With a groan and an annoyed huff, I set the last protein vat down carefully, then peeled off the "metal gloves" I'd cobbled together for the job. They kept my claws from tearing the lining and dumping me into a fresh bath of nutrient gloop, which had already happened once in the badlands and had not improved my mood or aroma. Night air cut through the lingering stink, cool on my face. I fanned my wings a few times to wick off heat and started for the ruined district. It'd been a week of stealing industrial quantities of food, a week of rescuing people from rubble and destruction, a week of spending every minute either hunting monsters or helping reinforce buildings to make them safer during the night.

For a heartbeat, I considered trying another takeoff test. The thought died as soon as I remembered how many times I had kissed dirt today. I knew I could fly if I could just catch the wind the way it had worked the first time. The memory sat there like a half-formed word on the tip of my tongue. Back then it had been pure instinct. Now that my brain was actually helping, it kept getting in the way. That could be a problem for future Axel. Right-Now-Axel was tired, sore, stinky, and frayed along the edges in a way that made my thoughts skid.

The district groaned with settling metal and distant wind. A rusted sign tapped against its frame. My shoulders throbbed from hauling. And I wanted a shower so bad it was a physical ache.

"You were tracked."

I did not jump and shriek like a little girl.

I jumped and shrieked like a seven-meter tall blade monster.

Shadow was right there, sitting on the rim of the metal vat like a smug gargoyle, arms crossed in disappointment, the rest of her wrapped in that black-shadow-y-ness that made the eye slide. My "hello" made her flinch, and I cackled inwardly.

"You can talk now?"

"Harrrd." The word felt like pushing a stone through stiff lips. I had been practicing. It still hurt. "Tracked?" She pointed up. I squinted until my eyes watered and the stars doubled. Nothing moved. Nothing I could pick out, anyway. A high-altitude drone? Satellite? "No p-groglen." I worked my jaw and tongue, tried again, and gave up before the correction made it worse.

I waved her along and cut into the outer district, weaving through ribs of broken buildings and a nest of tangled pipe. We slipped into the storm-drain through a different grate than yesterday's. No sense laying a neat breadcrumb trail if someone really was counting my steps. The tunnels had been busy when I first came through, full of skitter and breath and the scrape of monsters that had come out of seemingly every nook and cranny. After a week of my visits, they had quieted. Now they were choked with silt and scrap, the air heavy with cold rust and the sweet rot of things that never truly rot. Our footfalls thudded. Water whispered in a far-off channel. My sight did not mind the dark, but it slid off Shadow's cloak the way it always did, like my vision refused to focus on the edges that defined her.

I was annoyed I had not sensed her earlier. Without core-vision, though, I didn't stand a chance. I let the tunnel swallow us and kept going, counting turns, trying not to think about the sky behind us or the phantom pull in my shoulders that wanted to open wide and leap.

"How long youuu therrre?"

"Long enough," she said, voice casual, shoulder a little looser than a minute ago, though still tight. "When we stole from that ganger, you were taking back something to compensate for what they took from you. Why are you stealing from these corporations?"

This was the sort of talk I wanted to avoid but knew was coming. With my mouth the way it was, every word scraped on the way out. If I let this stretch, it would turn into torture. And it was not like I had not gone over it inside my head already a hundred times. I had done the guilt math during too many sleepless nights. I knew these corporations were not guilty of anything special. Prices climb when demand spikes and supply does not. That is how the market breathes.

That didn't make the situation any easier to swallow.

"Ssssahe humansss," I said at last. It was the only conclusion that ever survived the long hours.

We kept walking for a few steps, then I stopped. Letting someone starve while I had the power to act was not something I would tolerate. The tunnel hummed with distant machinery. Water ticked from a pipe. I could feel Shadow's gaze settle on me.

"Are you saying the people of this district are more important than the people that food was meant for?" Her question was soft, and the softness hit harder than a shout. We stood in the middle of the tunnel, the air stale and warm and putrid enough it hid my own reek of spoiled protein sludge. "Do you think this is your call to make?"

"Yessss?" I met her eyes.

She blinked, not expecting that, then drew a slow breath and shook her head. "There are some things I need to teach you about the lines we cannot cross. You are not entirely wrong that it is our duty to decide who we save and where we put our effort. But attacking a corporation and risking instability sits outside where we can stand. That belongs to the elders, with CYPHER above even that." She crossed her arms, voice steady rather than harsh. "Would you plunge the city into ruin to feed a few humans?"

