"You fucking steamhead, don't you dare die!"

Cyril rushed to the mechanic. The smiling mechanic sat on the floor, his apron torn, half of his goggles smashed on his head, his face is soot-smeared, and a pipe protruding from his stomach. He pressed his back against the frame of the steam machine, trying to hold the blood from the wound in his stomach using his own hand.

"That's you, my fine-looking friend." The mechanic said, smiling. "I'm glad you came."

He groaned and closed his eyes.

"What happened?" Cyril asked.

"I miscalculated pressure." The mechanic said, and coughed.

"Shut up, you can't laugh."

How do I know that? Cyril thought immediately.

"Cyril, we must save him." Clara said from behind him.

"I know." Cyril said over his shoulder.

"You are a good man." The mechanic said with difficulty. "I knew that right away."

"I'm not a fucking good." Cyril snapped. "If there was another mechanic around, I wouldn't give a damn about you."

The mechanic coughed. He immediately recognized the stranger as the man on the street. He was covered in blood during the day, but the mechanic lived in a working-class neighborhood. He knew that killing cows on a farm could get your hands dirty. There were a lot of dirty workmen hanging around the baths.

"I recognized you," he said, spitting out a clot of blood, "from that look."

"What look?" Cyril did not understand.

He got up to look around. The hangar looked like a battlefield. The stone floor was partially broken. Along the walls were skeletons of cabinets from which various tools and metal parts had fallen. The frame of the steam engine behind the mechanic bloomed like a metal rose with bits of iron and hollow pipes sticking out of it.

"Too wild look." The mechanic cleared his throat. "You seem to have lost something."

"Fuck you." Cyril snapped.

Clara looked at Cyril and saw the change in his face. In the bathhouse and on the way here, Cyril remained calm. He was angry when they got lost, but he still seemed kind to her. When the explosion occurred, his eyes were bright with determination. However, now, after the words of this unfortunate man with a pipe in his stomach, Cyril frowned. Clara remembered what Cyril had said about his wife and couldn't help feeling sorry for him.

A moan caught her attention. This time it wasn't the mechanic who was moaning. She left Cyril with the mechanic and followed the sound. The groan came from the opposite side of a shattered platform with large wheels. Clara did not know that this platform had been running through the streets of the city during the day.

"Cyril, there's a girl here!" Clara cried. "Easy, baby, it's all right."

"Where is my mommy?" The girl asked.

The girl was hiding behind a large metal cabinet. She was holding a large stuffed toy that looked like a strange reptile. Clara had never seen such an animal, but that didn't matter now.

"We'll find your mother." Clara said. "Cyril, where are you? We need you here."

Cyril didn't respond.

"Wait here." Clara said to the girl, and went back to where she had left Cyril.

He was sitting on his haunches, holding his head and muttering something.

"Cyril?"

"Fuck you." Cyril muttered. "Fuck all of you!"

"Cyril, what's wrong with you?"

Clara was afraid, but at the same time she wanted to help. She crouched down next to Cyril, trying to look him in the face.

"Like that time?" She whispered. "Like after the elemental?"

"Fuk this all!" He jumped to his feet. "Why can't I just die, huh? Why? This moron is dead, look!"

He pointed at the mechanic. He was sitting on the floor, leaning against the frame of the machine, not breathing. The inventor's glassy eyes held their usual amusement.

"Why he's the one who died but not me? Why?!"

Clara was not mistaken. When the mechanic died, Cyril realized his curse again. Again people were dying around him, but he could neither help nor take their place.

"Cyril, I don't know." Clara whispered. "But there's a girl there, and she's still alive. We can help her."

"That's not my problem." Cyril said, turning away and grabbing the basket from the floor. "I'm off. Do whatever you want."

He was almost out of the hangar when he stopped suddenly, as if remembering something. He turned to Clara. The girl still stood there, unable to decide whether to follow her man or help the girl. She refused to accept Cyril's words that he wasn't her boyfriend. Clara had already made up her mind and was not going to give up.

"Take the girl." Cyril said icily.

Clara nodded and hurried around the wreckage. Cyril went to the dead mechanic. He grabbed him by his leg and dragged him along. Out in the courtyard, he came to a small building that looked like a shed. The wooden door had an ordinary lock.

A groan came from somewhere behind. Cyril paid no attention. Letting go of the mechanic's leg, he straightened his hand and knocked the iron lock off with a single blow. He opened the door, took the mechanic's leg again, and dragged his body inside. Then Cyril closed the door from the outside and using his foot trampled down the ground below to prevent the door from opening. He picked up the lock and threw it over the edge of the yard, where small trees were sticking out.

"I'm here." He said, loud enough for Clara to hear.

Clara came out of the hangar. The light from the window of the small house behind him illuminated Clara and the girl beside her.

This girl looks familiar. He thought, looking at the little girl with a stuffed dinosaur in her hand. The girl's other hand was on Clara's arm.

"I saw you in the afternoon with your mother." Cyril remembered. "You wanted to climb on the chariot."

The girl nodded.

"Did she say something?" Cril turned to Clara.

Clara swallowed. There were tears in her eyes.

"Cyril," she whispered. "This girl has lost her mother."

"Let's find her." He said.

"You don't understand, Cyril." Clara shook her head. "Her mother is dead. We found her at the other end of the hangar."

"So that's why you're silent." Cyril said, looking at the girl. "Do you have a name?"

The girl was silent. Then she nodded again and said quietly:

"Alice."

"Do you have daddy, Alice?" Cyril asked her.

The girl shook her head.

"Grandparents, other relatives?"

The answer hasn't changed.

Damn it. Cyril thought, and headed back toward the street.

"Cyril, what should we do?" Clara asked him from behind. "Where are we going?"

"First to the neighbors, then to the pub." Cyril replied without turning around.

"Why the neighbors? Why pub?"

Clara trotted after him again, asking questions. Only this time there was no joy in her voice, and her hand was firmly held by the silent girl.

"To the neighbors to steal a horse. To the pub, because I live there."

Cyril's grim voice completed the picture of destruction perfectly. The night was darkening, and the dogs had stopped barking. The lone moan outside the hangar faded. The mechanic's body lay in the shed.