out rough. Her throat hurt. Her hand hurt worse. The heart had heated against her palm, and thin lines of light crawled over its metal casing.
Samuel noticed.
His eyes narrowed.
Nora shifted the heart behind her hip.
Too late.
"Nora Venn." His voice dropped. "Put the device on the floor."
"You know what it is."
"I know what it isn't."
"That's not the same thing."
His mouth pressed into a hard line.
There. A crack.
He knew more than he was saying.
The agent with the chain launcher took another step. "Inspector, we should bind her before the core destabilizes."
"It's not the core," Samuel snapped.
The carriage went quiet.
Even the automaton paused.
Nora stared at him. "First you say it's not a power cell. Now it's not the core either. What is it, then?"
Samuel's pistol stayed aimed at her, but the barrel dipped half an inch.
"Something you can't control."
"That's funny. I've been controlling it all night."
The heart pulsed.
A blue glow ran up Nora's wrist and vanished beneath her sleeve.
Samuel saw that too.
His face changed. Not fear. Recognition.
Nora hated that more.
"Search her," the baton agent said. "The royal cell is missing. She has the mechanical heart. It's enough."
"It isn't," Samuel said.
"Sir?"
Samuel looked toward the front of the train. The royal power cell had been mounted in a sealed brass housing beneath the engine controls. Nora had seen it once, when the carriage lights flickered during the explosion.
The housing was empty now.
Not ripped open. Not melted. Empty.
The bolts had been removed cleanly.
She pointed at the agent's belt. "That's your evidence, right?"
The agent frowned. "What?"
"The cell casing. You brought it with you."
A brass cylinder hung from his belt, stamped with the royal crest. Darkened by soot and split along one side.
"Recovered from the scene," he said.
"No, it wasn't."
"You were unconscious when we arrived."
"I was hiding under a dead passenger when you arrived. I wasn't unconscious."
The agent's hand moved toward the cylinder.
Nora saw it and smiled without meaning to.
There it was.
The lie had a twitch.
"Give me that."
The agent pulled it free. "Back away."
"You're holding the wrong part."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I repair spark boilers for a living. I know exactly what I'm talking about."
Nora stepped away from the window and toward him.
Samuel lifted his pistol. "Stop."
She stopped, but kept her eyes on the cylinder.
"The Crown housing has a pressure lock. Three teeth inside the collar. Keep the power cell from shaking loose when the train turns. Look at the casing."
The agent held it up. "It's damaged."
"The outside is damaged. The lock isn't."
"You expect us to believe you over a royal inspector?"
"I expect you to look."
The crowd outside had gone quiet. More faces pressed toward the broken carriage. Someone shouted, "Let her talk!"
Another voice yelled, "Show us the cell!"
The baton agent's cheeks darkened.
Samuel glanced toward the platform. His people were losing the crowd, and he knew it.
"Open it," Nora said.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because it's evidence."
"Then you won't mind proving it."
"Venn."
"What? You're arresting me for stealing a power cell. You've got the casing. Open it and show everyone where the cell is."
The agent looked at Samuel.
Samuel didn't answer.
That was answer enough.
Nora took another step.
The automaton's claws clicked together.
"Stay back," Samuel warned.
"Tell him to open the casing."
"Nora."
"Or admit you don't have the cell."
A sharp murmur ran through the crowd.
The agent cursed and twisted the brass cap. It stuck. He braced the cylinder against his thigh and forced it open.
The cap came off.
Inside, no power cell.
Only a thin layer of black ash and a tiny gear packed at the bottom.
The crowd exploded.
"That's not a cell!"
"They planted it!"
"Inspectorate dogs!"
The baton agent went pale. "It was intact when I found it."
Nora pointed at the gear. "No, it wasn't. That's a timing gear from the carriage lock. You put the casing together after the explosion. Badly."
She reached for it.
Samuel caught her wrist.
His glove closed around her skin.
The heart in her other hand slammed against her pulse.
A bright line of blue light flashed beneath her sleeve.
Samuel's fingers jerked, but he didn't let go.
Nora looked down at his hand, then up at him.
"Take your hand off me."
"You're bleeding."
"I said—"
"Your wrist."
The glow slipped under the torn edge of her sleeve. Nora yanked her arm back, but Samuel's grip tightened. Not enough to hurt. Enough to stop her.
The crowd was still shouting. The agents were arguing. The automaton kept repeating the same broken phrase about a living key.
Nobody was watching her wrist.
Except Samuel.
He leaned closer. "Where did you get that mark?"
Nora's stomach dropped.
She had no idea what he meant.
Then the heart pulsed again.
The light spread across her wrist in thin geometric lines, forming a circle broken by three sharp teeth. The pattern glowed through her skin like a machine turning on under the bone.
Samuel went completely still.
"That's impossible," he whispered.
Nora stared at the mark. "You keep saying that. It's getting annoying."
His eyes locked on the pattern.
The brass casing on the floor began to hum.
Not the ruined one. The missing power cell's housing.
The cylinder jerked from the agent's hand and flew across the carriage. It struck Nora's glowing wrist.
The heart answered.
A beam of blue light punched through the broken roof and shot into the fog above Veyra.
Every dead lamp on the platform came alive.
Then every lamp in the district.
The crowd fell silent.
Samuel released Nora's wrist.
He looked at the mark like it had just told him his own name.
"You're not carrying the royal power cell," he said.
Nora's fingers went numb around the mechanical heart.
"No kidding."
Samuel raised his pistol again, but this time he wasn't aiming at her chest.
He aimed at the agents behind him.
"You're the cell."
Before Nora could ask what the hell that meant, a voice crackled from the Inspectorate receiver on his belt.
A woman's voice. Calm. Polished. Close enough to make the agents straighten.
"Inspector Grey," Evelyn Crowe said through the static, "bring me the girl alive."
The carriage doors slammed shut.
Every patrol automaton turned away from Nora.
And pointed its claws at Samuel.