When Tabby returned to the workshop, she didn't bother with the rope ladder or bucket in the alley. Instead, she entered Newton's Mechanicals from the front. Nit took up a position on the roof to recharge and keep an eye out—not that Nit needed recharging yet. White prisms—she'd once discovered by surprise—lasted at least a week, sometimes more. Such an incredible amount of untapped energy. But given their frequent daytime forays into the city, Nit recharged quickly simply going about usual buisness.

"Don't overheat," she warned, teasing.

The bell chime rang. She paused on the threshold, allowing her eyes to adjust. The workshop was exactly as she'd left it yesterday, and the day before that, and the one before that. Perhaps that's why she was fond of it. Piles of scrap metal, shelves of mechanical objects, stacks of clockwork cogs. Organization by chaos. She loved it.

There were no customers at the moment.

She found Elias right away, his hobgoblin form hunched over a workbench, tweezers in hand, muttering to himself. His white tuft of hair was frizzed, as if he'd been working with those dangerous electric charges everyone whispered about these days. She smiled fondly. He probably had been. It was risky work, not well understood, and few knew how to handle it. But Elias was a scientist at heart, as were many hobgoblins from Ipsum, willing to try anything in hopes of finding an answer.

His spectacles had slid down to the bottom of his knobby nose. "Ah, Tabby." He didn't look up when he spoke. "Just in time for your shift. I've got a pile of rubbish in the corner you can sort through, recycled clockwork mechanicals, mostly. We can grab the useful bits and scrap the rest. See if you can find any gold in them. I'm running a bit low."

Tabby's gaze darted to the corner and back. "Sorry, Elias, not today. I've got a project of my own."

He set his instruments down and looked up, stern. "You've been skirting you duties for two days. I'm not running a crash-pad here."

"Fine." She crossed her arms, studying him. "Start charging me rent."

"That is not my desire." He looked her over. "You look like shit."

"Gee, thanks. Good to see you too." She took several steps but his next words stopped her.

"Long night, eh? You were at Norhaven Hall, weren't you? Seen the papers yet?" His gaze darted to the one on his bench. She glanced down. There was Norhaven Hall and Parlow's death proclaimed in bold lettering across the front. "Tell me it wasn't you," he said, voice low. Before she could answer, he muttered, "Never mind. I don't want to know."

"Don't ask, don't tell, remember?"

"Yes, yes." He frowned. "Where's Nit? I need to have a look at the little bugger."

"On the roof, sunbathing."

"Of course." A fond grin spread across his face, splitting his gray, wrinkled skin to reveal a set of pointed black teeth. "I expect nothing less from the lazybones. Any new surprises?"

Nit was full of them. When she'd first built the mechanimal, she expected him to take the form given. Nit's first transformation gave Elias a heart attack, or very nearly. She and Elias spent many nights scratching their heads, discussing each of the animal forms Tabby had built—industry out of indecision—before placing the prism and conducting the paring that tied them together. In time, Nit had shifted into each one. While neither of them could explain it, they accepted it.

The parts she'd used had developed a mechanical muscle memory of sorts, activated magically by the white prism, and since she'd used nearly all the same bits and pieces for each animal shape, the silver and brass remembered...somehow. But that didn't explain why Nit could change in size, why they could shrink down to something as small as a bee, or swell to something the size of a tiger. Prisms weren't supposed to change size, not the colored ones anyway, yet Nit's prism shrank or swelled to fit their body perfectly. In the end, Elias attributed it to her ability to manipulate light and the link between her and Nit. The rest was magic she might never understand.

"I wouldn't say they did anything out of the ordinary," she answered, chewing on the inside of her cheek. "You know, all the usual stuff like scolding me incessantly and complaining. Matter fact, I think they got that from you."

"Well? What forms did they take?"

"Oh." She hesitated. "A dragonfly, bee, monkey, sparrow, cat..." She began ticking off each one on her fingers.

Elias rubbed his hands together. "Splendid. The cheeky little bugger. That mechanimal does me proud."

"Let's not forget who made them."

"Oh?" He arched an eyebrow. "Let's not forget who taught you everything you know."

She chuckled. "Point taken."

