Flashback ( PDFDrive )

Tinker was the tallest elf Sophie had ever seen—and the red curls
piled messily on her head only added to her height. But what truly
made her striking was the abundance of metal strapped to her hulking
frame. A bronze half mask covered the left side of her freckled face,
from the top of her forehead to the tip of her pointed chin, leaving
only her gray-blue left eye exposed. Her right eye, in contrast, was
covered by a round eyepiece that was somehow mounted along her
eyebrow, made of five stacked lenses in varying sizes and colors. And a
cog-covered earpiece curved along the outer edge of her left ear and
dangled down, connecting to a golden choker—similar to the registry
pendants they all wore, but with a small silver sphere instead of a
crystal bound into the center. Her pants were fitted chain mail, and
her shirt was a riveted steel corset, cinching her waist beneath a wide
copper tool belt stuffed with hammers and pliers and screwdrivers—
plus all kinds of twisted, springy things. Copper bracers around her
wrists completed the look, connecting to hinged silver finger guards
that covered each of her pointer fingers like metal scales.
Tinker didn’t smile as the hatch silently sealed closed. She just
stood there, studying them one by one, her gaze lingering on Dex as
she repeated, “You can’t see the trick?”
Dex’s eyebrows scrunched together as he examined the clockwork
monkey again.
“No,” he eventually admitted. He bent to set the creature on the
ground and froze. “Unless it’s this.”
He lifted the marmoset again and pointed to something in its neck
that Sophie couldn’t see—just like she couldn’t understand any of the
Technopathy explanations he rattled off after that. Most of it didn’t