Kyrill knocked twice on the polished copper head of the mechanical beast. The loud echoing gong it produced amused him.

“Fancy toaster, this, innit?” he commented, pacing around the room with his hands clasped behind his back for a better angle on the machine. The team of lab-coated technicians tried to keep out of his way but the workshop was cramped and space was at a premium. Workbenches littered with sprogs and gears lined the room, lit by the glowing filaments of low-amperage lightbulbs that drenched the room in an orange glow. Kyrill’s shadow slipped in and out of the machine’s own, and no technician wanted to find him or herself in Kyrill’s way. The result was a rolling wave of scientists tripping over each other in an effort to avoid Kyrill’s steel-capped boots from crushing their toes, or more. Kyrill, of course, didn’t bother with such trivial details since he considered every room to be for his own personal use, no matter where he happened to be.

One lab-coat wearing individual cleared his throat and stepped forward to speak. His leather pocket protector and cuffed lab coat sleeves revealed him to be more senior than the other technicians in the room. His name tag sported the name ‘Dr. Nathan Houssard’.

“It is our most advanced Automaton,” said Dr. Houssard, “Field ready, fully reviewed, mister-”

“Please,” said Kyrill with a dismissive wave of his gloved hand, “Kyrill will do.” He never took his eyes off the copper-plated android.

“Very well.” Dr. Houssard hesitated to speak further, then coughed into his fist and stepped back to join his colleagues, leaving Kyrill to continue his inspection.

The Automaton was large, almost seven feet tall. Kyrill fancied himself an imposing man, but even he was in awe of the silhouetted android before him. Modelled on human proportions, the Automaton was fully metallic, a blend of copper cables, iron frame, and thin steel. Its body screamed danger. Coiled wires stretched under its many layers of armoured alloy, providing power and instructions to its limbs. In its chest, a clockwork sphere was spinning, emitting pulses of glowing light at regular intervals. Kyrill stopped to pull off his glove and place his naked hand on the thick slab of glass protecting the robot’s spinning entrails.

“Almost feels alive, it does,” he whispered, awe breathing through his words. He looked up to find the eyes of the artificial creature trained on him in a dead stare. Moving from side to side, Kyrill checked whether the eyes followed him. He couldn’t tell for sure if they did.

“Would you like a demonstration,… Kyrill?” Winced Dr. Houssard, not certain the first name basis was still valid.

“Too bloody right,” said Kyrill as he slipped his hand into his glove and pulled his shoulders back, stretching to his full height of six feet five inches. He turned around and let his thick leather coat sweep around his ankles. Several technicians gasped at the holstered pistols on his expensive belt. His glare kept them quiet. “Proceed, then,” said Kyrill, turning back to the Automaton, “let’s see what your tin man can do.”

Dr. Houssard nodded, then marched up to the back of the Automaton and opened a square panel near the small of its back. Kyrill watched him spin a combination dial back and forth several times, waiting for a click at each turn.

“This is a safety feature,” explained Dr. Houssard as he spun the dial, smooth oiled gears rolling into place at each turn, “so no-one can tamper with the device.”

Kyrill noticed a twitch of the Automaton’s head at the third click, and a jerk of its steel fingers at the fifth.

“Oi, is the device, like you call it, meant to-”

Kyrill never finished his sentence.

Before Dr. Houssard could push the panel closed, the Automaton whipped its metal arm back and crushed the scientist into the nearest wall. Kyrill’s mind went into battle mode. Apparently, so did the Automaton.

The android’s other arm shot out and grabbed a young technician by the throat. A sickening crack told Kyrill the man’s neck had broken. The android let go of the young man and turned to the other technicians, all scrambling to exit the room through the narrow hatch on the far wall.

Kyrill went into a crouch, ready to pounce. He looked for an opening, tried to gage the clockwork warrior’s next move.

The Automaton punched another technician, a redhead woman, down into the floor, cracking her skull before she could scream. Panic had seized the rest of the lab team. The door refused to open. With oiled gears snapping into action, the robot turned to the remaining scientists and took quick sharp turns of its head to target each one in turn. It then stopped and cocked its head, a very human looking reaction.

That was its mistake.

As the Automaton turned around to try to account for the last man in the room, Kyrill launched himself at him.

He grabbed hold of its neck with one hand and snapped his legs around the robot’s waist. He used his other hand to try to wrench the control box, where the combination dials were, out of the android’s back.