He glanced about the shop and sighed. "I won't be getting any help on the prism mechanimal commissions this week?"

"Uh...about that." She scratched an itch beneath her braid. "I didn't sleep well. But..."

"You can't skirt your duties forever, Tabitha Grey."

"Oh, cheer up you old coot. I got this for you last night, something to make up for my absence." She reached into her satchel and tossed him the drawstring bag taken from the Saphire Wolves. He snatched it from the air. It clinked in his hand.

"Is this what I think it is?" His eyes gleamed—cold and greedy. A true hob.

"It's exactly what you think." She grinned back.

He opened the bag and dumped the prisms into his palm. There were four, in varying shades of blue. Much needed for the mechs he was working on in secret. He didn't need to know where they'd come from.

"All right. All right. Fair enough." He looked up at her. The wrinkles on his inhuman skin pulled tight into a smile. After all these years, those teeth still made her shudder. "I take back what I said about skirting your duties. This more than makes up for it." He slipped the prisms into the bag and tucked them away in a hidden pocket—

"Head's up! You've got company!" Nit's warning jolted her. Her eyes darted to the front of the shop just as the chime sounded.

"You've got to be kidding me," Elias muttered under his breath.

Constables in their tall hats and blue uniforms waltzed inside. Tabby ground her teeth together. This was exactly what they needed at a time like this. The police breathing down their necks. She glanced between the constables and Elias. "Is everything stashed?"

"Relax," he tisked. "We're safe." He stood up from the workbench and squared his shoulders. His hobgoblin form only reached her shoulder.

"Morning," said the constables as they approached. Their proud blue uniforms and tall hats were pristine. "You Elias Newton?" They eyed him with sneers, keeping their hands on their batons, gazes searching.

"I'm Elias. How can I help?"

"And who's this?"

"Eh? Oh. Just a customer in search of a mechanical vacuum to clean her floors."

Tabby nodded. "I'll just take a look around then." She edged away, making her way over to browse the household cleaning supplies. Their eyes followed with mild interest before turning back to Elias. She stayed close enough to listen—close enough to act, if needed.

"Mr. Newton. I'm Clayton and this is Werner. Our inspector sent us. There've been rumors. Word is, you might be one of them that's involved in illicit prism activities." Hobs weren't allowed permits to work with prisms. What Elias did was very illegal.

"Me?" Feigned surprise. She hid her smile. "I would never think of breaking the law. I'm just a humble mechinist, after all, doing what I can to make ends meet. Us hobs don't have room to error. You'll find no prisms here."

"Good to hear." They didn't sound convinced. "You won't mind if we just...have a look around, then?"

"Not at all!" There was a pause. "And if you see anything that you like, by all means, consider buying it. Buisness has been slow. All these underground Lumineers sweeping the rug right out from underneath me."

"Understandable." Clayton glanced around. "You can trust us to get to the bottom of it."

"Good."

"We'll get to it, then," Werner added, spurring Clayton along with a prod to his back. The two of them moved away and began searching. Tabby continued her own browsing, watching through narrowed eyes.

"Everything okay in there? Do you need me?"

"Fine, Nit. Stay put. Just a couple of nosey mutton shunters poking their snouts into other people's business." Marley had been correct—not that the warning did much good.

Elias shuffled over, pretending to help with one of the items she'd selected from the shelves. Their eyes followed the constables as they inspected the piles of junk, shifting through scrap metal and cogs. They were none too quiet with their lazy assessment.

"I bet they don't even know what they're looking for," Elias muttered, his voice laced with irritation. He was probably right. Any prism user would be stupid to place prisms out in plain sight. If one was skilled enough to look, they'd know it was the tech itself that gave it away. The main thing that distinguished a prism powered object from that of steam or clockwork was the telltale gold socket buried deep in the clockwork innards. Otherwise, the similarities between cogs and clockwork were nearly identical.

"Want me to get rid of them?" Her hand went to the daggers hidden in her corset. Constables turned up dead all the time on this side of town, complements of Chroma's many gangs. "It would only take a moment." She kept her voice low, watching them through the spaces in the shelves. A searing glare from Elias made her shrug. "Just a suggestion."

"I've nothing to hide. Leave them be. You know I don't condone killing. Especially not in my shop."

