Briny rainwater battered the gallery's glass curtain wall as Ayla huddled in the shadow of The Wolf in the Thorns, her fingers compulsively tracing the fresh cracks in the sculpture's base. Security footage from three nights ago looped in her mind: at 2:47 AM, a gray-hooded figure had driven a chisel through the wolf's amber eye, fluorescent blue ooze weeping like grotesque tears.
"Infrared alarms set to vibrate mode." Max crouched by the window, licorice crunching between his teeth, night-vision goggles reflecting the laser grid crisscrossing the gallery. "But if you keep shaking like that, even the rats in the sewer'll hear your kneecaps chattering."
Ayla yanked her waterproof hood tighter. The scar on her collarbone burned with needle-like intensity in the damp air, as if invisible fingers were crawling up her spine. Last night's lab report still smoldered in her pocket—nanometal particles from the sculpture's ooze matched debris from the explosion three years prior.
Lightning split the clouds as her waistband vibrator erupted. Max's cane-tip camera projected footage of a gray figure tearing at the sculpture's alloy skeleton with hydraulic pliers. Ayla lunged forward with Lucas's silver bookmark, canvas shoes splashing through oil-scented puddles.
"Stop!" Her shout drowned in thunder. The intruder knocked over the Electric Sheep installation, triggering mechanized bleats reciting The Odyssey: "No mortal escapes the threads spun by Fate's spindle—"
Max's cane hooked the intruder's backpack strap, spilling a toolkit of twelve chisels. Ayla grabbed the nearest blade, its handle groove caked with silvery-blue residue under phone light—identical to the burns on Lucas's tattered gloves.
Torrents poured through the shattered skylight. When Ayla turned to assess the damage, her breath hitched—the sculpture's shredded alloy frame was regenerating, ooze solidifying into thorn-like neural networks between fissures. Max held a UV light to the mucus sample, revealing Neumann Group's triangular watermark.
"Not exactly a DIY repair job." He rapped the sculpture's hollow abdomen, the echo mingling with mechanical whirring. "Unless some mutt's turned himself into a 3D printer."
A waterproof compartment snapped open in the toolkit. Ayla pulled out yellowed Explosion Site Investigation Reports, page 47 marked with a photo: Lucas's mechanical right hand clutching an identical chisel, droplets etching her initials into concrete.
Gallery lights blazed to life. Selene's hologram materialized above the sculpture, wedding ring scanning Ayla's pupils with crimson lasers. "Enjoy the auto-repair feature, little sacrifice?" Her laugh dissolved into alarm sirens. "Remember—each drop of ooze devours an hour of your lifespan."
A silver injector rolled from Max's overturned toolkit. German labels blurred by rain except "L.N. Stabilizer." As Ayla poised the needle over her scar, the vent emitted familiar cedar-and-rust scent—a strand of silver-gray hair caught in the filter, root stained with bioluminescent scabs.