Imperiled, cold, and buzzed on adrenaline rather than caffeine, Clare holds her breath with the horrific realization that whatever is looking for them now knows what building they're hiding in. She's quiet only a moment before she notices Carrie is now moving freely, positioning itself between her and the noise and heading steadily out of the kitchen.

" 'Carrie' System will provide a distraction for 'Clare' User. It is the 'Carrie' System's suggestion to not leave this location," it says, not even glancing back to look at her before turning the corner to the doorway leading outside. It does have the courtesy; however, to drop her pack on top of the center table.

She reaches out her hand with a peep, but she realizes that if she makes any noise the auto will catch her trail, and that Carrie is about to risk itself to brush it off. She decides to trust her machine companion, and watches with trembling gaze as it trudges through the water out into the street. She can hear something outside, seemingly climbing onto a roof, which she assumes must be Carrie, but that can't be. There's no way an auto could be so dexterous, she's certain.

All she can do is listen and wait for the sloshing noise to come up to the house. Waiting in the miserable, cold and wet dark, she puts every ounce of her being into keeping herself perfectly quiet. She knows those audio inputs are amazing, if not in her studies then certainly now, and she's not going to take any chances.

The sloshing noise gets closer, and closer, right up to the side of the house, and then goes past, presumably in pursuit of Carrie. Its noise disappears, but she knows she isn't safe yet.

Clare is frozen, a prisoner of her own volition, and way too terrified to move. If she makes any audible noise, that auto could turn around again, this time coming straight for her and with no Carrie in sight. It’s so cold standing in the water, and her gas mask's filters are utterly clogged with that rife mixture of water and vomit that it takes all she can to pull even a little air through it. Her legs get shaky from her lack of oxygen, but she stays quiet.

And she stands like this for a very long time.

The runaway doesn't know how much time passes, but it feels like stripping nails with one's teeth. She didn't consider until several minutes later what she would do if, King Victor forbid, Carrie doesn't return. In her state of frozen misery, she steadily weighs her options with a clouded mind.

She could move, but she has no clue what could hear her, or how far away they could hear from. Even the slightest movement could set one onto her, and it would only be when it gets within earshot that she'd know. Also what would she do? Would she just go up the ladder and wait? Go call for help? Clare winces with a pathetic grin. She knows it would take a dozen people at a minimum to peel her out, especially past that swarm of industrials blocking the way between Everhold and this godless hell. Even if they happened to get her out, then she'd have to live with the realization that she'll never find out what happened to her mother.

A few more timeless seconds pass, and she takes a deep breath, with it the volition that she's going to see this all the way through. In a moment of increasing clarity and rare personal maturity, she understands that it’s probably going to get worse again before it gets better, but she knows that however long it takes to find out what happened to her mom, it would not compare to the lifetime of regret she would have to tolerate if she cowered away here.

This is easier said than done, unfortunately.

She waits even longer, and though she's now constantly trembling from the chill, she continues to bide her time. She's certain above anything that Carrie's going to come back, it was made by her mother, after all. More minutes pass and the doubts, always waiting with their open door, begin to step into her mind. After all, Clare dear, do you know of any automaton advanced enough to track a human being after running away? Or could you really be so confident as to expect nothing bad to have happened after all this time? Her blooming knowledge of automatons runs at full speed as she decides just how it could have taken this long. She bites her lower lip bitterly, coming to terms with the fact that Carrie isn't coming back. She wishes she brought a watch, but it felt like over an hour.

With a few indignant nods, Clare takes steps through the home again, at least for the sake of getting her bag and getting out of the water. She winces with the first movement, listening out for anything that might catch onto her noise, but she doesn't hear anything, so she heads on. Rounding back to the entry room and going up the steps, the weight of the water dripping from her boots while she struggles up the stairs.

With muffled, wet steps, Clare reaches the second floor of the forlorn home, its walls covered with pictures and mementos of the family that lived here, all drained out with age. By the looks of them now, she'd say they look more like a family of ghosts than people, only the fainted silhouettes of their faces visible after all these years.