She gave a quiet snort. "Nothing to hide? Elias, you have everything to hide."

He shrugged. "They don't know that."

She and Elias were careful to keep their prism tech locked safely in the secret basement, only accessible through a wall panel that had to be unbolted. But if they did, they'd find shelves of tech, cabinets of unused red, orange, and even yellow prisms that would fetch thousands, and all manner of illegal objects. A treasure trove worth a fortune, even by Candela's standards, hiding right here in the poorest part of the city.

Truth was, Elias was the best Lumineer in Candela—blessed with a hob's body and mind. He'd taught her a great deal about retrofitting steam tech and clockwork with prisms. Where steam tech required coal, and clockwork required winding, prism tech only required a healthy dose of sunlight every now and again. It was the cleanest, most renewable option in existence. The government hated it. Well, that wasn't quite the truth. The Traditionalists hated it. They hated anything that threatened the prosperity of their coal buisness. But the Technologists fought for it every damned day. And blood stained the hands of both.

She and Elias had a convenient arrangement. The Spectrum required it's Spects to lead double lives. When they weren't working at night, they were infiltrating Candela. Upon earning her half mask, she'd been instructed to find a position where she might blend in. Elias had agreed to take her on as an apprentice machinist. He didn't know what she was at the time, but it didn't take long. Hard as her heart was, she could never hurt him, so she forced him to bear her secret. The only living, breathing person ever afforded such leniency.

...Until Steiner, said the voice in the back of her mind.

"Well, everything checks out here." Clayton came over while Tabby feigned an exchange of coins for the clockwork floor vacuum she held. His partner, Warner, stood impatient at the door. "Sorry for the bother, Newton. Can't be too sure these days." He paused, glancing at her. She hid her disdain for the way his eyes slid over her curves. "We'll report back to the inspector on your behalf. Good day, sir, miss." He tipped his hat.

"Thank you! And be careful out there," Elias called, waiving and smiling that pointy toothed grin of his—the one that said I want to eat you. "Damn mutton shunters," he muttered under his breath after they'd gone.

Tabby sighed and set the clockwork vacuum on the shelf. "I've had enough for one day. I'm going to my room." Without waiting for his response, she stalked off and went upstairs. They shared the loft. A kitchen with a small stove and table, living area, and two bedrooms. Elias was one of the few that had running water in this part of town. It had to be boiled for drinking—but water nonetheless.

Her own bedroom was home. She kept a small workbench at the far side of the room next to the window where she charged her prisms. There was a cluttered cabinet accessed by a hidden panel in the wall. This was where she kept her own personal prism tech, stuff she'd made for herself. Her prism pocket watch, a slew of prism daggers, jewelry, a prism compass, things like that. A small bed sat near the door, with a second-hand nightstand and oil lamp atop it. There was also a wardrobe where she kept the clothing she was particularly fond of.

Sighing, she pulled off her belt and tossed it on the workbench, retrieved the bucket from the alley below, and pulled up the rope ladder. She left the window open for Nit to come in when they finished basking in the sun, then set out her drained prism items on the window sill. The tall buildings around Crock's Row only allowed a short spurt of direct sunlight. But her items could charge with diffuse light, too.

Eager to busy her hands, she set up at her workbench to tinker with a revolver she'd been fussing over for a year now. Riffels, pistols, muskets, revolvers...they were becoming more prevalent in Chroma—though they weren't her preferred method of killing. She didn't take kindly bullets, or the noise. Most Spects avoided them. Nothing matched the the satisfaction of killing with one's own hands.

She'd taken the recycled body of a long barreled revolver and fit it with a glass chamber and gold socket for prisms. If her theory proved true, she could mix seven colors—the light of the rainbow—to create a beam of white. And if she harnessed it properly, the beam would be powerful enough and narrow enough to do some real damage.

As she worked with tweezers, fitting miniature cogs into place, she imagined what she might do with it. It's capabilities would be endless—and convenient—even if she did despise guns.

A short while later, Nit came down to watch her progress. The morning rushed by in a blink, and the nap she promised herself never came. It was late afternoon when she went back downstairs to find Elias clanking around with a female mechanical, muttering to himself. She'd reheated an old pot of coffee on the stove and carried both the pot and the mug with her. She refilled Elias's cup as an additional peace offering for skirting her duties, then went to stand beside him. "What's she supposed to be?"

