(click to enlarge)
“This thing is lying to me,” Minjo hissed, her fingers jabbing at keys as the monitor bled error codes in crimson. Lines of text scrolled, stuttered, then reassembled themselves into elegant nonsense. “Every time I think I’ve found a pattern, it shifts. Like the data doesn’t want to be read.”
She spun in her chair and pinned Echo with a sharp look. “You’re the retro-tech historian. Have you ever seen anything like this?”
The air in the workshop smelled of hot oil and static charge, a tang that clung to the back of the throat. Echo clutched her battered field kit and let her eyes wander. This wasn’t the gleaming, glass-paneled lab she had imagined. It was a cathedral of machines that refused to die.
Vacuum tubes pulsed like orange fireflies in glass bell jars. Cables thick as iron vines hung from the rafters. In the corner, a brass automaton stood half-finished, its exposed ribs of gears glinting like the fossil of some mechanical saint.
“I’d almost think you were an Old-Tech fan,” Echo murmured, her voice full of reverent awe. “This place feels… curated. Like a museum where all the exhibits still want to work.”
Minjo gave a short, dry laugh. “Not nostalgia. Discipline. Automata tell you when they break.” She held up Kyra’s smart chip like it was a splinter under her skin. “So. What do you see?”
Echo’s pulse quickened. This was her territory. She slipped on cotton gloves, plucked the chip with tweezers, and slotted it into her portable analyzer—a sleek, Y2K-era contraption bristling with adapters, its glowing cathode display and keys that clacked with tactile defiance.
Her fingers danced. Green phosphor text flickered to life. Her breath hitched. “I’m in.”
The team gathered. Ghost leaned forward, his silence radiating an intense curiosity. Plague hovered, impatience sharp as his grin. “Well?”
“There are two partitions,” Echo said, her voice taut with excitement. “The first is a routing file. It’s… a map.” She zoomed out. A lattice of underworld arteries branched beneath the Forbidden Zone. “Detailed. Marked with hazards, safe zones, and access points. A complete underground network.”
Plague let out a low whistle. “The safest way through the Zone is under it.”
But Echo’s finger lingered on the second file. “This one… it’s labeled as a Sensory Recording.”
Minjo’s head snapped up. “Impossible. We don’t even have tech stable enough for that now.”
“A glitch from another timeline?” Echo teased, but her voice wavered.
Ghost’s hands cut through the air: Why give us a key for a lock that doesn’t exist?
Minjo’s lips curved into something predatory. “Maybe it does.” Her gaze slid to the pedestal.
The Black Snakeskin Box didn’t gleam. It drank. Its scales were a velvety, matte black that devoured light until the eye recoiled, as if staring into a pit that had no bottom.
“I’ve been studying it,” Minjo confessed. “It’s a delivery system. Quantum entanglement, maybe. But that would demand an impossible power source…” Her brow knit tight. “And yet—the same repeating pattern in Jihoon and the box. So I keep asking myself… what feeds on the absence of light?”
“Anti-light,” Echo blurted. “Like antimatter, but for photons?”
Plague snorted. “That’s not science. That’s pulp.”
Minjo waved him off. “No, no. It’s like it draws energy from what isn’t there.”
Ghost signed one word. Clean. Absolute. “Entropy.”
Minjo froze, wide-eyed, like Ghost had just given her the last number in a holy equation. She scribbled furiously across a pad, calculations blooming in jagged lines.
“Echo, build an adapter between that chip and that box. I’ll construct the viewer. Ghost—hack the box’s signal. Find a way to broadcast it back into the Zone and see if you can get a response from Kyra.”
Before anyone could argue, she whirled on Plague. “And you—I have your assignment. Once we find Jihoon, you’re the one who cures him.” She pulled a vial from a drawer; inside were the iridescent keratin crescents. “Claws. Proof he’s mutating. And here—” she flicked biometric scans onto his tablet—“the night before he caught fire.”
Plague’s eyes lit like a gambler’s. “Beautiful. But I need a control. Something from before mutation.”
Minjo hesitated, then crossed to a battered trunk. She dug out a dog-eared math textbook and, from between its pages, drew a delicate paper crane. When she unfolded it, strands of short black hair glimmered in the low light.
For a moment, no one spoke. The air seemed to still around the fragile keepsake.
Plague raised a brow. “You kept this?”
Her face flushed. “Don’t read into it.”
Echo glanced at her, caught the flicker of emotion Minjo tried to bury, and smiled knowingly.
Plague slid the hair into a sterile tube. “Control acquired.” He rolled up his sleeves. “Let’s see what our little monster is made of.”
Hours bled into a blur of frantic creation. Coffee cups stacked like a miniature skyline. Solder smoke, smelling of pine and hot plastic, veiled the rafters. Sparks flew from grinders, and the air filled with the whine of high-speed drills.
By dawn, something immense loomed in the half-light: a freestanding ring of brass coiled with copper, gauges trembling on its frame. Clockwork gears stood poised to turn like the teeth of a steel giant.
Plague lifted his head from a microscope, blinking at the thing. “What the hell is that?”
“A lens,” Minjo said simply.
“Echo, build an adapter between that chip and that box. I’ll construct the viewer. Ghost—hack the box’s signal. Find a way to broadcast it back into the Zone and see if you can get a response from Kyra.”
