Fez

Tick Tock Pt. 1

Case file #420
Entry date: May 17, 2017 EST
Missing Persons: Anthony, Paige; Vancise, Steven; Donald, Richard
Information: All persons have disappeared on South Franklin Street in Titusville PA. There is reason to believe that all three disappearances are related. All missing persons seem to have been going to repair their clocks at "Coo Coo for Clocks" and never returned. There have been no leads as to their location.

I scanned over the last bit of information that was provided and took a swig of my chamomile tea. I personally found it interesting that people were disappearing at a clock shop, that's just unlikely.
"People disappearing in a clock shop? In Titusville no less. Do you have any idea of the historical value of that place?" I asked the director.
"Yes. There was an oil well there once that was created by cybermen stuck in the wrong century, but some bloke named Drake took their blueprints for it," She responded.
"The entire premise of America: Take other people's stuff; change it a bit; call it ours."
"Yeah, just go."
"Will do, Director!" I marched out the door to Bow Tie and we set off to Titusville.
We arrived at around noon in the quiet town, there were a few suspicious bystanders, but all else seemed to be quite alright. Once we entered the clock shop we were greeted by a man in his late 50's with a well groomed beard and vest.
Bow Tie said the general spiel about who we are and why we were there. He seemed to be nice enough until she mentioned the disappearances.
"I'll have you know I would never kidnap anyone!" He said seeming offended.
"Sir, we just need to ask you a few questions," Bow Tie repeated, "Do you have any information about who might have done this?"
He seemed to calm down a bit and answered, "There have been these strange noises outside in the evenings, I have no idea what it is, but I'm sure it has something to do with the disappearances."
"Thank you sir, this information will be useful."
We walked outside and I came up with an idea.
"How about we do a stakeout over here?" I asked Bow Tie.
"Why not it's not like we have anything else to do," She responded.
We found a completely inconspicuous place to loiter, a Pokemon Go gym. We stood there with our phones out until a person carrying a clock walked around the corner. We watched them walk down to the shop until a hand jumped out of an abandoned building and snatched the person. Bow Tie and I shoved our phones back in our pockets and we ran over to the building that the person was pulled inside. We bashed inside only to find no one in there. We searched around until Bow Tie found a hatch under a dirty rug. She opened it up and found it was linked to some sort of spaceship. We went inside and walked around a bit and found a room with two chairs with clamps on the arm rests.
"That can't be pleasant to sit in," I remarked.
I heard a loud ticking noise behind me and turned around to see a robotic dude standing there. I nudged Bow Tie to get her attention, "We have company," I whispered.
The mechanical man lifted up his arm and pointed a blade at Bow Tie, "The brain is compatible stand by for implementation."
"How about we don't do that?" Bow Tie responded.
The man kept a steady advance, I whipped out a bucket of liquid nitrogen from my fez and dumped it on his unsuspecting head. He twitched and convulsed until he froze entirely. I approached him cautiously and removed his mask. He was made entirely of clockwork! I hadn't seen anything so complicated in my life until then.
"That explains the stolen clocks, but what about the people?" I asked myself.
"The brain is compatible? They must be using people to repair something, obviously clockwork men wouldn't be eating people," Bow Tie added, "What I really want to know is why do you have a bucket of liquid nitrogen? Don't you have to have a license for that?"
"Hack-Bat was doing some experiments and yes you do need a license which hack-bat has."
"Oh, we're doing things legally now?"
"No, I have a live animal in my hat. Some people would call that animal cruelty, but they don't have hats that are bigger on the inside."
The clockwork man's gears began to whirr and he started to tick again. He slapped his wrist and disappeared into the haze.
"Well that's very Star Trek, isn't it. He didn't say 'One for beam up' though," I commented.
"We work with aliens for a living, I figured you'd get over this by now," Bow Tie said palming her face.
"I will never get over aliens and making references to Star Trek."
"Let's go search for that clock guy and see what he's up to."