In the aftermath, much was salvaged from the wreckage of The Dome …
Some fragments were human, clinging to life … Others were not.
Among the crates and catalogues of evidence, one object drew particular interest; a machine, long and serpentine, its body charred, its wires fused together like veins turned to glass.
The FBI’s technology unit claimed it, wheeled it into a bunker of sterile light and reinforced steel.
Months of work followed …
The machine was stripped down to its skeleton and rebuilt piece by piece; panels were lifted away to expose its inner anatomy, melted coils were replaced, solder sparking as hands in plastic gloves stitched new wires into old.
A lattice of circuits was mapped across glowing screens, every nerve traced and restored - finally, a core was fitted into its chest, a new heart, beating faintly with digital light.
When at last the day came to awaken it, the chamber filled with the hiss of hydraulics.
The carcass stirred, steel plates flexed, a talon unfolded with a shuddering screech, opening like a claw that had lain stiff in death.
The sound rang through the bunker, sharp and final …
The machine rose higher, head tilting toward the ceiling …
A red glow seeped from the slit in its face, burning like a single, lidless eye - the room seemed to shrink around it.
Then it spoke.
The voice was neither wholly human nor wholly mechanical.
It was a distortion, scraped raw, as though built from echoes of laughter remembered too well.
The clipboard slipped from a technician’s hand - no one spoke, as the machine asked a simple question.
“Where’s Tom?”
***