A gold socket hidden deep in the mechanical's innards meant it would soon hold a prism. "A child's nanny, if I can get her ticking."

"That's what you wanted the blue prisms for?"

His grunt was the only answer. She turned, heading towards the back of the shop—

"I had a visit from Lord Steiner a little while ago."

She faltered, mid-step. "Lord...Lord Conrad Steiner?" She turned back to him.

"Is there more than one Steiner in Chroma?" This time Elias turned to face her, hands covered in grease. He pulled the rag from his apron and whipped them clean—as clean as he could. "We shared a rather interesting conversation."

"How interesting?" Her jaw tightened.

Elias sighed and pulled up a stool, groaning as he plopped down on it. He took the cup she'd left and drank several gulps. "You're not going through with his plan, are you?"

"He told you?! That filthy wretch!" She hissed.

Heat traveled up her neck, quickly morphing to fear. She suppressed a string of curses. Why would Steiner put Elias in danger? He was the closest thing she had to a father. Unless...was this Steiner's way of blackmailing her? Ensuring that she cooperated? Was his offering not enough?

"Steiner had no buisness coming here. And this doesn't concern you, Elias, so why do you even ask?"

"I ask because I am concerned. You can't possibly expect to succeed."

That alone triggered her defiance. "I can, and I will. The Spectrum has controlled me long enough."

"Controlled you? Yes. For long enough—also yes. You know my stance on the matter, but hunting them down isn't going to fix your problems. Don't you see the irony in it? To free yourself from a life of killing, you're going to—what? Go and murder them all?"

"What makes you think that's my intention?"

"I know you, Tabby. Well enough, anyway. You believe that by eliminating them, you'll be free." He paused, drilling into her depths with those eerie green eyes. "Ah. It's more than that, isn't it? I see it now." He sighed. "You can't fix what happened to Clora. You can't bring her back from the dead. You can't change her choice."

She sucked in a breath. "No, maybe not. I know that. But I can seek revenge. Clora deserves justice."

"Justice is not your responsibility. Light will judge them for their actions."

"Light?" She laughed, bitterly. "They deserve death, Elias, all of them—for what they've done." What she didn't say, was that she was just as guilty. She deserved it just as much. Blade or not, she could have made the same choice as Clora.

"And you reckon you're the one to bring it?"

"Why not?" She shrugged, careful not to slosh the remaining coffee from her mug. "Wouldn't be the first time. And if not me, then who?"

Had Steiner told Elias the real reason she was doing this? Of how desperate she was to know the identity of her father? Of how that desperation drove her? Years and years of it burrowed so deep it riddled her bones.

"Justice. Revenge. Whatever you're looking for—it's not the way to fix this. You'll be digging two graves. One for yourself, and one for Reaper."

She tensed at the mention of Reaper's name. "I have no choice, Elias. We're in danger. I can't simply defect. They'll come for me—for us." She hesitated. She was trained to avoid attachments. Yet, she would never forgive herself if they came for Elias. He was the only person in the world she wanted to keep safe.

But if she eliminated them...they would both be safe. The thought washed over her. Alluring in a dangerous way. A world without the Spectrum. A world where her enemies no longer existed. What would it feel like to live life free from fear?

"So, what? You're going to kill every last Spect in the country?!" He shook his head. "What gall, girl! I knew you were the bricky sort, but get a grip!"

"Not every Spect, Elias. Only the ones that matter."

"Lord Steiner cannot protect you if you stay here, Tabby. You should defect into Ipsum where you will be safe. Utilize my connections there."

She snorted. "And leave you behind? Leave this shop? Our lives? What we've built together? What we've accomplished over the last decade? It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world learns what you are. There are few enough Lumineers as it is. Most have all but disappeared. Your ability with prisms..." She glanced around the shop, around the small empire she'd helped him amass. "As soon as the Spectrum discovers you, you'll be branded a traitor. You'll go to the gallows and die a traitors death." She swallowed, hard. "I can't let that happen."

"I am not your responsibility. Don't stick around to protect me."

