When the Gem awakens to call a Hero, the world is ill prepared...and its fate is placed in the hands of a 17 year old boy, named Wendell.
Some will say this is nothing but a tale of fiction.
Let them think as they may.
After all...I can't fix stupid.
Previously: Höbin sneaks into the Fishis Archive Foundation hidden inside a crate. Wendell delivers a revolutionary speech to thousands of gnomes, gets shot, and escapes through the sewers with Otger. He knows exactly where he’s headed…the one place in Clockworks City no one would think to look.
Chapter 86
Out of sight. Out of mind.
…if you’re lucky.
“Come ON!” Höbin grunted.
Numbers ticked across the screen, but he couldn’t remember the last time it had taken so long to pick the lock on the Guild files. It made him even more curious about what the FAF was hiding from its own staff—the professionals charged with collecting, organizing, and presenting facts, figures, and lore to the rest of the gnome race.
BEEEEP!
“Finally,” he hissed, yanking the cables free.
Behind him, a wall monitor murmured updates about Wendell’s latest escapade. The media kept spinning it until it sounded like Wendell had hired an assassin to kill a Centurion. It sickened the fishis—bold lies, open corruption. You just couldn’t trust a word over the airwaves anymore.
With the city boiling tonight, gnomes would be drifting back into the building to get the drop on other divisions of the government faction.
That included the news media.
“Time’s tickin’, old man,” Höbin muttered. There wasn’t time to do the research properly.
That meant a download.
He pulled a drawer open and stared down at rows of hard drives—organized, labeled, and backed up for years. Which one did he need?
With a flick of a lever, he slid a cable from his forearm—his own custom creation, kept secret through his final years at the Foundation. The administration would’ve never approved the hacked database software he’d obtained.
It was a crime.
He smirked. “Not like they can exile me.”
He picked two drives, plugged in the cables protruding from his arm, and initiated his crack program. Custom code he’d built years ago—part secret agent, part plague. Once deployed, the virus would worm through every corner of the enclosed network, leaving subtle back doors for his remote systems to find later. If he didn’t get what he needed tonight, he’d still be able to tap the database again.
Small blue lights blinked inside the drawer.
Connection confirmed.
He was in.
“That’s my girl,” he said, patting his forearm like it had feelings. Now he just had to wait while the program did her job…
…and pray no one found him before—
His head snapped up, eye wide.
“Stupid, stupid, STUPID!” he hissed. “You prep and work out the minutest detail to get in here, Höbin Luckyfeller—” He let his forehead drop, thunking against the drawer’s edge— “but never once thought about how you’d get your crusty old butt out!”
His long, exasperated groan echoed through the darkened office.
There’s no way I could have found my way back here on my own, I admitted. But that was the whole point of bringing Otger.
He knew these tunnels the way I knew the layout of my own bedroom back home — every turn automatic, every branch in the passage recognized without a second glance. For hours we walked with few stops, navigating mazes of cement tubes and metal hatchways, pushing through sludge and worse, until the tunnels widened and the smell shifted from sewer to something older. Drier.
We were close.
And then there they were — looming out of the dark like something from a fever dream, jutting from mountains of dry, stale garbage — the huge metal doors of the Clockworks furnaces. The heavy steel design made the surface look like a giant smile pressed into the chamber wall.
A creepy smile.
A familiar one.
I exhaled slowly. This was the place. The one spot in all of Clockworks City where the government wasn’t looking, because as far as they were concerned, nothing worth finding lived down here. Just garbage and the people they’d decided were the same thing.
Which made it perfect.
“Can you get them open?”
Otger crinkled his nose. “Uhhh…maybe?”
“Is that a statement, or a question?”
Another pause. “Yes?”
I laughed. “Either you can…or we just had a lovely walk for nothing, because I certainly can’t get us in.”
Otger bit his bottom lip. “Don’t you have super strength, or something like that?”
“What?” I barked a laugh.
“Well, you’re the Gnolaum, aren’t you?” He eyed me sheepishly.
