Outside the warehouse walls, the Rust Yard was screaming.

  We could hear the heavy iron boots of the City Guard kicking in doors down the street. We heard the shouted orders of the Truth Mages, demanding citizens present themselves for scanning. We heard the snap of lightning spells used to intimidate reluctant shopkeepers.

  Inside, the air was thick with the metallic tang of steel wire and the acrid smell of burning flux.

  "Faster!" I barked, pacing between the workbenches. "Wrap it tighter! If you leave a gap, the pressure will find it!"

  Rax's team of weavers and chainmail artisans were working with desperate speed. Their fingers, usually deft with delicate jewelry or flexible armor, were raw and bleeding from manipulating the stiff high-tensile steel wire. They were wrapping the thick rubber hydraulic hoses in a tight, shimmering metal braid, turning soft flesh into armored veins.

  As soon as a section was braided, Rax took it to the anvil. He placed thick copper collars over the ends of the hoses. CLANG! CLANG! With brutal swings of his hammer, he cold-forged the copper onto the steel braid, crimping the fittings so tightly that nothing short of a plasma cutter would remove them.

  "Last one!" Rax shouted, tossing a heavy, armored hose to me. It felt like holding a dead steel snake.

  We scrambled up the scaffolding surrounding the towering, headless torso of the Centurion. Amelia and I wrenched the fittings onto the main hydraulic manifold, our hands slick with sweat and residual oil.

  "It's sealed," I said, dropping the wrench. My heart was hammering against my ribs, echoing the thuds of the Guard getting closer outside.

  "Can we turn it on?" Amelia asked, already reaching for the engine ignition.

  "No!" I stopped her. "If we start it now, the air pockets in the lines will compress and explode. We have to bleed it."

  "Bleed it? We don't have time!"

  BOOM. A door down the alleyway was blasted off its hinges. They were next door.

  "We make time," I said grimly. I grabbed a hand-pump connected to the reservoir of foul-smelling Troll-fat sludge. "Open the bleed valves on the knee joints. Tell me when you see black."

  I started pumping frantically. It was grueling work, forcing the thick, gelatinous muck into the cold hoses. Amelia climbed down to the massive knee joints. "Nothing yet... still just air hissing..."

  CRASH. Something heavy slammed against our own warehouse doors. The metal groaned but held.

  "Open up!" a magically amplified voice boomed from outside. "By order of the Magisterium, this district is under quarantine!"

  I kept pumping, my shoulders burning. "Amelia!"

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  "Still air... wait!" A wet sputtering sound echoed through the silent warehouse. Then, a thick glob of viscous black slime shot out of the valve, splattering Amelia across the chest and face.

  "It's black!" she spluttered, wiping the foul grease from her eyes. "It's solid black!"

  "Close the valves!" I shouted, abandoning the hand pump and scrambling up the ladder to the pilot's platform strapped to the Centurion's chest cavity. "Get up here! Rax, get your men back!"

  The workers scattered, hiding behind crates of scrap metal. Amelia scrambled up beside me, smelling like a sewer accident.

  The warehouse doors began to glow cherry red in the center. The metal sagged, then melted. A concentrated blast of thermal magic blew the locking mechanism apart, sending molten iron spraying inward.

  Through the smoking breach stepped a squad of armored City Guards, their halberds lowered. Behind them strode a Truth Mage, dressed in pristine white and gold robes that seemed obscenely clean in the filthy surroundings.

  The Mage wrinkled his nose in immediate disgust at the overwhelming stench of the sludge and the industrial grime. "By the Architects," the Mage sneered, looking around the dimly lit space. "What a wretched hive. Search the area. Arrest anyone you find. Burn anything that looks like contraband."

  He looked up and saw us standing on the scaffolding surrounding the rusted hulk of the Walker. "You there!" the Mage shouted, pointing a manicured finger. "Get down from that scrap heap and submit to scanning. Now!"

  I looked down at him. I didn't feel fear anymore. I just felt the cold vibration of the machine waiting beneath my boots.

  "Amelia," I said quietly. "Ignite."

  Amelia didn't hesitate. She grabbed the distributor manifold and flared her mana.

  KA-CHOOGA-CHOOGA-CHOOGA— The V8 engine turned over heavily, the massive flywheel gathering momentum.

  Then it caught.

  ROOOOOAAAAAARRRRR!

  The sound was apocalyptic in the enclosed space. Eight cylinders firing unsilenced explosions created a physical wall of noise that hit the guards like a hammer. Flames and thick black smoke erupted from the straight-pipe exhausts, instantly filling the upper rafters.

  The Mage stumbled back, clapping his hands over his ears, his pristine robes billowing in the sudden heat wave. The guards flinched, lowering their weapons in confusion. They were used to the hum of magic, not the screaming violence of combustion.

  "What in the nine hells is that noise?" the Mage screamed over the din, trying to ready a spell.

  I gripped the twin hydraulic control levers. They vibrated violently in my hands. "This," I yelled, though I couldn't even hear myself, "is the future."

  I slammed both levers forward.

  The high-pressure pumps screamed in protest. The armored hoses tensed, the steel braid biting into the rubber as thousands of pounds of pressure forced the black blood into the ancient cylinders.

  GROOOOOAAAN-CRACK!

  A sound like a dying dragon echoed through the warehouse as fifty-year-old rusted joints were brutally forced to move. Layers of oxidized metal sheared off in showering flakes.

  The floor beneath the Centurion's massive feet cracked. Slowly, agonizingly, the fifty-ton torso began to rise.

  The Mage looked up, his eyes widening in impossible horror as the mountain of scrap metal he had dismissed suddenly loomed over him, blocking out the warehouse lights.

  "It's... it's moving without a core!" he stammered, his spell fizzling out in his hands.

  I kept the levers pinned. The engine roared under the strain, pouring black smoke into the air. The hydraulics whined, holding the impossible weight.

  The Centurion straightened its legs fully. Its headless shoulders slammed into the warehouse roof. Wooden rafters snapped like toothpicks. Corrugated iron sheets tore open with the shriek of tortured metal.

  Sunlight and swirling fog poured through the massive hole we had just punched in the ceiling, illuminating the swirling smoke and dust.

  We stood ten meters in the air, looking down through the smoke at the tiny, terrified figures below. The Centurion swayed slightly, its new heart beating violently against its rusted ribs.

  It was ugly. It was loud. It smelled awful. And it was standing.