Chapter 3: Infiltration

To Belle’s surprise, no one was immediately inside. The front room was massive in width with an unmanned reception desk at the front. Fancy steamtech toys lingered as decorations, but there was no one to take her name, no staff to lead her around and keep an eye.

The brunette looked over her shoulder just to make sure that front door stayed shut. She was worried about those guards poking their heads in. After a few seconds of that she got to work.

She played the part just in case anyone was watching from somewhere she couldn’t see. She took out her sketchpad and scribbled the desk. She wrote a brief description of the room, too, before flipping the page of her pad to a new one and walking around.

She squinted left and right, up and down but there were no mirrors for which someone to watch her on the other end. Two sets of double doors lead deeper into the complex, both evenly spaced left and right of the big empty desk. Once sure she was unwatched, she took the right doors and went in deeper.

The next room after was boring. It looked like a lobby of sorts, with some simple, small models of automobiles, airships and other steam vehicles on display.

The room immediately after was very similar. More mundane diagrams of slightly improved airship designs, and fancy steampipe layouts scribbled on parchment, proudly displayed on the wall and yet entirely above her ability to fathom. She didn’t know the exact significance of what these developments were, but she knew two things. First, they were probably interesting enough for a story and a follow up that would be best sellers for the paper. Secondly, she knew it wasn’t what she was looking for.

Prototype models were interesting stuff, but far from “world changing” like her contact had said. She had to go deeper, to the building’s center. But, she knew once she opened the doors leading deeper, if caught, it’d be her end.

Belle took a deep breath and opened them.

Once again, the young woman was shocked. She was in a long, wide corridor. It was lined with doors, yet almost entirely empty of objects and completely bereft of any employees. The doors on the sides had windows, and she peeked through as she moved along. There were diagrams of unreleased steam automobiles, geartanks, and airships. There were also rooms with the walls covered in diagrams of complex pipework. There were also plenty of normal offices as well.

Belle didn't investigate any of that closer. She knew the most important project in the complex, its main purpose, would have to be smack dab in the center room. It just made sense. So, she continued her march down the hallway with only the taps of her flats and the gentle hum of steam rushing through the copper pipes high up on the walls.

The young woman was impressed at how wide and tall the hallway was. It stretched dozens of feet in the air, and was wide enough to fit probably half-a-dozen geartanks side by side. She imagined it would be exhausting working here and walking around so much.

She kept moving, and moving. The hall stretched for at least two blocks, and although it had some left and right junctions, she never once turned. The middle of the facility was her goal.

As she drew nearer to the facility’s center, some opened boxes started to pop up more and more on the side. Thick shipping crates. She paid them little mind till, at last, doors on the other side of the long hallway came into view. Then, she heard the knob turn. There was talking and chatter too, echoing down the hallway. It was something about “sweeping the area.”

With her heart thumping deep in her chest, Belle thought to hide. She ducked behind a horizontal box that was itself hidden behind two vertical ones. She heard them walking her way, though she had just a bit of time. She was hidden then, but soon as they walked past she’d be spotted if they so much as turned to the right. She couldn't’ move the boxes, that be too much noise.

‘The lid, however...’

Belle waited for a particularly loud hiss from the steam pipes crawling atop the halls. Then, she quickly slid the lid of the horizontal crate just enough to slide her lithe self inside. Lucky for her, it was a shipment of raw cloth, so not only did she not make much noise ducking down inside, but she was rather comfy. Certainly, she was more comfy than if it were a shipment of raw gears or stud-nails.

Belle waited. She held her breath but couldn’t do anything about the thump of her heart in her chest. Over a very stressful couple of minutes, the footsteps of the guards came, then went. She waited a solid minute of not hearing them before finally slinking out of the crate, sliding the lid back into position and heading down the hall.

More junctions, more opportunities to turn back and retreat. Belle kept going, even as the piping increased above, the side rooms grew sparser, and the sounds of steam flowing increased. She had no fear, eyes on the prize, she tried and opened the doors at the end of the hallway at last.

It was locked, but no problem for Belle. She slipped a lockpick free from her arm and had it opened in a few seconds. It seemed odd to protect the room with such a simple, basic common lock, but given the trouble to get in here it made some sense.

She opened the doors.

As soon as Belle was inside the complex’s central chamber, she was stunned. Belle was not surprised, not shocked, but in absolute, unsteady awe. It was immediately clear to her what her contact was talking about, why everything was so secretive and, finally, why the complex was so huge.

Looming near the far end of the room, towering at around 1000ft tall, was a gigantic, stark naked figure of a woman.

It was entirely inert, and the solid brass of its construction was thoroughly polished. Iron and bronze scaffolding surrounded it, covered in platforms and complete with slews of steps and ladders for navigating around the work of art. All said scaffolding seemed very firmly welded to the ground and affixed to the wall at the back. All sorts of steamtech, grabber and tool-tipped arms jutted out from the scaffolding towards the gigantic model.

From where Belle stood, she could crane her neck and just barely make out its face. Its head was pointed slightly down, like a doll at rest. The craftsmanship on the face was very lifelike. She wondered what kind of details it held if she could get even closer. She wished she had some gear-oggles at that moment. Still, even from a distance she could tell that they even carved out nails for the fingers and toes.