The clockwork warrior buckled like a bull. It reached its articulated arms back to grab hold of Kyrill, but he dodged the attempt, resisting with all his might. Pushing his fist around the box, Kyrill finally grabbed the wires stretching deeper into the Automaton’s chest.

Then the robot crouched and jumped backwards, slamming Kyrill into the wall with all its weight. Kyrill got the air knocked from his lungs. His hands went limp for a moment, but his legs still held fast to the android’s waist. But another backward slam into the wall made him crumble to the floor, struggling to breathe.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the technicians had finally opened the door and were rushing out of danger.

The android stepped out, turned around with sharp, precise moves and zeroed in on its prey. A quick lean forward was punctuated by a whir of gears and Kyrill was staring into the robot’s eyes again. Only this time, they were very much alive, filled with glowing coils of tungsten anger.

“Not very civil, are you, mate?” growled Kyrill through coughs and spits.

“Not your mate,” crunched the robot in what passed for a clockwork voice.

Kyrill smiled through bloody teeth.

“Too right,” he said.

The Automaton pulled its arm back to smash Kyrill’s skull into the concrete wall. Then its chest exploded backwards and sprayed a shower of sparks and gears across the lab floor. It looked down to find its control box gone, a jagged hole cut out in its place, metal edges still glowing hot. It staggered back, limb gears misfiring, its legs jerking left and right. It staggered to its knees, stuck in a loop of tangled twitches.

A junior technician stuck his head around the edge of the door to see what was happening.

Kyrill slowly pushed himself up off the wall, a smoking gun in his left hand. He spat blood onto the floor, then pulled his other gun from his right holster and marched up to the agonising Automaton. Kyrill gazed at the machine for a moment, then raised his right hand and aimed his gun at the android’s head. The android turned away from him. Kyrill used his gun barrel to pull its head back, to force it to face him. He looked the spring-loaded warrior in its fading, angry eyes.

Then he pulled the trigger.

The more gears exploded all over the lab, sprinkling sounds of bouncing metal against concrete surfaces all around the room. Then everything settled down and silence returned.

Kyrill holstered his guns and turned to find the young technician’s head still sticking out from around the doorframe.

“You,” he said, pointing at the young man, “gimme a phone.”

The technician glanced at the smoking metal heap on the floor, hesitating.

“Is aw’right, tin can lost its marbles, wont do any more harm,” Kyrill assured him. “Phone.”

The young man carefully stepped back into the lab and towards a metal locker a few steps from the door. He opened it, reached inside and pulled out a cellphone, which he handed to Kyrill with a trembling hand.

Kyrill scooped the cellphone up and began to dial.

“I… I assume you want to cancel your order?” asked the young technician, a sheepish look on his face.

“Cancel? What you on about? You lot have got to get production started on this thing, sharpish!”

“Er… What do you mean? That thing almost killed you, I mean, it killed Mary, and she was new, just out of school, and-”

“Fancied the redhead, didya? No worries, plenty more where she came from,” Kyrill assured him. He saw the young man turning towards the ginger girl’s body. “Best not to look, though, you understand.” He pulled the young man around so he had his back to the mess. Then Kyrill put the phone to his ear and waited for the line to ring.

“A few tweaks and we’re in business!” He said with a wink to the young technician. The line connected and Kyrill turned away, walking and talking on his way out of the room. “Yes, hello, put me through to Colonel Vincenzo Marieti of the United Nations Shadow Service… Kyrill Trex. He’ll know who I am, love, just put me through.”

As Kyrill’s steps echoed down the corridor, the young scientist could hear him talk of an amazing new weapon that he had just started producing, a game changer in the personal protection field, something that should equip every Shadow Service team as soon as possible. He heard Kyrill push home the fact that it would save lives. From Kyrill’s reactions and tone, the scientist felt that the person Kyrill was speaking to sounded interested.

Somewhere in the building, alarms began to ring out, drowning out Kyrill’s conversation, while flashing lights strobed across the walls outside the room.

The young man suddenly lost all his hearing, with only a high-pitched whine filling his ears. Somehow, the isolation made him feel sheltered, safe. He was left alone in the lab, the smell of cordite, gunsmoke, and oil hanging in the air. For a long time, all he could do was stare at the wreckage of the Automaton that he had spent so many months crafting and perfecting. Then he forced himself to stand and march out of the room. He paused where Mary’s body was lying, closed his eyes, then took the final steps to reach the door and threw up in the corridor.

Then he gathered himself, and straightened his tie. He had work to do. Production was about to begin and this time, nothing more would go wrong.

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