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said Julian, his voice sharp, final. “What we need from you is the overall design, the base mechanical construction. You have the most experience with designing mobile war machines and understand best how such a machine needs to function. Therefore this task falls to you.”
    â€œBut—­”
    â€œYou have until Thursday.”
    â€œAnd if I can’t finish it in time?” she asked, her voice rising.
    â€œYou will. You are rather resourceful when you need to be.”
    Petra just stared at him.
    â€œNow go,” he said, waving her off. “We are done here.”
    She swallowed hard, the last of her arguments dissolving into silence as she rose from her chair and turned toward the door. Her mind whirled through a jumble of half-­imagined designs, trying to think of what she might be able to cobble together in a week.
    â€œOne more thing,” he said amiably, masking his words with the feigned politeness she so despised. “The arrangement I previously proposed still stands. Defy me, try to delay this project any further, and it will be the end of you.”
    She hesitated at the door, her throat suddenly dry. Slowly, she turned around and met his smoldering copper stare, her chin set, not daring to quail under his gaze. “Understood, sir.”
    â€œGood.” He smiled pleasantly then, his casual handsomeness lighting a fire in her stomach. “Then I look forward to hearing of your progress. Do keep me updated, Miss Wade.”
    She nodded curtly. “Of course.”
    When he said nothing else, she took it as her signal to leave. She clenched her hands into fists. A week! How could he expect her to come up with a workable design in so little time? And if she failed . . .
    She pushed through the door to the stairwell and leaned against the wall, kneading her brow. She’d have to come up with a design—­and fast.
    There was no time to panic.
    P etra stood over the drafting table in her hidden subcity office, a dozen nonviable war machine schematics littering the desk and floor, the designs crude and uninspired. She stared at the crumpled paper in her hand, anger rippling down her arms. She didn’t want to build this. She didn’t know how.
    Yet Julian had given her a week to deliver a completed design.
    She didn’t even know where to start.
    Because of the war machine’s requirements, any remnant of the automaton was useless. The new machine couldn’t be powered with clockwork or controlled remotely, which meant she would need to increase the internal cavities of the machine to house the pilot and controls. And accounting for the added size and weight of an engine, the leg frames would need to be much larger in order to support the additional weight and maintain stability. While balancing the machine with automatic gyroscopic adjustments was ideal, the technology was still in its infancy. Yet relying on manual compensation risked human error. She focused on her notes, absently tapping her pencil against the desk. Perhaps the potential danger of tipping the machine could be reduced if she designed a regulating feedback system to inform the pilot to manually adjust the machine as needed, but that would require a complex system of weights, levers, gyroscopes, and wiring to manage.
    And that still left the matter of her sabotage.
    She’d be damned if she gave Julian the designs for a fully functional war machine—­not without a backup plan.
    With sufficient time, she might be able to do it—­the complete design, the sabotage, the subterfuge to hide her treason. In fact, she was certain she could. But to design all of that within a single week, to present a buildable design to the council by Thursday, was next to impossible.
    But that was the deadline given to her.
    She stared at the three sketches in front of her—­a big, hulking beast with stout arms and widely spaced legs, a four-­legged contraption with a