Of course, it was decidedly inhuman as well in that its hair was solid, rather than than individual strands. The ‘style’ was short, flared a little at the edges to further emphasis its femininity. It wasn’t much shorter than Belle’s own, though. Even though the strands weren’t individual, they were molded to seem as such. She could even make out the waviness in the ‘hair-do’ which helped bring the sculpture to life.

‘No way, could that be it? All this fuss for a giant sculpture?’, Belle thought.

Yet, a sculpture didn’t seem right. It seemed too simple for all this effort. A couple things didn’t make sense to her. The colossus's head was tilted slightly forward and looking down. That wasn’t the most photogenic pose if this was to be propped up somewhere. Metal bands about its wrists, ankles, arms, and legs held it to the scaffolding behind it. These kept the arms and legs against the wall, but also meant the posture was just a bland, standing one.

Belle looked closely and realized the eyes were glowing. A gentle golden light emitted from the irises of the construct. At least, it seemed gentle from this far away.

‘They can’t display it like that, which means it has to be able to move. But, if it can move then... it’s a machine? A gigantic, humanoid machine. It has to be. I need to get closer’, thought Belle.

The reporter took out her sketch pad. She frantically drew a base sketch of what she saw while moving forward.

The room had a lot else going on too.

It was clear this was where the real work was done. The gigantic room was held stable by a wide variety of towering, thick pillars of solid bronze. Each one was a fortune to erect, no doubt. Desks were scattered about in an open floor plan style that she was somewhat familiar with as a reporter. A slew of papers and documents littered each, with diagrams between the desk areas for all to see and peruse.

The central chamber served as a workshop as well as a workplace. It was entirely self-sufficient with its own printing press at the front right corner with respect to Belle, and a smelting furnace far, far in the opposite corner with plenty of room and pipes to help manage the heat.

Pipes crisscrossed on the walls and lead everywhere towards the ceiling. Belle craned her head up to see, to her amazement, docked airzeps! They were the sleekest kind of airships, too, but the fact that entire airships, even the smallest, were used to navigate in here blew Belle’s mind. They seemed specialty made too, with gear-jointed limbs jutting off the bottoms for manipulation and work.

Yet, the only thing tall enough to ever need an airship would be that brass colossus.

“Is this, all this, just for that brass creation...”, mused Belle.

“Voxhaben really spared no expense.”

Belle quickly noticed a large diagram showcasing the colossus, only with its arms held at its sides and its legs slightly more spread. It was titled “Brass Woman”. She walked up to that first desk it was near for a closer.

“Brass Woman, so that’s what they call it. Fitting.”

There were some pamphlets on that nearby desk, and she stuffed one in her shoulder bag while quickly flipping through another. It had very few words, and simply showed the colossus in various poses. Strangely enough, there were little diagram drawings of movement.

‘Movement, but how? There’s no joints on it, no visible gears.’

Belle looked to the center of the room, where the largest two desks were. Each was absolutely covered in papers that were all neatly stacked. The scene was like the border of a square, cut down the middle and pried apart to make the two large desks. A slew of diagrams stood between the two workspaces there, and they looked a good deal more detailed and different than the one she just saw.

The reporter ran over. She remembered that she only had an hour to get and record as much information as possible. She still wanted to get close to the colossus, see if there were hidden bits to see up close, but that could wait till her bag was filled to the brim with documents and dossiers on this thing.

All the while, her mind was racing.

‘It’s a weapon. If it moves, it has to be. But, that seems so impractical. Why not make a 1000ft tall tank instead? Or just make a really big bomb...’

Questions, so many questions. She reached those central desks and didn’t know where to began. She flipped through one diagram--it was on a tri-legged stand like the others--and saw some internal details. There were gears inside, that was much certain, but she had no idea how any but the brightest mind could comprehend it. She certainly couldn’t, especially not flipping the pages as fast as she did.

She couldn’t take such a large diagram with her, but she saw the stacks of documents on the left desk. Each was different from the other. This was it. Just one of these would be proof enough, but she flapped open her bag and just started stuffing them inside.

It’s at that moment that every door to the chamber swung open, and security guards swarmed. The lights were on her, literally, as from atop the scaffolding near the ceiling great big lanterns were pointed her way.

Belle reached for the knife on her thigh and started moving to run, but it was too late. It was too late the moment she entered the room. A militia’s worth of gear-oggled goons rushed to her, holding rifles or pistols in hand. At the same time, radio-speakers across the chamber echoed out a warning.

“Raise your hands. Do not move or you will be killed.”

The security staff had mostly the same dark suit on as the ones outside. Two goons grabbed her arms and held her steady, she saw a very important man walking her way.

His cane tapped against the floor with every one of his steps. He wore a long gray coat decorated with some copper trimming. It made his obviously skinny physique seem a bit more wide. Short black hair just poked out from beneath a tall top hat that rotated with not one, not two, but three full decorative cogbands on it. His shoes were dress, slate gray.

Belle knew who he was. Everyone did. He offered a black-gloved hand to shake, and the guard on the right released the associated arm of hers from his grip.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. My name is Victor Cogston. I believe you already meant my associate, Henry Fib.”

Another man stepped out from the throng of security staff behind Victor. Belle’s heart sank. It was the mustached contact she yet met just a day ago. He smiled as he spoke.

“Just Henry is fine.”