abigail and comet looked towards one another as the body of charles boston lay at their feet, now completely lifeless, his one remaining eye, staring blankly in locked utter terror. "his use to me has come to an end," comet said as he floated next to abigail, the blue flames shooting out of his aorta like a heart beat. "we must find cassandra, quickly before she does something untoward to our goals. abigail did you find anything of use in the library?" abigails good eye rolled towards the mechanical heart next to her. her mouth started to open as the crystal shavings in the night air drifted slowly to the ground. "i wasnt able to find anything in the humans library except old excerpts from their town diaries. and even then, there wasnt any mention of a way out of this place. there was however... never mind." comet was interested in what abigail had to share, but time was of the essence, and they had both felt the flow of energy, which meant that another mechanical heart had activated. 

"you must find a host body comet, you-" "SILENCE! we are mechanical hearts, built by our god, of the mechanical hearts, the great dr. david jerimiah linker! we do not need such pitiful excuses for hosts such as these when they do not give us the proper amount of strength... and that buffoon that you see before you, lain to rest by our very chains, was of no help to me at all!" comet said agressivley, as his chains slid out of his aorta, still snatching at the air like birds waiting for their mother to feed them. "he helped you find me, didnt he?" abigail said simply, but that was enough. instantly, her hosts bodies useless eye was ripped from its socket, connected only by the optic nerve. "i will not have to make another expample out of your host, will i? the next time i am pushed to this level, i will take your other eye... and then you will have to find another host to sit comfortably in." abigails heart trembled, not from fear, but from the excitement of it all. "i want you to do it, you know as well as i do there are plenty of hosts to be found." 

cassandra left jordan in control of her own thoughts, the mechanical heart beating fiercely as jordans body moved of its own accord. cassandras wires wrapped around jordans bones with excitement, bonding her own technology to jordans organic structure as she did so. the night air became insteively cold as patches of blue started appearing on jordans body. 'wha-what are y-y-you doing to me!?' the child thought, though as terrified as she was, she had quickly become used to the idea, and couldnt wait for her death to come. "your death will not come little one, not in a long time. these chains of mine-" caasandras voice shaking with great excitement as the chains emerged through jordans fingernails, "will help our kind achaive their goal... escape from this accursed crystal prison from which your people have been trapped in... for how long, i do not know." the chains slid back into her fingernails, only stopping for the three pronged claws to invert themselves to be used at a moments notice. 

"do you know ANYTHING of the outside world, jordan?" cassandra asked slowly, excited at the prospect of all the humans she would kill off in order to make room for her kind, the mechanical hearts and their god, the great dr. david jerimiah linker. "neither do we, for our kind only knows the confines of this place, this town of delcru, and nothing more. we know not of the day or night, or of the peoples or places outside this prison. but soon enough we will... our god has been revived by one of our own... and as soon as we find a place weak enough to escape, we will take over the rest of the planet." jordans thoughts were wild and shaky, and kept getting more so till her thoughts couldnt make sense to cassandra, but somehow they did. "calm down child! you are useless to us dead... although for a host, you would be excellent example of a perfect melding between our kind and yours, as the doctor initially intended..." cassandra said happily. jordans thoughts were closer together, but warbled and twisted as though under water. 

the body of the great dr. linker shambled onward as strange covered the weak areas with an ever expanding length of gload, platinum and bornze wires that reinforced both muscle mass, patches of missing skin, broken bones and repaired his missing eye, a bronze orb with two spirals, one gold, and the other platinum. "never fear, the great strange linker is here." it said through gravely tones, as fourteen chains snaked their ways through viens that once pumped blood but now pumped metal links together. they all stopped once they reached the spine and wrapped themselves around it and ripped their way out of his back. the night air was chilly indeed, but stranges over all goals wouldo nly make the chilliness seem like a hot day in a sauna. "no more games 'doctor'. now we play by the god of the mechanical hearts rules." strange said, his every step cracking the ground underneath his tread outwards. 

"i will destroy everything... destruction... destruction... oblivion awaits!" strange laughed into the night, the dead town, the remaining survivors, the crystal dome itself, shivering with the laughs of strange thoughts, nightmarish visions, and the fourth mechanical heart. 

"long... live... the god of the mechanical hearts.... ME!"