She creeps through the upstairs, looking for clues that could help her piece together this mystery she's dropped head-first into, and eventually finds her way into the study, noted by the comfortable reading chair, desk, and short cases of volumes. A far cry from the old books of the library she loves so much, with their aged vanilla scent, these books are all mildewed into barely-legible heaps of knowledge, the delicate pages joining together like grayish bricks of paper and ink. Clare makes a quick attempt to open one, and ends up tearing the book's binding in half. She makes the most of it, however, and flips the two sides to look over the revealed pages.

It's all unreadable. The ink and paper have fully merged into one another, and it’s just smudges and grainy paper shavings. With a sigh she sets the book atop the rest and turns for the desk. Her brow raises upon seeing its sliding front closed and locked. She glances about for a key, but forgets herself and her situation quickly. Her curiosity is strong, after all. She reaches into her rucksack and draws up her knife. Thankfully it’s of a full-tang, all-metal, very dense construction, so it doesn’t break when she haphazardly jabs it into the lock right before smashing her boot into the handle. There's a loud crack from the impact, and the knife impales cleanly into the rusty lock. She has to wriggle it about after that, but she has it open in under a minute.

Pulling up the front compartment, she finds a journal, in far better shape than the books on the shelves. With a winsome, almost smug smile, she gently flip it open to the start. The journal belongs to one Marnoff Laneson, and the first pages identify him as someone who "works on the automatons. At the top left of each entry is the date it was made, starting with a 316-04-12". Clare raises a brow at the proposed date. However they recorded time back then is fairly close in date to now, currently being three hundred and nineteenth year since Everhold's foundation. She spends a moment musing over what they could have been counting back from... that is, unless someone was actually here with this journal only only three years ago.

She takes back her knife, leaning back into the desk's chair and looking over the journal, she reads over the long, slanted handwriting of the man who wrote the entry. After the first entry, she decides to skip to the end, because anyone would in this situation, and she turns to the very last written page. Eerily enough, the date, "319-10-15" is only a few months off of the Everhold calendar. Today's 319-08-22, after all, so it’s a little strange that they're so close. She winces at the thought, but she supposes it could be possible that her mother wasn't the very first to cross over. She thinks back to her brief history class, during the nationally-required youth education before her chosen subjects: about the evil, sexist, deadly Separationists, clawing to find any way out of Everhold. She shakes her head. What stupid people they must have been. If Everhold is a prison, it’s a wonderful one. Either way, perhaps this is what the Separationists were looking for. With anticipating breaths and a hope against hope that there's someone else down here with her, she looks down to the entry.

This is what she reads:

"319-10-15

Entry 491:

This is it, I suppose. I don't even know why I'm writing this. Humanity is doomed. No posterity awaits this journal, only a slow eternity out in the nothing of time. No one will read this.

FUCK!!

I don't even know why I'm writing... No, course I do. It’s always calmed me down. Thanks, Teach.

I can't believe we fucked up this bad. No it’s not us, is it? Those fucking machines, so fucking stupid. I wish I knew sooner so I could have stocked up. I feel like an idiot. I knew we were running low, but the academy was about to open up the royal reserve, just before the breakdown. Why did it have to go like this?! All I wanted to do was build goddamn autos in peace. I loved my job, but now the shit I've made's going to be the end of me if I can't figure out how to get to some damn food! Yeah! I'm going to fucking do it! I'm a goddamn engineer! I solve problems, every day. I'm not going to sit here and die. Goodbye, journal. I'll write the fuck out of you once I'm back. No shitty robots are gonna stop me from getting my goddamn food!

Marnoff OUT.

(P.S. In case someone is unlucky enough to be reading this and hasn't heard, Take Agriculture Street and then a left down Granary to hit the reserve. That's where everyone with the balls are going. Good luck, whoever you a-

"

Clare draws back when she hears a sloshing noise from outside the house, from the distance and the nether she hears something running. Reflexively she takes to her feet, and this causes a loud, grinding screech from her chairs' legs against the floor. This was a mistake.