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CLOCKWORK CHRONICLES 1
THE BRIMSTONE KEY
Summer is ending and the Grey Griffins are about to transfer to Iron Bridge, a Templar Academy on the island in the middle of Lake Avalon. Students from all over the world have been invited to attend, and for the first time, the Griffins will meet other kids just like them. Some will have Bounder Faeries, others are actually changelings with strange powers just like Ernie, but all are being trained to fight monsters, faeries, and dark spirits. Rumors soon surface that a mad scientist known as the Clockwork King has returned. The Griffins will have to defeat his robotic war machines before total devastation is unleashed on the world.
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Prologue: THE NIGHTMARE
Max Sumner knew he was dreaming. It was often that way. Yet knowing that didn't provide him any protection from his nightmares.
In this dream, Max was standing alone in a long corridor of misty shadow. The floor was damp, and water poured from the ceiling. The only light flickered through tattered plastic sheets strung across the hallway.
As he walked toward them, Max heard the faint whistle of drills. Lost in a trance, he didn?t notice the fallen bicycle until he tripped over it. As the wheel spun, Max continued down the murky corridor. He reached the ragged sheeting, pushed it aside and stepped through. The temperature plummeted and breath rose from his mouth like a ghostly serpent.
Crunch...
Max looked down. A rotted yellow bag half-filled with decaying newspapers was under his foot. He swallowed hard, and continued his journey toward the light. He was certain that he smelled blood in the air, and the closer he came to the growing brightness, the stronger the odor became.
He passed a discarded sneaker, then a baseball cap that lay on the floor upside down. The name written on the lining was JOHNNY GEIST.
Light was shining through a doorway just ahead. Shadows moved inside the room, rising up and thrashing.
"Help me..." a small voice begged.
Max raced through the doorway only to find an empty room. It was some sort of laboratory with rusty instruments and tools lined up on tarnished trays. Glass jars filled with mysterious liquids crowded the dilapidated shelves lining the walls and a faint red stain ran along the concrete floor toward a drain. In the center of the room stood a long steel table with leather straps for hands and feet. There was no sign that anybody had recently been there? until Max felt a cold hand on his shoulder.
Stumbling backward, Max turned to look into the eyes of a young boy. He was dressed in a striped shirt and jeans, with a lone sneaker on his left foot.
"Did you call me?" Max managed to ask. "Are you Johnny?"
The boy said nothing, but continued to stare unblinkingly. That's when Max noticed that instead of eyes, there were camera lenses in the boy?s sockets. And worse, he saw that the veins in the boy's pale arms were pulsing with a silver-blue glow. No matter where Max?s eyes fell upon the figure in front of him, he found machinery in place of humanity, with very little left of the boy that had once owned the body. But single tear running down his silicon cheek was real.
Max's stomach lurched and he tried to look away, but the same cold hand forced him to look back. This time the boy was gone. Ernie Tweeny, one of Max?s best friends, was standing in his place.
"Help me..." Ernie moaned through blue lips. Max stumbled back and fell against a tray of rusty instruments, sending them clanging to the floor. As Ernie walked into the light, Max saw that part of his friend?s skull had been cut away, revealing a mechanized brain of whirling gears ticking like a clock.
Max cried out as strong hands took hold of him from behind, lifting him into the air. He struggled against the invisible grip as his arms and legs were strapped to the table. A convex mirror hung over the table, and strangely, it wasn?t his own face looking back at him. Somehow Ernie Tweeny had taken his place. Ernie fought to break free from the straps as a man in a stained lab coat walked into view. He was tall, with neatly combed silver hair and as he turned to face Ernie, Max's blood froze. He would never forget those eyes. They were intelligent, cold, and as sharp as the scalpel he held in his gloved hand.
The man raised the rusty instrument that glinted in the half-light.
Max screamed.
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