Time Merchant

Chapter 3: Mechanical Hearts and Copper Tears

The light runes of the time cage pulsed like veins, Edwin's pocket watch alarm piercing his eardrums. Tabit's mechanical body unfolded at the base of Leifeng Pagoda, his spine extending joint by joint, revealing an abdominal cavity with interlocking gears—inside hovered a beating crystal heart.

"59 hours?" Lin Xia glanced at Edwin's dial, then yanked him toward the densest cluster of runes. "Then let's play dangerous!"

Her copper coin sword slashed her wrist, blood droplets spattering the watch. Both bronze timepieces erupted in blinding blue light, and Tabit's mechanical fingers shattered into time-space ripples as they grazed Lin Xia's hair.

"Are you insane?!" Edwin grabbed her bleeding wrist amid violent dizziness. "Activating with blood speeds the countdown!"

A stubborn smile tugged at Lin Xia's pale lips. "We're dead either way."

The ground collapsed into a vortex, plunging them into darkness. When weightlessness ceased, Edwin's back hit metal. The stench of oil and rust flooded his nose, with steam pipes hissing in the dark.

"19th-century London sewers?" He propped up, palm touching gear patterns that felt sleek with futuristic tech.

Lin Xia struck a Victorian match, its flame illuminating hundreds of brass coffins hanging from chains, each engraved with watch motifs and numbers. She gasped: "Chronos Committee's junkyard..."

As the match died, the nearest coffin knocked. Edwin shielded Lin Xia, only to hear muffled English from inside: "...Carter... is that you?"

Lin Xia's sword clattered to the floor. The coffin lid slid open, revealing a bearded man with a bronze pocket watch over his left eye—identical to Edwin's. When the man looked up, Edwin's blood froze: it was his father, aged twenty years.

"Impossible..." His trembling hand touched the man's wrinkles. "Father?"

The man's cloudy blue eyes cleared. "Edwin? No, you shouldn't be here!" He pounded the coffin. "Lin Mingyue broke her promise? She swore to protect you—"

"You knew my mother?" Lin Xia lunged to the coffin, matchlight revealing their similar eye shapes. The man froze, repeating like a machine: "So alike... so alike..."

Hydraulic hisses echoed from the pipes. The old man ripped off his watch, shoving it into Edwin's hand. "Go to New Babylon, find the 'Clockmaker,' tell him 'the twins are activated'..." He pushed them. "Run! The hounds smell across time!"

Lin Xia clung to the coffin. "What do you mean 'protect us'? What did you plan?"

The old man's lips moved, but Edwin read the word: Eternal Vault. The next second, rust-red mechanical tendrils pierced the coffin, embedding in the old man's neck. His body shriveled, the watch crumbling to dust.

"No!" Edwin's roar was smothered by Lin Xia's hand. She dragged him into a drain, activating their watches just in time. In the blue flash of transit, Edwin saw his father's last mouth shape:

"The watch eats memories..."

They crashed into a neon-lit alley. Acid rain and hologram jingles signaled 22nd-century Tokyo, yet vermilion torii gates lined the street like echoes of the Heian period. Lin Xia's wound glowed gold in the rain.

"Your father lives..." She leaned against the wet wall, gasping. "But that wasn't our timeline—it's the Committee's dump for 'failures'."

Edwin stared at his father's watch remains, which was reanimating—metal writhing like living tissue. Worse, he realized he couldn't recall his mother's eye color.

"Memory loss has started." Lin Xia tore her cheongsam to bandage the wound, revealing golden patterns spreading up her waist. "Every jump speeds it."

The rain curtain suddenly rippled. Holograms turned blood-red: ILLEGAL TIME JUMPERS DETECTED. Hunters in quantum suits materialized at both ends, unarmed but with fingertip runes matching Tabit's.

"Let me handle this." Edwin snatched Lin Xia's sword. The moment he touched the hilt, visions flashed: Lin Xia chained in a glass chamber, a white-coat woman screwing a wind-up mechanism into her spine...

"How do you—" Lin Xia's cry was drowned by an explosion. The sword emitted not Taoist gold, but blue energy matching his watch, blasting back the hunters as the blade disintegrated into powder.

"You have time genes." Lin Xia's voice shook. "Only direct blood can—"

Acid rain steamed between them. Edwin seized her shoulders. "What did that scientist do to you?"

Lin Xia's pupils constricted. "You saw my memories?" She shoved him back. "This isn't natural... unless our watches have—"

The hologram warnings fuzzed to static, then a handwritten message appeared: FOR ANSWERS, FIND THE MECHANICAL GEISHA IN YOSHIWARA.

The eldest hunter removed his helmet, revealing a circuit-lined face. "Don't trust her... the Clockmaker is—" Sparks exploded from his temple, and he collapsed.

The remaining hunters retreated in unison. Lin Xia picked up a fallen neural catheter etched with TM-31—matching Edwin's father's coffin number.

"They're all cyborgs." She held the tube to the neon. "We must go to Yoshiwara."

"Wait." Edwin pointed to her neck—the golden patterns had spread behind her ear, forming a lotus interwoven with gears. "Are you being modified too?"

Lin Xia wordlessly fastened her collar. The rain stopped, and a building's glass reflected their embracing shadows, but not the countdown on their watches:

Remaining Time: 53 hours 07 minutes.