Kell's Legend

after birth to have the correct clockwork construct grafted, added, injected, implanted, and from thence the true vachine can grow and meld and begin to function.”
    “So…we all begin as human?”
    “Yes.”
    “But we feed from human blood! The refined mix of blood-oil! That makes us…little more than cannibals!”
    Vashell shrugged, and smiled. “Blood of my blood,” he said, sardonically. “I find it hard to believe Kradek-ka never explained it to you. He kept you in a bubble, Anukis. He created this; this structure, this schedule, he elevated the systems of clockwork integration to make us better, superior, to elevate us above a normal impure flesh. With vachine integration we are the perfect species. Can you not see this, Anukis? This is your family’s life work. This is the creation of the vachine.”
    Anu sagged, leaning against Vashell, her mind spinning as she watched a thousand babies undergoing vachine integration. She saw scalpels carving through flesh, through baby chests and into hearts, replacing organic components with clockwork, replacing valves and arteries with gears and tubes. Babies cried, squealed, and their wails were hushed by pads held over mouths until they lost consciousness. Blood trickled into slots and was carried away to be further refined and fed back into Blood Refineries in order to create the blood-oil pool.
    “We are vampires,” said Vashell, staring down at Anu who was pale and grey, a shadow of her former self. “Machine vampires. We feed on the human shell; revel, in our total superiority.”
    “What we’re doing is wrong, ” snarled Anu.
    “Why? The creation of a superior species?” Vashell laughed. “Your naivety both astounds and amuses me. Here, the rich noble daughter, blood-line of our very own vachine creators—and you do not even understand the basics?”
    A babe squealed and there was a chopping sound. Anu saw the flash of a silver blade. The tiny head rolled into a chute and was sucked away. The corpse was thrown into a bag, and an Engineer moved to a distant cart and slung the body aboard, along with all the other medical waste.
    “So,” said Anu, fighting for air, “every babe that is born, here in Silva Valley, it comes here? It comes to be formed into vachine?”
    “Yes. But more than Silva; the vachine have spread, Anu. We are breeding soldiers in other valleys. We are growing strong! We grow mighty! Our time for domination, for expansion, for Empire, is close.”
    “But-” said Anu.
    Vashell frowned. “What do you mean?”
    “Something is wrong,” said Anu, with primitive intuition. “What’s going on, Vashell? What’s happening here?”
    “We need to find Kradek-ka.” He scowled. He would say no more.
    For an hour Vashell dragged Anukis through the Maternity Hall, and she saw things so barbaric shewouldn’t have believed them possible. The babies were operated on, implanted with clockwork technology—in their hearts, in their brains, in their jaws, in their hands. Even at such a young age they were given weapons of death, using blood-oil magic, clockwork, and liquid brass and gold, silver-quartz and polonium, in order to control and power and time the mechanisms of the vachine.
    “How many work?” she said, at last, exhausted.
    “I do not understand?”
    “How many babes…become vachine? Successfully?”
    “Fifty five in a hundred successfully make it through the—shall we say, medical procedures. Fifty five in a hundred accept the clockwork, accept the fangs, and can grow and meld and adapt and think of themselves as true machine.”
    “What about the others?”
    “Most die,” said Vashell, sadly. “This is a great loss; if we could improve the rate of melding, our army would be much larger; we could advance so much more quickly.”
    “And?”
    “The cankers?” Vashell laughed. “They have their uses.”
    “Take me away from this place,” said Anu, tears on her cheeks, fire in her part-clockwork heart.
    “As you wish. I thought you needed to know, to understand, before we set out on our quest.”
    “Quest?”
    “To find your father. He was working on a refined technology. In trials he had pushed acceptance fromfifty-five to ninety-five in a hundred; we barely lost any babes. You see, Anu, why we need to find him? If you help me, if we pull this off for the Watchmakers, for the whole of vachine-kind, then you will be saving hundreds, thousands of lives, every year. You understand?”
    “You