“What does that have to do with anything? This isn’t a comic book.”
“Comic book?”
I sighed. “Never mind. No, I don’t have super strength or anything else super. Except maybe my appetite. I’m starving.”
Otger sighed. “Me too.” With a grunt and the crunch of compressing garbage, he climbed the dried pile of junk next to the doors. Cans and glass, cardboard and wire-frames of who-knows-what flew over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
“Digging!”
I shook my head and chuckled. “I can see that, Otger. Why are you digging?”
A second later he lifted a cable. “To find this.” Tugging and yanking, he loosened a portion of the black snake from its den. “Help me find the controls. It should…be on the end of this. I’ll see if the doors can be hot-wired.”
“Now that’s an idea.”
The cable was nearly as thick as my wrist. With a few more yanks, we uncovered a long black box with two dozen buttons across its surface. We both reeled back as a sour smell rolled out with it. Caked in crusted bumps and something blue and furry, the box was wet and hot from being buried under the mound of garbage.
I coughed. “Is that mold, or what?”
Otger nodded. “Looks like it’s been under that pile for a while. The vehicles use a remote, so they wouldn’t need this box.” He leaned closer, sniffed the fuzz, scratched a piece off with a nail…
…and put it in his mouth.
“Don’t—” I gasped, but it was too late. I’d forgotten who I was with.
“Yup,” Otger said, chewing calmly, “fruit mold.” He broke off a chunk and popped the whole thing into his mouth. After a second, he glanced up. “Sorry, that was rude. Do you want some?”
I waved him off. “I’m good. Enjoy.”
The control box was as long as Otger’s chest. The buttons were all intact, each glowing a soft orange.
“Drat.”
“What’s the matter?”
Otger lifted the opposite end of the box and pointed to a small hole with a rubber plug. “Admin key. We need one to make the buttons active.”
“So…”
“We can’t open the doors.”
I kicked a can into the air. “Seriously? All this way and we can’t—”
Otger cocked his head. “Unless…”
“Unless?” I dropped beside him. “Unless what? We like unless.”
“Well…” He flipped the box over and scraped the mold off to reveal a set of numbers engraved into the metal. “This is a 34C-TTT-890b24 model.”
I nodded like I understood. “Right. A 34C… yeah. Of course.”
“Which means it doesn’t have a secondary bolt mechanism.”
My smile sat there, useless. “You know I have no clue what you’re talking about, right?”
Otger laughed. “This is a 34C-TTT-890b24 model.”
“You said that already.”
“That means it’s not a 34C-TT-890c24 model.”
My smile died.
Otger grinned wide, patting the box. “Difference is, if there’s a power outage or a short in the system, the locking mechanism is designed to open the doors—to let the workers out.”
“Oh!” I blurted. “Good news. Right?”
He nodded. “Definitely. All we have to do is short out the main motor.” He pointed to a human-sized box jutting from the wall. “Once that motor stops working, it should send a signal to the main panel and trigger the doors to open.”
“Way to go, Einstein!” I cheered, ruffling his hair.
Otger froze. He looked up, slightly hurt. “But…I’m Otger.”
I beamed. “That’s a compliment, buddy. Back home, it’s what you say when someone figures out something amazing. It means you’re really smart.”
He thought about it, then looked up at me and beamed back.
“So,” I said, “how do we short the motor out?”
“Well, we have to find a way to get the cover off.”
“Okay.”
“Then we need to pull this box apart and get to the raw cables.” He flipped the device over and found a set of clamps. “These get damaged easily, so they’re made to be replaced easily. This won’t be a problem.”
“Fantastic. Then what?”
“Uh.”
“What.”
He scratched behind his neck. “Well…” His eyes drifted to the motor. “Then we need to put the cables into the motor.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
Otger gulped. “Could be. Never…actually done this before.” He forced a smile. “But it should work.”
I stared at the control box. “That has electricity running through it?”
“Yeah.”
