the chains, tipped with three pronged claws hovered, shaking with anticipation of another spatter of blood covering their metal tips. cassandra could feel the thirst for blood driving through the viens to which the mechanical heart was connected. she repeated herself sternly, in hopes of squelching the overp owering hunger for sustenance her body craved. "i will not harm you little one. return to your places my children, your thirst shall not be quenched this time." the chains shook and rattled in their dissapointment in cassandra, the programming the great dr. linker put inside them becoming twisted in its deathly laws. the child looked into the cold dead eye of the thing she had clung to with out reservation.

"wh-what are you!? you are a monster! GET AWAY FROM ME!" she screamed as she tried pulling away from the thing that held her tight. "i will not harm you little one." was all cassandra could state firmly. "i do not know where i am, and i require a guide through this town of yours." her thoat whistled through the hole in her neck as she spoke, maggots occasionally falling out from a sudden shift in her wieght. "do you know where the other two are?" the child didnt know what cassandra meant by her kind, until she looked into the hole in the undead creatures chest and saw the bronze, gold andp latinum wiring, the three gears that stuck out and turned silenlt, as well as the three metal segmented hooks which hooked onto the first, third, and second chambers of the heart. "you... youre one of them arent you?" the child asked as cassandra wiped away the tear that traveled down her cheek.

the city of delcru was incased in a dome of bioluminecent crystal seven hundred feet above even the tallest of sky scapers, casting a bright, warm light during the day, and a shivering cold darkness which enveloped delcru in thick fog at night. the buildings, which were from the eighteenth century never saw the rest of the world as time progressed, so the architecture neverp rogressed beyond what the founders knew. before the accident, ideologies had grown and evolved from the founders laws, and on occasion had given way to revolutions, riots, and natural disasters along the course of history.  after two hundred years, new ideas began to stagnate from the lack of technological progress, leaving one third of delcru in the oil lamp era, one third in the coal burning era which seemed to drive away some of the fog in the area, as well as thin the layer of crystaline covering to where a few sparse hole could let in fresh air. the last third was a combination of the oil lamp and coal burning eras, and was the most suceptible to raging fires.

the mechincal heart that was using abigail as a host returned to the body and with a few wires, got the body up and moving again. "this is useless." abigail said, though the words were not her own. half of her face had been burnt off in a fire when she fell to the floor after her heart attack, knocking a red hot kettle of boiling water onto her face in the process. "i need to find some more information, though that diary did seem interesting, i wil have to come back to it as soon as i can." as abigail walked away from the library, she thought she felt a familiar wave length near by. as she rounded the corner of the old broken down bank, she passed an elderly couple that had sleeping the night before, but had died in their sleep. the mechanical heart noticed through her one good eye that there were holes in their chests and sparks coming out of them. "most likely mechanical hearts that failed to merge properly with their chosen hosts. where is he!?" 

boston and comet had been practicing their walking when boston noticed through the feeling left in his skin that night was rapidly approaching. 'comet, i think we had better go inside unless you want to lose this body of mine to the bitter cold of the delcru nights.' comet had been surveying the area around the bakery, highschool and police station, all around were either the bodies of victims of the mechanical hearts initial attack, of failed merging attempts that resulting in either the host spontantiously combusting from the ribcage up, or simply falling down, occasionally twitching until the machine would explode. the duo were only a few miles from the huge crystaline wall which seperated them from the outside world. but it was thin enough to where the roar of an airplane passing echoed through out the dead city. 

'simply amazing, isnt it?' comet began, hoping for some decent conversation. 'i have no interest in the progress of the outside world, my kinds only goal is to find an exit out of this place, where we can slowly destroy the rest of the worlds population. this containment is only a small obstical, that can be dealt with when we have the proper tools for the job." comet answered emotionally unattached to his hosts need for friendship. 'your kinds only goal is oblivion of everything else... isnt it?' boston asked, sad that he and his fellow towns people had to have such a plague set upon them. "yes.  unless i am mistaken, and we usually are not, that is our only goal in our design. you see boston, dr. linker... i should say, the late dr. linker, had made two million of us to kill of a paltry city with a population of only one hundred thousand and fourty three... that is our only function to kill. i must find the other two..."

some where in the city,  a fourth mechanical heart activated with a very specific goal:

the revival of dr. david jerimiah linker himself.