A week ago, that question would have made me falter. Back then I still believed someone else would step in. Now, after nights of thin faces and empty bowls, after watching the district tighten its belt hole by hole, I felt an answer forming and it did not scare me the way it used to.

"Come," I said, cutting left and taking the meguca back the way we had come, then into a different run of tunnels toward my secret weapon.

We threaded a maze of cluttered storm drains where the air turned stale and heavy. Our steps sent ripples through thin films of oily water, and the walls sweated in long streaks that caught our dim light. After a short walk the roof had caved in ahead, opening into the gut of an abandoned mall that had been picked clean before I had even been born. Concrete walls lay bleached and scabbed with spray paint. Storefronts were only gaping mouths with cracked tiles for teeth, holding nothing anyone wanted. Here and there I found the marks of people who had tried to live here once: empty drums choked with ash, ceilings stained with smoke, bundles of cloth flattened into bedding, a human skeleton slouched in a corner with its jaw tilted like it had one last complaint. Maybe this place had sheltered vagrants for a while. Once the roof broke, the sweltering heat from outside would have poured in and cooked anyone that stuck around.

We crossed the husk of the food court, passed a toppled fountain full of black water, and slipped out through the southern side. The old entrance was a ragged hole you could drive a truck through. I lifted a claw and pointed across the street. A low-rise apartment block squatted there, its first floor wrapped in barricades of concrete chunks and scrap. It had taken time to drag those pieces into place and lash them together, but the wall held. No lights showed at this late hour. Even so, something moved behind the slats. Guards, bored and careful.

"Were those what you wanted to show me?" Shadow asked. She tipped her chin at the graffiti painted over the fortifications. A winged black thing with long limbs and longer claws tore through other monsters, rendered with too much care for a simple boast.

If I had the capacity to blush, I would have. I was grateful I did not. "Go in," I said. I could not follow without turning quiet into a riot, but she needed to see it. "Look inssssside. Quiettt."

She did not huff. She left the suggestion of one behind instead and vanished, gone as if the shadows had swallowed her. Five minutes stretched, then she reappeared at my side, hands tucked back into her sleeves like she had never moved. "There's nothing in there," she said.

"Pp-geople. Chillldren. Orphansss," I told her.

"Humans." She nodded, naming a category, not a feeling. "You saved them?"

"Yessss." The note of pride died with the regret I couldn't have done more.

Her face settled. The joking edge I sometimes heard from her was gone. "We must steel our hearts, Axel," she said, as if the building of desperate souls was nothing new to her. And I could only assume it was exactly that: habit. I could only scratch at the notion of what else she might have seen that made this feel more like tedium.

I shook my head before she could build a wall I did not want. "Not like thissss."

Shadow's posture tightened until she seemed to sink into the darkness at her back. "These children… their plight is unfortunate, but it is not our duty to step in. We deal with monsters, both kinds. Our work is too important to let ourselves get tangled up. Will you stop mid-fight with a D-class to save someone begging for help, even if it meant hundreds more perished while you were distracted?"

I stepped closer and snarled. My hands, big and clawed, closed so hard that my palms broke skin. The question almost tore out of me. Would she kill those children if it meant killing a monster? I almost said it, then clamped my jaw shut before I did something I would regret. I did not want that answer, not from her.

So I shifted. "Arrreeee any gegucas?" I asked, pointing at the building.

Shadow scoffed. "It is impossible to know. Most of the girls there are too young to…" The implication caught up with her and stopped the words. "There are men there too," she added, more accusation than certainty, and it came out as a mix of petulance and annoyance.

"Collateral." I crossed my arms and let a thin curl of satisfaction show.

Her shoulders sank in defeat.

We moved back through the hollow mall and into the tunnels, she kept silent. I did not know if breaking that silence would help either of us. I watched her glide forward with that practiced grace of hers, heels not making a sound.

"It is very hard to be your teacher," she said at last, almost a dejected whisper that did not carry far in the tunnel. "The corporations will not stand idle. They already requested aid from megucas and the elders blocked the motion because…" She turned and met my eyes. "Axel, actions have consequences. Will you face yours, or hide behind the council of elders to shield you from the corporations?"

I would have taken a punch from Bear over hearing that. I locked in place, a statue given heat and told not to move. My body refused to show anything. Fear did not get through. Apprehension did not get through. Dread skimmed the surface and slid off. That was the gift and the curse of this form. It muted what should have burned.