“A lot?”
He shrugged. “Enough to control giant doors, so…yeah. Probably.”
“And we have to take the live wires and—”
Otger tensed. “Yeah. ‘Fraid so.”
I took a deep breath and let it out in one go. “Oy.”
“Yeah.”
“So we can do this… but we’re likely to get fried.”
“Well, not exactly.”
I frowned down at him. “Would you please be exact, Otger?”
He went sheepish. “There shouldn’t be much of a problem, so long as the cable is applied directly to the circuit board above the motor.”
“That doesn’t sound that bad. You know where it is, then? The place to fry?”
Otger nodded. “But I can’t reach it.”
My stomach sank. Of course. “I have to do it.”
“Sorry.” Then, softer: “We can start walking back now, if you want?”
I stared up at the furnace doors and couldn’t stop seeing Simon behind them. All these people. Good people. Trapped down here with no way out.
Someone needed to do something for them.
Someone needed to make the effort to change what was wrong around here.
That was exactly why we came.
I stood. “Show me what I have to do.”
The control box cover came off easy enough. The motor cover did not.
It took over an hour to find a scrap of metal strong enough to use as a screwdriver. One by one, we fought the rusted bolts. After another two hours—drenched in sweat and sporting more than a few cuts—the engine was finally exposed.
Gears spun rapidly in their cage, purring like a metal cat. A smaller box welded to the top held the wires and circuits.
I gripped the cable tight and swallowed. Why do I always end up doing the crazy stuff around here?
But I knew the answer.
I glanced down at my own chest. You have my back if anything goes wrong, right?
I shook my head. Stupid question.
Sparks popped from the end of the cable. Suddenly, this plan didn’t feel nearly as brilliant.
“So I jam the end of this,” I lifted the cable slightly, “into the wires on top?”
Otger bolted for the nearest pile of garbage, one hand raised, thumb up.
Lovely vote of confidence, buddy.
I squinted, drew a deep breath, and raised the cable over my head. Might as well make this quick.
Lowering it toward the wires, I thought, Here goes noth—
A fountain of sparks arched high overhead.
I was out cold before my body hit the far wall.
“Because I want to get a jump start on these other idiots, that’s why,” the gnome snapped. “There has to be some lead out there on the Gnolaum!” He looked at the fat gnome with disgust. “Besides—look at you, Mr. Hypocrite. Why are you here, Jake?”
“Because I’ve already had too many sick days, Lewis. If I don’t get these shipments out tonight, other people can’t do their jobs. People depend on me.”
“Whatever, snot wipe.”
Both gnomes skidded to a halt.
“Why are all the lights on?” Jake frowned. But that wasn’t the only odd thing. The monitors were programmed to mute during the night hours—and yet several of the wall-mounted screens were spewing news feeds loud and clear. Some of the neat desk formations were off, too.
Two desks in particular were askew, rotated at odd angles. Between them sat a small pile of boxes…all stacked on one large metal crate.
“How the TGII am I supposed to know why the lights are on?” Lewis scoffed. “I’m not normally here, like the rest of you morons from the mail room.” He knocked a set of papers off a desk as he passed and laughed. Strutting away, he called over his shoulder, “Nighty-night, loser.”
Jake stood there, fuming—and stung. “Why do they always have to be such jerks?” he muttered. He never understood the ingratitude of some employees. Nothing would get done around the FAF without the loyal, efficient workers in the mail room. They were the lifeblood of the organization outside the fishis themselves.
Kneeling, he collected the research papers and aligned them. “We collect and verify, copy and deliver everything of importance in here,” he reminded himself. It was exciting—being trusted to transport new discoveries, important theories, and making sure the greatest minds of Clockworks could exchange physical data freely. So what if only a handful of the six thousand employees knew his name? It was a start. The government wouldn’t let him go to University. He wasn’t smart enough, they said. But he knew numbers. He understood the delivery grid.