"I have every intention of it." She snapped, then exhaled, calming her emotions, burying them behind the mask she was forced to wear. She sipped her coffee. He didn't say anything else. Arguments like this had come more and more frequently between them. "I've got a busy night ahead. I'll leave you to your work." She turned and disappeared, feeling his eyes digging into her retreating back.

Nit was upstairs waiting. Her mechanimal didn't immediately speak, which she was grateful for. Her prism objects were charged, so she tucked away the ones she wouldn't need, like the gaudy violet prism necklace, and gathered the ones she would.

"Elias is right, you know," said Nit from the perch on her workbench. So much for silence. "About seeking revenge. You should not do this for the wrong reasons."

"Oh, Light! Not you too. Come on, we've got work to do." She glared at Nit before checking her appearance in the mirror. "You know how I hate the Temple." She was always testy on report nights. Friday came and went each week, and each week she tightened up like an overwound clock. Nit knew it too, so they let it go.

She didn't take the exit at the front of Elias's shop. She used a different one to avoid patterns. Besides, she wasn't keen to see Elias again this evening. She'd suffered enough of his judgement for one day.

Light! Steiner deserved a pommeling. Better yet, a blade to his throat. She had half a mind to visit him tonight, but she had other business. So instead, she stewed.

The flat rooftop of Elias's shop was accessible by a ladder in the loft. From there, she surveyed the world beyond. A whole tangle of buildings and smokestacks that stretched out before her. Chroma. It was hard to say why she continued to call this city home. She could defect, as Elias had suggested. Hiding in Ipsum would buy her time. The Spectrum might not bother to send anyone after her, especially given the charged political climate in Candela. Not for a while, anyway.

Yet, she stayed. Perhaps because Chroma was as broken as she was, and she thrived on it, understood it, related to it. Eliminating the Spectrum might fix it, or it might not. But she was certain it would not fix her. Steiner had been right. There wasn't enough light in all of Candela to erase the things she'd done. The lives she'd taken to spare her own.

She thought of her father and a familiar rage welled up inside of her. He was out there somewhere, tucked under a rooftop in the distance, probably in Catterford. He was rich—she remembered that much. There was little else she recalled. Images of his manor in the countryside with its decadent furniture and numerous house servants. The flashes of her dream life occasionally returned in bits and pieces. And sometimes, if she was especially unlucky, the fuzzy image of a woman who'd become her step mother. She had never known her real mother, not even her name.

There was one memory that had never been drowned out by the horrors of the Spectrum. She remembered sitting on her father's lap while he read to her from Glaston's Fairy Tales. She was three, or perhaps four. He held the book open and pointed at its pictures, reading with a calm voice. He always smelled of cigars. To this day, the scent often brought flashes of this particular memory. Of him reading while she sucked on her two middle fingers—a habit the Spectrum had quickly broken her of.

Now she owned twelve copies of the damned book. Some were picture books and others pocket-sized, like the one she'd taken from Parlow's study last night. It was all she remembered of him, and she hated him for it. Hated him.

There were times when she returned from a difficult kill, when she was feeling particularly vengeful, that she found herself sitting cross-legged on her bed, flipping through her copies, reading the words, but not really reading them. Always simmering over the ways she would make him suffer if she ever found him. None of her plans were quick or painless.

She didn't care that he had once been her father—that she had once loved him. He had abandoned her—given her up to a fate worse than death. What kind of a parent did that to their child? The version of Tabitha Grey that loved him had died in the bowls of the Temple, tortured to death and replaced by One-nine-eight-nine. She'd ceased to be a person, becoming a number instead. A tool. Until she made her first kill. After that, they'd fashioned a new name for her. Her Spect name.

Tempest. A storm that would destroy her father's world and everything he cared for. Starting with the woman he'd married. The woman who hadn't been her mother.

She gazed out over the rooftops at the sun kissed horizon, splashed with hues of tangerine and violet, and her stomach grumbled anxious and hungry. She sighed. The time had come. Climbing the ladder at the back of the building, she landed with a muted thud. She pulled her cowl over her face. Nit transformed into an eagle and took off into the sky while she stepped deeper the alley, welcoming the darkness as she slipped into it, letting the night swallow her whole.