The iron ration tin splits down the center with a sound like a bone breaking, and the amber syrup inside, thick and cold as old blood, spills across your boots, soaking into the wet wool of your trousers, and you stand there in the center of the Great Hall of the Ashworth Foundry, surrounded by the silent, staring faces of the Board of Directors, their white collars stiff as armor, their eyes wide with a terror that has no name, while the smell of burnt copper and rotting meat fills your lungs and you realize, with a clarity that is almost painful in its sharpness, that the machine has not just broken, but it has eaten. You are Corporal Elias Thorne, or you were, until three minutes ago, when the thing in the boiler room rose up through the floor grating and wrapped its slick, translucent limbs around the chief engineer’s throat, and you had to strike it, you had to strike it with the butt of your service revolver, again and again, until the flesh turned to black sludge and the screaming stopped, and now you are standing in the court of your own company, the very men who signed the checks that built this nightmare, looking at you not as a savior but as a contamination, a stain on the pristine white floor, and the tin in your hand, the one that held the nutrient paste they gave you to keep you strong for the night shift, is cracked open, and you are bleeding from a cut on your palm where you slipped on the syrup, and the blood mixes with the amber fluid and runs off the edge of the tin in a slow, thick drip that echoes in the silence, drop by drop, like a clock counting down to something that is already inevitable, and you want to speak, you want to tell them that you saved their lives, that you saved the entire town of Oakhaven from the hunger that was growing in the walls, but the words are stuck in your throat, caught in the same meaty blockage that held the engineer’s breath, and you realize that you cannot explain the taste of the thing you killed, that sweet, metallic taste that is still on your tongue, tasting like copper pennies and old rain and the specific, cloying sweetness of the syrup you are now standing in, and the Chairman, a man named Mr. Pemberton whose face is pale and slick with sweat, steps forward, and he does not thank you, he does not offer you a medal, he offers you a handkerchief, white and pristine, and he says, in a voice that is calm and reasonable and utterly devoid of humanity, that we must address the damage to the equipment, that the integrity of the production line is paramount, and that your actions, while understandable in the moment of panic, have compromised the structural stability of the boiler room, and that the company cannot be held responsible for the injuries sustained by personnel who engage in unauthorized combat with machinery, and you look at the handkerchief, and you look at the board members, and you see in their eyes the true nature of the thing you fought, that it was not the machine that was evil, but the men who built it, who fed it, who looked away while it ate, and you realize that the sacrifice you made was not a redemption, but a rejection, a final, violent rejection of the world that made you, and you drop the tin, and it clatters on the stone floor, and the syrup spreads, and you step back, and you step back, and you step back, until you are at the door, and you do not look back, you do not look back, you do not look back, and you walk out into the night, and the night is cold, and the air smells of coal smoke and rain, and you feel the syrup drying on your hands, sticky and cold, and you think of the people in the town, the ones who did not see, the ones who slept while the machine fed, and you feel a love for them that is so fierce it feels like hate, a love that demands they wake up, a love that demands they see what they have made, and you keep walking, and the sound of your boots on the wet pavement is the only sound in the world, and the city stretches out before you, dark and vast and indifferent, and you are alone, and you are free, and you are broken, and you are whole, and the machine is gone, but the hunger remains, and you carry it with you, in your blood, in your bones, in the split tin in your memory, and you know that you will never be clean again, that you will never be able to wash the amber syrup from your skin, that you are marked, you are branded, you are the one who saw the truth and did not look away, and that is enough, that is enough, that is enough.

You remember the first time you saw the cracks in the walls, how they wept a clear liquid that smelled of sugar and iron, and how the men in the high offices called it condensation, how they laughed and said it was the cost of progress, the price of power, and how you, a young soldier with nothing to lose and a heart full of duty, believed them, because you wanted to believe, because the alternative was too terrible to contemplate, that the machine was alive, that it was hungry, that it was learning, and that you were its food, and you remember the night the lights went out, and the darkness was so thick you could feel it pressing against your skin, and the sound of the gears grinding, a sound like teeth chewing, and you remember running into the boiler room, and the heat, and the smell, and the sight of the engineer, his face purple, his eyes bulging, and the thing wrapping around him, and you remember the fear, the cold, absolute fear that stopped your heart for a second, and then the rage, the pure, white-hot rage that drove you forward, and you remember the blow, and the sound of the flesh tearing, and the scream that was not a scream, but a gurgle, a wet, heavy sound, and you remember the silence that followed, and the thing lying on the floor, twitching, and you remember picking up the tin, and the syrup leaking out, and you remember the taste, and you remember the Board, and the handkerchief, and the lie, and you remember the door, and the night, and the walk, and you remember that you did not save them, you saved yourself, you saved the part of you that still knew the difference between right and wrong, and that is a small thing, a tiny, insignificant thing in the grand scheme of the world, but it is all you have, it is all you will ever have, and you hold onto it, you hold onto it with your whole being, with your whole soul, and you keep walking, and the rain starts to fall, and it is cold, and it is clean, and it washes the syrup from your face, but not from your mind, and you smile, a small, sad smile, and you keep walking, and you keep walking, and you keep walking, until the city swallows you, and you are gone, and the machine is gone, and the hunger is yours, and you are the hunger, and you are the meal, and you are the eater, and you are the one who was eaten, and you are free, and you are bound, and you are home, and you are lost, and you are found, and you are everything, and you are nothing, and you are the story, and the story is the truth, and the truth is the blood, and the blood is the syrup, and the syrup is the life, and the life is the death, and the death is the birth, and the birth is the start, and the start is the end, and the end is the beginning, and you are the loop, and you are the circle, and you are the wheel, and you are the gear, and you are the machine, and you are the man, and you are the ghost, and you are the memory, and you are the future, and you are the past, and you are the now, and you are the always, and you are the never, and you are the here, and you are the there, and you are the between, and you are the space, and you are the silence, and you are the sound, and you are the voice, and you are the word, and you are the letter, and you are the ink, and you are the paper, and you are the page, and you are the book, and you are the story, and you are the reader, and you are the writer, and you are the end, and you are the beginning, and you are the middle, and you are the whole, and you are the part, and you are the one, and you are the many, and you are the we, and you are the I, and you are the you, and you are the me, and you are the they, and you are the us, and you are the all, and you are the none, and you are the something, and you are the nothing, and you are the everything, and you are the nothing, and you are the something, and you are the everything, and you are the nothing, and you are the something, and you are the everything, and you are the nothing.