“I might not be smart enough to be a fishis,” he said under his breath, “but I can become the best router in the mail room.” He gritted his teeth. “Someday I’ll become the Route Director. You’ll see.” Then, softer: “I’m not a loser.”
Jake stood, wiping his nose across his sleeve. With great care not to wrinkle the documents, he set the papers back on the desk. June Campbell’s desk. Mechanical statistics and manufacturing history. He knew every desk’s name—even if he’d never met a face. June was important, sending and receiving a great deal of mail to field workers and correspondents. Jake shifted the papers with his fingertips, making sure they were offset from the corner by two inches and aligned with the outbox tray.
“Now why are you sitting here like an eyesore?” he asked the huge crate. The stamps on the side said it was outgoing, but it hadn’t been delivered to the sorting room. Odd—something that important just squatting between desks. He circled the package, searching for a note or directions. When he lifted the smaller packages on top, he found a handwritten sheet.
Detailed directions. In red ink.
“Red ink,” he cooed reverently.
His eyes scanned each line with professional precision.
Jake’s face exploded in glee.
“LEWWWWWIS!”
“What!?” the young fishis barked from down the hall.
Huffing, Jake rounded the corner, pushing the giant crate into the office and waving the paper. “I…have…something for…you.”
“Then put it on my desk and go away.”
“No, I mean—” Jake shook his head. “Something for you to deliver.” He nodded toward the crate.
Lewis looked up from his desk, irritated. “Has the sugar from your obscenely huge doughnut consumption gone to your brain instead of your belly, tard-boy?”
Jake’s face hardened. “Don’t call me that.”
Lewis flared. “What do you WANT?”
Jake stepped in and dropped the paper on the keyboard. “Read it,” he said coldly.
Snarling like a bear woken from hibernation, Lewis snatched it up and scanned. The lines in his face smoothed out immediately. “Is this for real? A set of listening and photo devices? An actual tip and sighting of the Gnolaum?”
Jake nodded.
“Sweet!” Lewis sprang to his feet. “I’ll take it off your hands, dweeb, and—”
A palm shot up, stopping him short and knocking him back into his chair.
“NOT so fast.” Jake’s expression shifted from wounded to sharp. “I’m thinking you shouldn’t go after all.” He let a small, satisfied smile curl up. “You’ve been mean to me.” He corrected himself, voice tightening. “No—that’s not right. You’re always mean to me, Lewis. I’ve done nothing but help you, serve you, even make you a priority around here—hoping you’d put in a good word for me eventually. I never asked for favors. Just a kind recommendation like others write for the lower positions. But you’re nothing but a bully.”
Lewis started laughing.
“You think this is funny?” Jake slammed his fist on the table. Lewis laughed harder. “You blamed me for things I’m still paying for! You wrote my name on disgusting notes and planted them in places I can’t go—and now I’m not allowed to deliver to the executives! Just because you have power around here—” The anger drained from his face into something colder. “You lied about me, Lewis. I’ve never told a lie or done anything dishonest since the day I was hired, but you changed all that.”
Lewis shrugged. “Yeah? So?”
Jake’s mouth softened into a coy smile. “You’re not the one with power. I’m responsible for the mail. I’m responsible for the deliveries—and I’ve never let the FAF down.”
“Whoop-dee-DO,” Lewis scoffed. “You’re going to do what? Deny me stamps?”
Jake shook his head. “I’ll hand this crate over to McCoy instead.”
Lewis choked, nearly tipping out of his chair. “What!?”
Folding his arms, Jake nodded once. “At least he talks politely…and brings me doughnuts.”
Lewis popped up fast, smile glued on awkwardly, gripping the paper tight. “Now look, buddy—there’s no need to act hasty. I’ve been a little harsh, I realize that now, but I was just conditioning you.”
“Conditioni—”
“—to make sure you were ready to go into the field as a fishis.”
Jake’s eyes went wide. His arms slowly unfolded. “A fishis? Me?”
