Clockwork Zero Novels & Stories

Her face was completely expressionless, showing nothing. Rather, it seemed like it was drained of everything, like a stagnant pool. She moved purely on instinct, mechanical, numb. With the accelerator slammed down, Jamie reached the warehouse in under half an hour. From outside, Lucas's shrill cries echoed. Following the sound, Jamie pushed open the rusted door, and Lucas sat bound to a chair inside, a bomb strapped tightly to his body. Standing right behind him was none other than Wilson. When his gaze met Jamie's, Wilson grinned wide. "I knew it! That other guy didn't matter, but you sure came running for this one!"

The ultimate terror of a countdown isn't the mechanical ticking of a clock ticking toward zero; it is the sudden, freezing realization that the corporate empire you built to protect your future is about to be handed over to a fraud, while you sit fifty yards away in the dark, matching the ticking second for second with a handwritten log of their destruction.

But the warmth was a lie, or at least, it felt like one. He reached into his pocket and his fingers brushed the cold, shattered face of the pocket watch. **Tick. Tick. Tick.** The sound wasn't coming from gears or springs. It was coming from the air itself. It was a countdown that had no visible numbers, a heartbeat of a machine that refused to stay dead. "Rowan?"

This was a clockwork mechanism—a 1940s-era shortwave relay that used the house's iron-ore foundation as an antenna. "He built a 'Dark-Net' before the internet even existed," I whispered. Enzo gripped the crank. "If I turn this, what happens?" "We broadcast," I said. "But not to the web. We broadcast a 'Ping' to every 'Quiet One' listed in this book. Every man who owes the Cavallo family a debt of silence. Every soldier the Weaver doesn't know exists." Enzo looked at me, his eyes reflecting the flickering kerosene flame. "And it also tells the Weaver exactly where we are."

“You mean to say…?” “Yes,” I replied. “The fishing line was tied around Clocky. The rolling alarm clock was given a few modifications, though. It didn’t ring and time was not needed to be set for the trick to work. All it needed was a push of a button that was linked to the Bluetooth mechanism found inside the device. The silent alarm would go off; the wheels would turn on; the trigger would be pulled; the bullet would be shot; the fishing line would slip off the trigger and will wrap around the body of the rolling clock…

It was currently sitting on the mantle of the fireplace in our real home, the one we had fled after the explosion. "The clock?" I whispered, my voice failing me. "Not the clock," Cassian said, his voice dropping an octave into a register of pure lethality. "The weight inside the pendulum. It’s not lead, Mrs. Moretti. It’s a specialized, low-frequency transponder. It doesn't just track location; it records audio within a thirty-foot radius and transmits it via a burst-signal to a satellite uplink every six hours." The air left my lungs in a sharp, cold rush. "The bedroom. The clock was in the library, right next to the master suite. Every word we’ve said... every plan you made with the Battal

I narrowed my eyes at a brown clock on the table as we made our way outside. "What's this?" I stopped to pick it up. "That's just my time run." He said, receiving the rusty looking clock from me. "Don't touch it, it could be dangerous." "Dangerous, how?" I resumed walking while he led the way. "You see, for three years now, I've been working on a time machine, but that's never happened. No success at all." He began. "Okay?" I raised a questioning eyebrow at him. "But I managed to come up with the time run. It's a reverse clock that takes you to twelve noon the day you use it." He explained even though I was unable to comprehend.

She nodded to Sera, who tapped a specific sequence on the pedestal’s interface. Suddenly, the "stopped" clock didn't just restart; it transformed. The pedestal’s glass cleared, revealing that the "stopped" gears were merely a holographic projection—the "Ghost Pedestal" Elias had created. The real Medici clock was perfectly functional, its golden gears moving with a silent, mesmerizing fluidity.