Dalia felt the watchful eyes of the servitors upon her, the hairs on the back of her neck rising as she felt their cauterised minds assess her level of threat. She could visualise the simple logic paths of their battle wetware, tiny decision trees that would decide whether the weaponised servitors would ignore her or obliterate her.

In her mind's eye, she began evolving that wetware, building in safeguards, null-loops and protection subsystems to avoid any paralysing logic paradoxes.

Lines of golden fire emerging from a fog…

'Planning on joining us, Dalia?'

She looked up, startled by the sound of Caxton's voice. Zeth, Rho-mu 31, Mellicin, Zouche and Severine had passed through the door, but the youthful Caxton awaited her and she smiled, faintly embarrassed to have fallen into one of her technical reveries once more.

'Of course,' she said. 'I was just thinking.'

'Anything as exciting as the theta-wave enhancer?' asked Caxton, holding out his hand.

She shook her head as she took his hand with a smile. 'No, just ways to improve the wetware of the servitors.'

'Really? You're a regular STC system, Dalia, you know that?'

'Don't tease,' said Dalia, stepping through the door with him and feeling a gust of frigid air wash over her.

The breath caught in her throat as she found herself standing on what appeared to be a funicular elevator carriage attached to the inner wall of the silver cylinder, which Dalia now saw was hollow and plummeted down into the darkness.

Dalia squeezed Caxton's hand as a sudden knot of vertigo settled in her stomach. The carriage rails spiralled downwards, and Dalia closed her eyes in fear as the doors she had just stepped through slid shut behind her.

'You are uncomfortable with this mode of transport?' asked Rho-mu 31.

'I don't like heights,' gasped Dalia. 'I never have.'

'Don't worry,' said Zouche. 'Can't see the bottom, so you can't tell how high we are.'

'That doesn't help,' snapped Dalia.

Zouche shrugged. 'Oh, I thought it might.'

'Well it doesn't, so keep thoughts like that to yourself!'

'Just trying to put your mind at ease,' grumbled Zouche.

Dalia yelped as the funicular car began its spiralling descent with a jolt, gaining speed as Zeth pushed out the throttle. Her breath came in short, hiking gulps, the analytical part of her brain processing that the air was cold, far colder than she might have expected, even allowing for the speed they travelled through the echoing empty space.

She kept her eyes shut as the carriage spiralled deeper and deeper into the bowels of Zeth's forge. The air was chill in her lungs and she opened her eyes to see a cloud of breath misting before her mouth.

Cracked white lines of ice were forming on the metal guard rails of the carriage.

'It's cold,' said Dalia. 'Look, there's frost on the metal.'

'So there is,' said Caxton, releasing her hand and wrapping his arm around her.

'Don't you think that's odd?'

'Odd how?'

'We're descending into the planet's surface or at least below a lagoon of lava, so I'd have thought it would be getting warmer.'

Caxton shrugged, giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. 'The wonders of the Mechanicum, I guess.'

Dalia forced a smile as the car continued on its interminable descent, once again screwing her eyes tightly shut.

It seemed they had been travelling for hours, though Dalia knew it could only have been ten minutes at the most. Other than the few words she had exchanged with Caxton, the journey was wordless, yet Dalia had the distinct impression that someone was speaking to her.

She looked over at her fellow travellers. Each was engrossed in the journey, either craning their necks upwards to the spot of light at the top of the cylinder, or leaning over the edges of the railings to penetrate the gloom below.

None, however, were speaking.

Dalia squinted in puzzlement as she stared at Adept Zeth and Rho-mu 31, seeing a ghostly nimbus of light floating above their heads that rippled like a sheet of luminous gauze. Flickering scraps of light darted between Zeth and her Protectors, as though they were communicating in some non-verbal manner.

Was she hearing echoes of that communication?

As though aware of the scrutiny, Adept Zeth turned to face her and Dalia guiltily turned away, closing her eyes and concentrating on the sounds she had heard. The rumbling of the carriage was loud, yet Dalia felt she could hear something beyond the squeal of the metal wheels along the rails.

Something soft, a whisper of far away… a chorus of commingled voices.

'Do you hear that?' she asked.

'Hear what?' asked Caxton.

'Those voices.'

'Voices? No, I don't, but then I can't hear anything much beyond the noise of this elevator,' said Caxton. 'I wonder when its last maintenance check was?'

Dalia fought the urge to snap at him for that remark. 'I swore I could hear somebody whispering. Do any of the rest of you hear it?'

'I hear nothing,' said Zouche, 'except that the bearings on this carriage need replacing.'

'Thanks for that,' said Dalia. 'Severine? Mellicin?'

Both women shook their heads, and Dalia risked a glance over the railings, seeing a change in the texture of darkness below and realising that the carriage was approaching the bottom of the shaft.

Dalia caught a glance pass between Rho-mu 31 and Adept Zeth. Though their faces were covered, she could tell from their body language that they knew what she was asking about.

'You hear them, don't you?' asked Dalia. 'Your hearing is augmented. You must hear it. It's like a thousand voices all whispering at once, but as though they're really far away or behind a thick wall or something.'

Adept Zeth shook her head. 'No, Dalia. I don't hear them, but I know they are there. The reason you hear them is one of the reasons you are so special to me.'

'What do you mean?'

'You mean she's right?' asked Zouche. 'There really are voices here?'

'In a manner of speaking,' said Zeth with a nod. 'But most people will never hear them.'

'Why not?' asked Dalia, hearing the voices grow louder, like the sound she imagined the waves made on a shoreline, though without any sense of the words they spoke. 'Why can I hear them and no one else here can?'

The carriage began to slow, coming to a halt at the base of the cylinder with the smallest bump. The ground was floored with marble threaded with silver and gold wiring that glittered as though alive with current.

A number of unremarkable steel doors exited the chamber, but Dalia's eyes were drawn to a steady pulse of light that spilled through a low archway in one silver wall. She knew in the marrow of her bones that the source of the voices lay beyond it.

'All will become clear in time,' said Adept Zeth, 'but save your questions until I have shown you the wonders that lie within my forge.'

Kelbor-Hal stood at the very edge of the dome with his back to Kane and his hood drawn up over his elongated head. Waving manip arms were poised at his shoulders, and one turned as Kane approached. Beside the Fabricator General was the ebony-skinned automaton of Lukas Chrom, its smooth, featureless face turning towards him with apparent curiosity.

Kane disliked automatons, as he hated all attempts to mimic the perfection of the human form by mechanical means. As a mark of respect, Chrom had also gifted an automaton to Kane the previous year, but he had never activated it and it remained without power in one of the tech-vaults of Mondus Occulum.

No, the human condition could be enhanced and augmented with technology, but should never be replicated or replaced by technology.

Kane allowed himself a tight smile. The Technotheologians of Cydonia Mensae would have a field day with such apparent contradictions inherent in his thoughts. That a man so enhanced by the boons of technology should so resist the inevitable meld of human and machine.