Lewis pounced on the opening. “Of course! Dude, are you kidding me? With your attention to detail and spotless paperwork?” He waved a hand. “I know I made everyone believe the copier fire was your fault, but hey—that was a test. To see how you’d handle scrutiny. Cross-examinations.”
“They docked me eighteen hundred credits.”
“The pressure of the field can get pretty intense,” Lewis said quickly. “Not everyone’s cut out for this kind of work.”
Jake searched his face—too bright, too eager. He blinked hard. “But…you think I am?”
“Absolutely!” Lewis slid around his desk and shuffled toward the giant crate. “And as soon as I get back from this assignment—” he nodded, “with your permission, of course—I’m going to write my personal recommendation for you! I mean, why wait any longer? Right?” He laid a hand on the metal package like it was holy.
Jake had to lean against the desk. His life’s ambitions…his fondest dreams. Was this really happening? His mother was going to be so proud.
“You start filling out your application,” Lewis said, trying to remember, “Mr. Blake…”
“Blick.”
“Blick! Of course—Mr. Blick, I’m sorry, I’m just so excited for you…”
Jake glanced up at the wall clock. “You’d better hurry. You’ll need time to get to the site and set up before the Gnolaum appears.”
Lewis’s voice went eager. “You’re letting me take it, then?”
Jake nodded. He took the papers and signed his name beside the official stamp at the bottom. Then he pulled his route-key from his pocket—a small device that time-stamped paperwork—and pressed the end over his signature.
“You can take van #202,” Jake said. “Just need your thumbprint.”
Lewis shoved his left thumb into the route-key.
Jake smiled. “Done. It’s all yours.”
Morty sighed. “Now that is a great cup of tea.”
It felt good to have the front door back on the warehouse. Even torched and half-ruined, it was still his home—and with that door missing, he’d felt overexposed. Like it was an invitation for idiots to wander in and “inspect” his life.
He took another sip—
BANG! BANG! BANG!
—and spilled it all over his beard.
“What the…” he growled, shoving his chair back.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
“Alright,” he called. “ALRIGHT!”
With a grunt and a tug, Morty yanked the newly welded door open.
“Here,” Höbin snapped, shoving a bag into the tinkerer’s arms. “Hold this!”
“Höbin—you made it back!” Morty beamed. “I just made some Arlong Tea, would you—”
“Hold that thought!” Höbin barked—and sprinted off into the darkness.
“Where are you going?”
“Be right back!” he shouted, the tap-tap-tap of his metal leg echoing down the street.
Morty blinked after him. “Morty Teedlebaum,” he muttered, “you have undoubtedly the strangest associations in Clockworks City.”
He shook his head and chuckled. It had been a good day—highly productive, breakthroughs at every turn. There wasn’t a thing in this city that could—
The night air exploded into flame.
From around the corner, a small mushroom cloud of orange and red billowed between buildings. Smoke followed. Then the shockwave slapped the street like an angry hand.
Morty’s mouth fell open.
He watched the flames climb—until the tap-tap-tap of Höbin’s metal leg returned, fast.
The historian shoved Morty inside and slammed the roughly-fit door shut. He bolted it, just to be sure.
“Yes,” Höbin said, wearing a broad, happy grin.
Morty blinked, then looked past him at the door. “Yes…what?”
“I’d love some Arlong Tea.”
“Right,” Morty said dully. He handed the bag back and wandered toward the kitchen like a gnome in a trance.
Höbin plopped the bag onto the table and pulled up a second chair. “You put a door back on. Good idea. Don’t want just anyone walking along being able to—”
“What just exploded?” Morty asked, setting a chipped cup on the counter.
“Oh, just a FAF delivery van. #202, I believe. Don’t worry—there wasn’t anyone in it.”
Morty froze. “So you stole a Fishis Archive Foundation vehicle.”
Höbin looked up, offended. “I would never!” Then he grinned. “I was the cargo, that’s all.”
Morty poured tea with hands that didn’t quite trust themselves. “Cargo?”
