September

"The dingey creak emanated through the empty hallways. Elfonse shook his head at it, oblivious of the source of the noise. The dust swirled around him as he brushed his mop up and down the corridor, trying to finish his days chores. Outside, light was casting into an otherwise empty laboratory for clinical research.

The cogs zoomed by. They traveled past the dusty laboratory, perfectly in fashion with the road around them. They carried other workers and automatons, just like Elfonse, on their way to work, chores, and errands. The city was bleak and mechanical, various harsh lights bleeding over an iridescent landscape of steel and wires.

The day was just like any other. The automatons had left for work, empty and hollow of emotion. They had taken their road cogs various places, all glowing and mechanical, and committed to their labor again. The various parses of natural land contained ragged leaves, bare trees wasting away in wretched grass, here and there all over the city.

Elfonse leaned his mop in a corner of the corridor, wheezing at his shift nearly being finished. His dead eyes looked out the window, feelings of remorse and trepidation still easing into his soul. The orange morning light was almost clearly up, and a morning sun shone brightly in the sky. Elfonse wondered at it. Oh well, at least it was doing its work.

An alarm loudly blared through his assigned vacant laboratory. Elfonse looked up sharply. This was a strange alarm. He noticed smoke pouring down the road outside, and a woman began screaming in the distance. What was happening? He rushed to the loudspeaker and began listening for announcements.

The screaming was joined by more screams as the smoke became acrid and cloudy, billowing in further intensity in the roadways. Cogs pulled over, as everyone became aware of something in the sky. Shrieking and pointing, Elfonse followed the crowd's gaze to a very tall building somewhere in the distance.

The Hamien Towers. Shit. Not what Elfonse would have expected. Twin towers of grace and majesty, they were home to the great leaders who told Elfonse what to do. A plane had apparently hit one of the towers, and a big one too, at quite high speeds. How could this happen?

Elfonse's stomach doubled, a strange warmth coursing through his system at the same time as feelings of deep fear and dread. There was another plane. Elfonse shielded his eyes as a bright flash hit his face. The second plane had slammed into the second building, a resounding boom echoing through the city's buildings and wires. The explosion was rocketing straight towards them.

Elfonse remembered something, an ancient riddle he was taught as a young worker, about a dark prince seizing power over the city's masters in pillars of flame, as his heart froze. For the last second before the flames engulfed the building, Elfonse's automaton mind had returned to life fully for one instant.

Something had happened..."