Heart of the Tower

Galia entered the tower with shaking steps. Half-irons prowled outside, unaware of her presence. Their azure eyes cast eerie glows across the moonless night of the broken city. Their once human bodies making strange creaking noises in the dark as they watched for anyone who dared step foot near The Tower.

Many had, she suspected. She had never seen so many half-irons before. She had counted two dozen patrolling the front alone, and she had stopped counting completely after the fifth dozen. Some appeared to have been families once. Children with spikes for teeth still walked with mothers with wires for hair, gripping eachother’s hands with copper fingers fused together. Perhaps they didn’t see the hoard till it was too late, perhaps they were one of the “Iron Children”. Fanatics that believed the Iron-Horde provided eternal peace and unity. Whatever the case, they were part of the horde now.

Galia pushed the horde out of her mind. The tower itself seemed to be absent of them. Nothing but rubble and rusty beams were left now. The worn letters of some old language were painted across a wall at the end of the room. She didn’t know what it said. Maybe her father or grandfather could’ve read it. Her fingers tightened around the locket wrapped around her hand.

They had studied the old world. The world before the half-irons. Before the horde.

Her grandfather was turned into one of the Iron-Horde. She found him over her father months after the letters stopped.

She killed him. She had to watch as her father’s bones and flesh were slowly overcome by metal. She tried to save him, but the metal had spread to his blood. He shoved the locket into her hand, told her to find the Steel-Mind. She wept as his eyes began to turn blue.

She killed him too.

Galia looked at the locket. It was such a small thing, no bigger than the tip of her thumb. It was shaped like a heart, with all the arteries and veins required. It was ridged, with gold and obsidian lines Sometimes she thought she could feel it pulse as if it were alive. She had opened it one time, after months of trying. But all she found inside was strange patterns that resembled the wires the Iron Children threaded through their skin to show their devotion.

Her father seemed to think it was the key to something. And she was inclined to believe him.

She had believed the half-irons were like animals. Only doing what they did to feed and replicate. You wouldn’t think a wolf was evil for feasting on a deer. But what she had seen that night told her she was wrong.

She had gone into her father’s study after he… died. She found a small group of half-irons prowling inside. She had to climb atop the roof and wait them out. No one survived an encounter against so many and walked away unturned. She watched through the sun roof as their bones screeched with every step, sometimes emitting a series of clicking warbles and growls.

She watched one as it walked up to her father’s desk. It as it stood over the mass of papers, ink, and books. She expected it to turn around, not seeing anything it was capable of turning to the will of the horde. Instead, it took its only hand—fingers mangled, with tips so long it could skewer a dog—and ever so delicately, picked up a page. Never once gripping it hard enough to crinkle the delicate paper, let alone tear it.

Galia watched in fascination as it picked up page after page. Setting down and picking up each one as gently as the last, flipping them over slowly to see both sides. She realized it was reading her father’s notes.

What was on those notes she never saw much of. When the half-iron finished, it turned to its companions, issuing a series of warbles and growls, its eyes flashing so fast it made Galia’s head hurt. The others answered in turn, rushing out of the study, leaving that one alone with her father’s notes. It raised its right limb, the forearm nothing but a flesh cover metal spike. It placed the tip on the desk.

The desk, and everything on it, turned to dust before her eyes. Only a scrap of a single page remained. It mentioned The Tower, that eventually led her here.

She walked through the broken rooms of The Tower. When she could no longer hear the sounds of the half-irons, she took out her glow rod from her bag.

This place once seemed to have been split into dozens and dozens of little square sections. Broken walls made out of strange material were littered everywhere. At least one chair that seemed to roll on wheels was always placed inside, along with a desk, and usually some strange rectangular object she couldn’t guess the use of.

Eventually she came across a set of doors with no handles. They seemed to slide into the wall, instead of swinging forward and backward on hinges. She pried them open, forcing herself inbetween them, starting with her fingers, and then her whole body. She panted with the effort. She wondered why someone would ever use such doors, and how they would even close them again.

She shined her flashlight inside, and was surprised to see what looked like a sideways corridor, with wires to climb up and down on. Was this how the old people got to different floors? Why not just use stairs?

The old world, Galia decided, was weird.

She hooked her flashlight to her belt, made sure her bag was secure, and shoved the heart into her pocket.

She decided down was the safest route. She could save her strength that way. She just hopped she didn’t need to go up. She gripped the wire tight with her hands and thighs, and made the slow slide downward

When she reached the bottom, her hands were bloody. Twice she lost her grip, her hands slid across the wire so fast it ripped the skin off. There were holes in her pants where her thighs had gripped, they were bloody too. The entirety of the decent took roughly thirty minutes. She had no idea how far down she was.