Unzipping the bag, Höbin pulled out loose files—then dumped a small clatter of electronic keys, security tags, and other odd personal items onto the table. “Silly me. I made it into the FAF, got into the restricted database, even uploaded my own program for future use. Problem was… I hadn’t thought about getting out.” He chuckled, examining a level-three access card with Lewis’s picture on it. “So I decided to create an outgoing delivery.”
Morty stared at the charred, grimy gnome. “But you only had the one air canister… how could you—”
“Drilled holes in the bottom of the crate,” Höbin said, casual as a grocery list. “I was making all this too complicated.” He set the card down and picked up the key ring. “When I saw all the hyper activity around Wendell, I left an urgent package—which was me—attached to a bogus tip. Labeled the crate fragile equipment. Put an address around the corner and down the street. Said there’d been a sighting of the Gnolaum hiding in the warehouse district.”
Morty shook his head slowly. “That’s crazy.”
“Oh, I know. But the FAF is a curious crowd. I should know.” Höbin sipped his tea like he hadn’t just rearranged reality. “My best hope was someone finding me in the morning… or, at best, someone from the mail room doing night deliveries.” He smiled. “Looks like I hit the jackpot.”
Morty nodded at the pile. “What’s all the stuff?”
Höbin’s smirk sharpened. “The personal belongings of Lewis Robert Natonek.”
Morty choked on his tea. “T-the research and report Natonek?”
“Yup.”
“The…girls and the…” Morty couldn’t quite finish.
“The same.”
Morty shuddered. He wasn’t a history buff, but even he knew that name. Famous for attention, not integrity. “The gnome is an embarrassment to your noble profession.”
“Thank you.”
“Why haven’t they thrown him out of the FAF?” Morty’s eyes landed on the keys again. “Wait—and what are you doing with his personal belongings?”
Höbin looked up with a grin that sent a cold little spike down Morty’s spine. “Throwing him out of the FAF.”
They stared at each other. Morty folded first.
“Okay. Tell me.”
Höbin leaned forward. “No one’s been able to pin him to anything worth firing him over. He’s always alone… or he’s covered his tracks too well. He doesn’t take risks unless he knows anyone willing and able to point fingers will…disappear.”
Morty nodded once. “Right. We already established he’s a butt.”
“Well,” Höbin said, too calmly, “he happened to threaten a kind young kid from the mail room. After this fictional assignment was over, he planned on ruining the simple existence of a good person. So I decided to make sure it didn’t happen.”
A tiny lever slid in his cybernetic arm. A mini flap popped open. With careful fingernails, Höbin pried out a data chip. “I recorded the entire conversation. With the kid… and his plotting, backstabbing words while he thought he was alone in the van.” He held the chip up like a jewel. “I’ll mail this to my contact inside the FAF. Mr. Natonek can change his name to mud. The administration will take his credentials, prosecute him, and send him home with the Centurions.”
Morty sat back and exhaled. “Wow, Höbin. I know you’ve done incredible things in your career—and I know you’re a protective father, but…” He trailed off.
Höbin set the keys down, then picked up Lewis’s travel license. The vulgar smile on the ID glowered back at him.
“But?” Höbin prompted.
“I didn’t think you were vindictive.”
Höbin flinched like he’d been struck. He set the ID down gently. “I’m not,” he said, quieter.
“Then why go to such lengths that you’d blow up a company vehicle and—” Morty pointed at the ID pile, “—I’m assuming—blame it all on Natonek?”
Höbin sat up straight and tapped the table once with his metal hand. “Two reasons.” His jaw tightened. “One—because that gnome hasn’t only tarnished a profession I love dearly… he’s used the trust of the public to manipulate them for his own selfish desires.”
His fingers curled into a slow fist.
Morty took a careful sip. “And two?”
The glare beneath those wild eyebrows wasn’t anger anymore. It was recognition. Old wounds. Cold resolve. The blue eye caught the light of the single bulb.
“I started my career in the mail room.”
Own your own copy of CHOICES
