Raizen launched, the harness hissed, and everything that should have been clean turned into a shove in the wrong direction. He hit the reinforced panel shoulder first and left a perfect sweat print of a mistake. The plate on his back rang like a dull bell. Gravity remembered it had a Job. He slid down until he was a heap, half laughing, half out of air.
Somewhere behind the clipboard, Kori sighed. Thɪs chapter is updated by nοvelfire.net
"That is the fiftieth wall this week," she said. "You’re running out of walls, Raizen."
"Good thing I brought a spare spine," he managed.
The training hall absorbed the noise like it had seen worse. Crosshatched drains waited under the floor for accidents. The black plate on Raizen’s back thrummed against bone. Two thick cables hooked over his shoulders and down to the actuator bars along his arms. When he breathed, tiny pistons twitched at his triceps like shy animals.
Saffi peeked from behind a crate, grease on her cheek. "Ten out of ten splat. Three out of ten landing."
Esen, legs crossed on the edge of the central ring, raised a hand like a judge with a chalkboard. "Form’s exquisite. Style points for the slide."
Kori did not look at either of them. She tilted her head, eyes on Raizen, then on the long crack that ran spider-thin from the point of impact. She wrote something on the clipboard in the kind of handwriting that made welders behave.
He stood, wincing. The harness translated the motion a half second late, all weight and no grace. Everything about it was almost. The back plate sat too far off his spine. The shoulder cables dragged. The arm bars were thicker than they had any right to be. It looked like progress. It felt like someone else’s coat.
"I can go again" he said.
"You have been going again for four hours" Kori exhaled.
"Five more tries. No, look. Three."
"Zero more tries. Because I enjoy my walls and because you are about to cross the line where pain starts pretending to be courage."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. The harness clicked once, a little embarrassed. His breath fogged the cold in front of him. He could still feel the first impact in his teeth
Kori tapped the plate with two fingers. "You have a spine. It is not this one. Sleep, food, thought. Then we open it up and remove everything that looks like it wants to kill you."
"It all wants to kill me," he said.
"Then we make it ask politely."
She gestured at Saffi. "Document the wiring. We are thinning the arm bars by two millimeters and moving the cable anchor down a notch. If you argue with me I will throw you at another wall."
Saffi saluted with a wrench. Esen slid off the ring and offered Raizen a water flask.
"You good?" Esen asked.
"I’m fine" Raizen said, breathing in the ribs, not the throat. He took the water. "Again tomorrow."
Kori’s eyebrow traveled a short distance. "Tomorrow, maybe. Twelve hours from now, no."
He laughed, because the laugh was easier than the thing on his back. He had spent weeks learning the difference between harder and truer. The harness did not know that yet. It tried to be loud where he needed it precise. It tried to throw him where he needed to exist.
"Alright" he said. "I’ll cool down."
"Do more than cool down," Kori said, already writing. "Go outside. Look at something that is not a wall."
He peeled the band straps and unclipped the belt. Not off, not yet. The harness hung looser as he wandered toward the side doors, into the corridor where the sound of the hall dulled to a hum and the smell shifted from oil to disinfected air. Light from the high windows came in obedient stripes that made everything look sorted. He liked it less out here. Out here, order was a costume.
He leaned against the cool of a pillar and let the burn in his shoulder become a steady heat. That was when he heard them. Two voices, low, on the other side of the service door that opened to the exterior stair.
"Underworks thing again," the first voice muttered. Heavy boots. A belt that clinked when the owner moved. "Collector’s run. I want it by tonight."
"Lovely" said the second, lazy, the kind of lazy that knew it was safe. "Another man with pockets full of wind."
"It’s a woman" the first said. "And I’m pretty sure she can’t pay. If she can’t, we take something that can pay."
The lazy one snorted. "Or we make the evening worth the trip. Heard she’s thin. This one’s going to be fun."
There was a small silence before the first voice made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost not.
Raizen’s fingers tightened around the strap at his ribs. The harness felt heavier, as if it understood. The heat in his shoulder cooled into something hard. Memory laid itself over the corridor like ash. Doors under the Underworks that only opened in one direction. Men in the wrong uniforms. A woman trying to breathe through fear and smoke.
Kori’s voice was somewhere behind his ear. Sleep, food, thought. Then we open it up.
He pushed off the pillar. Not yet, he told himself. Not yet, not in this hallway. He needed to know where. He needed to know when. When rage showed up first, it tripped over the same step every time.
The service door opened. Two Wardens in the black and steel of authority stepped out, half lit from the spill of outside light. The lazy one cracked his neck. The other adjusted his baton like it was a piece of jewelry. They didn’t see him. They did not have to look where they were used to being allowed. Their voices trailed down the stair and into the city.
Raizen waited. Ten breaths. Twenty. When the hall noise covered his exit, he slipped through the door and followed the stair down two levels, then three, until the air got colder and the smell of oil gave way to vented heat and old water. Neoshima got stranger the lower you went. Shine at the top, work in the middle, bones underneath.
He wrapped the harness straps tighter to stop them from rattling and pulled his jacket over the back plate. He walked like a student who had permission to be anywhere. The trick was never to act like a secret. Secrets drew eyes.
By the time the light outside had thinned toward evening, the under-arteries of the city were working. Steam rose where it had always risen. People were the same size as yesterday and a little older. He took the lanes he remembered, careful to stay out of sight. The Underworks had improved in the ways that didn’t really matter.
He was three turns from the right kind of quiet when a shadow pulled off the wall and stood up.
They stared at each other, all surprise and no show. Her hair was tied back with a strip of cloth. Her eyes took in the jacket bulge at his back and the wire that tried to hide too obviously at his shoulder. She did not ask. He did not explain.
She reached into her pocket and held out a folded square. A dark bandana worn thin at the edges. He took it.
"Then I guess you’re not the only one" she said.
He nodded. "You heard the same thing."
"I heard it yesterday" she said, voice as flat as a blade laid on a table. "They apparently postponed it to tonight. Thought they would be clever and take the back walk."
She tilted her head, then moved. He fell in beside her without having to remember why it had always been easy to move with her. They said nothing. There was a time for count and there was a time for quiet. He tied the bandana low and loose. The city’s breath lifted it at the edges.
They cut down a tight corridor where the piping got brave. Feris avoided the puddle with the rainbow sheen without looking. Raizen mirrored her steps. He knew the reason for every turn and not the reason for the one after. He let her choose the shadows. If there was ever a test of whether they were still a team, this was it. Coordination with no clock. Trust with no rehearsal.
They reached the last corridor before the alley. Feris held out a hand like a barrier, and he stopped. She pressed two fingers to the bricks, then to the air, a sign for sound. He heard it after. One man in authority boots, shifting his weight to entertain himself. Another set of steps lighter, almost on her toes. The narrow sound of pleading.
They stepped to the mouth of the alley and saw the evening already doing its worst. A Warden with a shaved head and a baton that had been polished more than used. A woman with a cleaning apron and hands that had learned to make themselves small. The man had a smile that did not reach his eyes.
"Tax is due" the Warden said. "When you can’t pay, you pay in another way."
"I told you!" the woman said. "He’s sick. We will have it in four days. I can give you half now."
"Half is not a number" the Warden barked. "Half is a dream."
He lifted the baton like a teacher lifting a pointer. The woman flinched. The alley drew in its breath.
Then a brass piece met skull with a sound like a dropped tool on a pipe.