Before anyone could argue, she whirled on Plague. “And you—I have your assignment. Once we find Jihoon, you’re the one who cures him.” She pulled a vial from a drawer; inside were the iridescent keratin crescents. “Claws. Proof he’s mutating. And here—” she flicked biometric scans onto his tablet—“the night before he caught fire.”
Plague’s eyes lit like a gambler’s. “Beautiful. But I need a control. Something from before mutation.”
Minjo hesitated, then crossed to a battered trunk. She dug out a dog-eared math textbook and, from between its pages, drew a delicate paper crane. When she unfolded it, strands of short black hair glimmered in the low light.
For a moment, no one spoke. The air seemed to still around the fragile keepsake.
Plague raised a brow. “You kept this?”
Her face flushed. “Don’t read into it.”
Echo glanced at her, caught the flicker of emotion Minjo tried to bury, and smiled knowingly.
Plague slid the hair into a sterile tube. “Control acquired.” He rolled up his sleeves. “Let’s see what our little monster is made of.”
Hours bled into a blur of frantic creation. Coffee cups stacked like a miniature skyline. Solder smoke, smelling of pine and hot plastic, veiled the rafters. Sparks flew from grinders, and the air filled with the whine of high-speed drills.
By dawn, something immense loomed in the half-light: a freestanding ring of brass coiled with copper, gauges trembling on its frame. Clockwork gears stood poised to turn like the teeth of a steel giant.
Plague lifted his head from a microscope, blinking at the thing. “What the hell is that?”
“A lens,” Minjo said simply.
Echo’s throat went dry. “We built a Hephaestus Gate.”
Minjo scoffed. “More like a chronal resonance viewer.” She gripped a heavy lever. “Ready?”
The workshop lights dimmed, then the ring flared with a low, resonant hum. Gravity seemed to fail, as if a poltergeist had seized the room—levitating pens, papers, and tools in silent revolt. Gears clanked, relays snapped, and the air thickened, tasting sharply of ozone. The inner circle shimmered, not as a hologram, but like a mirror remembering.
Luminous Roman numerals wheeled into a spiraling vortex, casting an eerie phosphorescence across the room as tools, notes, and loose strands of hair lifted, weightless, into the air.
And then— A faint brass horn. A snatch of jazz, warped by static. The shuffle of footsteps on cobblestone. A man’s laugh, cut short by a stutter of distant gunfire.
The sounds bled into Minjo’s lab like ghosts that had been waiting a hundred twenty-six years to speak. On the monitor, green text scrolled once, then froze:
ARCHIVAL RECORDING — CHICAGO, FEBRUARY 14, 1929
The Engine Room is back! Lots of wonderfully inventive and finely crafted items in this round, it's always such an elegant and imaginative treat. .... After much thought and intense writing, the Apoohis story continues, shedding its cyberpunk and stepping into the Steampunk world. ...For this first post, the gang unlocks a secret thanks to the RS Store Syn Time Twist. It's a clever illusion using projectors, it really does look like a time swirling down the drain. It's mod so you can tint and resize it. It also comes with a hud to tint its hologram colors. ....From Starlit Endeavor is wonderful new outfit with a crazy number of mesh bodies supported, even canidae legs (LaraX, LaraX Flat, Legacy M, Legacy F, Legacy F Flat, Aesthetic, Jake, Anatomy, Ebody, Ebody flat, Ebody Waifu). For Minjo, I used LaraX Flat, and used the pant length option for taller boots. The textures are PRB and with a hud you can customize or tint. ....Matching is the Nomada Journal. It can trigger animations and poses, raise or lower the journal, plus many texture options, and ability to customize the notepad. ....From Apricot Paws are the Faux Fingers with fits for Lara X, Reborn, or Legacy F. They come with a texture hud to change out the look. Textures are PBR. Faux Fingers ....Ni.Ju brings the new Tomtom Hair with style options, mullet with bangs, no bangs, rigged and unrigged, for men and women. The hair is PBR only and comes with many texture options. ....Below you see another view of the Widow's Workshop by Candle and Cauldron. It's beautifully crafted and detailed. A trap door, sliding doors for a backroom, stairwell, fireplace stones, large windows and scenic landscape of Victorian buildings. It comes with a hud to switch turn off the landscape, or switch between PBR textures of tile floor or wood, wood walls or aged wallpaper. ....Standing in for Black Snakeskin Box, is the Wormhole Suitcase by Linkrave. It's a wearable transporter you can program for up to 5 locations. Pretty fun!
On her, Minjo, Robotics prodigy:
Head: LeLUTKA CAMILA [mesh](3990L)
Body: Maitreya Mesh Body LaraX [mesh](2750L)
Body mod: Maitreya Mesh Body - LaraX FlatChest Add-on [mesh](499L)
Body mod: Maitreya Mesh Body - LaraX FlatChest Add-on [mesh](499L)
Setting:
Portal: RSStore RS-Syn-Time Twist [mesh](Engine Room)(525L)
Skybox: Candle And Cauldron C&C - The Widow's Workshop [mesh](Engine Room)(399L)
Suitcase: LINKRAVE Wormhole Suitcase - Aged Brown [mesh] (685L)
BONUS IMAGES: inworld raw shot, hi-res, midday sky.
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