When Randal finds an injured girl, cruelly beaten and cut apart by the genetically modified crow boys, he dreams of rising above his status as a clockwork man and becoming a hero. With the help of his adopted father, Jackson, Randal patches the girl together and nurses her back to health using the same clockwork cybernetics that brought Randal back from death.
But grim streets of Downside are no place for fairy tales, and gangs do not let people walk away without paying a price. As the crow boys gather, demanding Randal turn over their injured prey, the clockwork man will find out the hero's path can be deadly.

Winner of the 2009 Aurealis Awards for best Science Fiction Short Story, and also available as part of the collection Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet.