2710,the dawn（ stage1,Kanahi）

As the bone blade sliced through the target's throat, 4067 heard the sound of gears turning. Not the sharp sound of metal rubbing against metal, but some sort of older tremor - like the ripples at the bottom of time caused by a bronze vessel plunging into a deep well. The strange sound came from the scar three inches behind her ear, and whenever the blade touched her carotid artery, the gear-like bumps under that skin glowed with a cold bronze color. " The 3487th harvest is complete." The mechanical voice fell from the clouds, shattering into electronic detritus in the mist of blood.4067 flung the blade, and the blood beads condensed into rounded spheres at the tip of the blade, which hovered in violation of the laws of gravity for a full three seconds. It was the twelve hundred and forty-ninth time she had witnessed this: blood that should have been splattered often took on a bizarre quantum state when it was detached from the body. She looked up into the sky beyond the shield. Twelve sets of giant bronze gears bit through the clouds, and sparks fell like a meteor shower into the interlocking, vein-like aqueducts. Boiling steam poured out of the cracks in the earth, enveloping Pariah Camp 10257 in a rust-red haze. 4067 knew that what was rushing through those pipes wasn't water, but life-giving plasma refined from corpses-what the Ombudsmen called "colostrum." " Warning, entropy exceeded in sector B7." The shields suddenly hissed as gears jammed. In the distance, the pipeline network suddenly burst into steam. As a white mist rose from the network of tubes, 4067 noticed a shimmering light flickering in the cracks in the ground. She plucked away the concrete debris with her bone blade, and a bronze gear the size of a grain of rice was turning on its own. It was devouring the plasma that had seeped into the c***k, expanding 0.1 millimeters with each revolution. As 4067 tried to get a closer look, the entire floor suddenly shuddered - the transfusion network had exploded again. A second before the airwave toppled over itself, 4067 saw the cog complete its last expansion. A fine oracle bone script emerged on its surface, and the shape of those words mirrored that of the scar behind her ear.4067's scar behind her ear burned suddenly, and some kind of intuition beyond her five senses compelled her to roll on her side. Where she had originally stood, the ground was cracked open in a jagged opening, and the stumps of three mechanical scavengers were being swallowed by the c***k in the ground. She noticed that the surfaces of those metal severed limbs were covered with biological fibers, like some kind of hybridization between machinery and flesh and blood. The quest panel flashed red on her retina, urging her to proceed to the next coordinate point.4067 As she retracted the bone blade into its spinal sheath slot, a hovering droplet of blood finally crashed down. It shattered into a spiderweb trail on the ground, miniature bronze gears faintly visible turning in the cracks. " System delay 0.3 seconds." She stated into the air. Normally the beep would arrive within 0.5 seconds after the harvest was complete, but this time it dragged on until the beads of blood began to coagulate. A certain icy euphoria roamed through her neural circuits - an unfamiliar emotion she hadn't experienced in all the 4,067 lives she had harvested so far in her existence. Passing through the C Block outfall on the way back, 4067 suddenly stopped. The putrid wind wrapped around a human voice, a language she had never heard before. The syllables carried the buzz of clashing bronze between them, each word resonating in the scar behind her ear. As she tried to move closer to the source of the sound, the gears of the shields revved up steeply and the sky dropped black iron-colored snow. A snowflake landed on her bare wrist, instantly vaporizing into a holographic warning, "Proximity to unauthorized sources is prohibited." A serpentine mark appeared on the burned skin, identical to the star-tracked totem she had spied three days ago in the depths of some hunter's pupil. When she returned to the survival pod, there was a grinding sound of gears jamming in her left arm.4067 removed the bionic skin, revealing a miniature reduction gear embedded in the ulna. Dark red lubricant oozed from the seams of the gears, tracing vein-like patterns on the metal surface. Thirty-seven percent of her body has been drenched in blood and flesh, including the beating third-generation quantum heart that has also outlined the vein-like patterns. " Survival rate increased to 0.07%." The AI of the survival pod announced in a compassionate tone. 4067 stared at his own reflection on the blade, and deep within those pupils stained with blood and rust, bronze-colored star trails were coalescing into swirls. The loud clatter of gears biting together came from outside the shields, drowning out the sound of the nascent heartbeat inside her.