She walked into a red lit room, bearing a giant triangular door, at least five times as tall as she was. The door seemed to pulse with her approach. A single crimson eye starred down at her with an angry glare.

She subconsciously wrapped the heart locket around her hand again, the little thing seemed to pulse in unison with the door.

Suddenly, the eye shot out from the door towards her. It sat on the tip of a single, snake-like appendage. It stopped just inches away from her face as she jumped back with a girlish yelp. She felt embarrassed, despite the lack of people around, warmth bloomed in her cheeks.

The eye followed her movements, keeping only inches away from her face. It watched her attentively, sometimes shifting from one side to the other.

“IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED,” a deep unnatural voice boomed. Galia assumed it belonged to the red eye. She didn’t understand what it said. The words were foreign to her. It sounded like the old English her grandfather used to study all the time. She tried explaining that she didn’t understand.

“LANGUAGE UNKNOWN. IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR ENTRY.”

Galia tried again to tell the red eye she couldn’t understand. She held up the heart locket to it. Perhaps it would recognize it. Or at least understand what it was.

The eye shifted on its “body”, to look directly at the heart. It pulsed once and called out a last time.

“TOWER HEART RECOGNIZED. IDENTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS OVERRIDDEN. WELCOME.”

The red eye’s body receded back into the door, and the door receded into the walls and floor, seemingly by itself. Where the cracks should have been left behind, the floor seemed to mend itself anew.

Beyond the door, was a room like nothing Galia had ever known. Made of so many pieces of reflecting metal the whole room turned crimson. She had never seen something put together in such a way. The rectangular pieces made up a sort of pyramid above her where the red lights shown down from every side, focusing themselves into a single point in the middle of the room.

She walked up to it. It seemed so small. A single cylindrical object on a pedestal. When she approached, the top half twisted itself clockwise, and rose up about six feet from where it was, leaving a red space between the top and bottom.

She stared at that space for what felt like eternity, and then starred at the locket. Was this it? Was this what all her struggle, all her striving to make her father’s, and her grandfather’s deaths justified, lead to?

She broke the rope holding the locket, and placed the heart inside the space. Something invisible seemed to grab hold of it. When she removed her hand, tiny copper wires stretched out and connected to the veins and arteries. The hue of the cylindrical space flashed to blue. Then the room slowly seemed to come awake, red turning to blue with loud thunderous noises. A blue eye appeared from above. This one much larger.

“TOWER HEART ACQUIRED.” Came the deep voice. “STEEL-MIND, ONLINE. SCANNING.”

Galia watched as the eye shifted.

“WARNING. CYBERNETIC OUTBREAK DETECTED. THREAT LEVEL, BLACK. INITIATING COUNTERMEASURE… ERROR. AI PROCESSOR DAMAGED. NEURAL BLUEPRINT REQUIRED.” The eye starred at her.

“NEURAL BLUEPRINT LOCATED. CONFIRMATION REQUIRED.”

The eye stared at her intently. She didn’t understand. What did it want? She tried telling it again she didn’t understand. What was it supposed to do? What was so important that her father had to die?

“LANGUAGE BARRIER DETECTED. NEURAL BLUEPRINT STILL REQUIRED. BEGINNING ASSIMILATION.”

Suddenly, giant arms shot up out of the floor and grabbed Galia’s body, restricting her limbs and keeping her from moving. She began to struggle, not understanding. What was this? She yelled at the blue eye to let her go. But it couldn’t understand her.

The arms thrust her into a newly created indent in the wall, shaped for her body. Bands of metal appeared out of the indent to keep her restrained inside.

“COMMENCING ASSIMILATION. BLUEPRINT EXTRACTION START.”

The indent closed around her, as she became a part of the wall. It was as if she had suddenly been thrust into the center of the sun. And then ceased.

She woke up later, as if out of a bad dream. She tried to remember what happened. She was trying to talk to the Steel-Mind. Or what she assumed was the Steel-Mind. Suddenly, pages of information displayed themselves in front of her, all about the Steel-Mind. Specs, capabilities, and function.

She moved her arms, and noticed they weren’t the arms she remembered. They were snake-like, with blue orbs at the end. When she looked around, it seemed as if her perspective simply changed. She wondered what was happening.

The answer came immediately to her. She had become the Steel-Mind. Her first priority. End the cybernetic outbreak. She was compelled to obey. As she worked, she began to wonder, why she was afraid only moments ago. That answer came to her immediately as well. Ignorance. She couldn’t understand, she didn’t know what was happening. A typical human fear.

She continued to work. The Iron-Horde had grown very large since this unit had gone offline. She would have to be careful. Right now the Steel-Mind was vulnerable, but that would change.

She had thought, only moments ago, that she had been approaching the end of her story. Perhaps she had in a way. But in truth, this was only her true beginning.