The same could not be said about anger. It found purchase.

I inhaled sharply.

Shadow spoke first. "This was my fault," she said, voice steady even as her eyes weighed me. "I didn't teach you the responsibilities, the boundaries. I was too busy with my other obligations and I neglected my student. That is not something I will repeat."

"I did not assssk," I hissed through clenched teeth. "You sssay I geguca, yet I can't get fff p good to district. Calls ghosssted, ratesss sug…" The word tangled and died, brain unable to find a speakable alternative that wouldn't tie my tongue or contort because I didn't have lips. My jaw slammed shut like a trap. "Why won'ttt elderrrrr help? You can help."

"It's not that…"

"It isssss. Just one call. Corps can't ignore. Costs would…" My claw punched into the wall before I could stop it. Concrete and grit rained over my arm. The sound came out of me as a raw animal roar, more heat than language.

Only after I let out a strangled breath did I notice Shadow had stepped back. Her hand had found her sword hilt. She watched me with a tight, measuring look, the kind you give a storm to see if it is moving toward you.

"Ssssorry," I forced out. My veins burned. My chest felt too small for the breath I needed. "Need ssssleep."

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Her brows drew together, and for a heartbeat she studied me as if I were a puzzle she should have solved earlier. When our eyes met, her mouth thinned. "You can't turn back, can you." Not a question. I flinched anyway, and that was enough for her. "Are you safe? Do you want someone to keep an eye out while you rest?"

The offer hit me sideways. I shook my head hard. There were a billion and one things a meguca could be doing instead of standing over a cot while I twitched. The idea crawled under my skin. "Sssaafe enouggg." She did not look convinced. "Talk toppp orrow?" I added, grasping at anything that would end this, anything that would let me curl up and stop thinking.

"Tomorrow? Fine."

She vanished. No flash. No flare. One moment there was a person and the next there was quiet. Dust motes drifted through the torn air like nothing had happened.

I stood there for a heartbeat, then two, then three. Muscles locked. Breath counting itself.

"Don't need help, SSSsshadow," I said to the empty room.

I waited. Pipes clicked in the walls. A slow drip measured the seconds. I did not move.

"Fine, tomorrow," she said again, her voice folding out of the dark from nowhere and everywhere. The last echo slid off the ceiling and down my spine, and this time I was only half sure she had actually left.

It felt like a bunker door had been dropped across my shoulders, the emotional kind, maybe heavier. I hauled that weight through the storm drains, over slick concrete and ankle-deep runnels, and into a small cavern scratched out of the wall by something with claws and patience. The air tasted like copper and mildew. I sat with my back to the stone and let the cold pull the heat out of me until the adrenaline-fueled shaking stopped.

My mind kept trying to spring back to what she had said, the two big things she had said, and for a while it almost managed it. Exhaustion kept swatting those thoughts down each time they lifted their heads.

I was too burned out to spend another night chewing my own brain into knots, so the knots loosened on their own.

I tried not to count the days since I had a real bed, a hot shower, even a lazy scroll through my socials. That list only made the weight worse. But what caught me off guard was the pull to talk to Kali. I could not help it. The memory of our first meeting kept running on a loop, and each pass smoothed a little more of the edge off tonight.

It'd been over a decade ago, it had been another bad day, an old cherished memory.

After my aunt died, orphan became my label and the floor of the barrel became home. The sleep pods turned claustrophobic that night, all recycled breath and cheap disinfectant, so I walked. Midwinter rain soaked me through, and I stumbled into Kali's tiny shop by accident, drawn by a crooked neon sign and the thin promise of warmth.

The girl behind the counter could not have been more than a few years older than me. Rancid and mean, eyes hard, she told me to buzz off if I did not have credits. I slid down the front wall and stayed there anyway, too stubborn to go back to the pod and too empty to find somewhere else. Rainwater pooled under me. My fingers went numb. Time blurred.

Maybe out of pity, maybe because she did not want a drowned rat scaring customers, Kali came out with an expired sandwich, the kind they were going to throw away anyway. After weeks of protein sludge, the smell of stale bread made my chest cave in. I took one bite and cried where anyone could see. She looked away and let me finish it.

Things tumbled forward after that as I visited more often. A second sandwich. A towel. A ragged joke that was not funny but kept the quiet from swallowing us both. I still had a hard time believing the steps that had taken me from there to now.

A part of me still refused to accept that Kali and the meguca Sahara were the same person. The hacked call before the fight with Shadow crawled under my skin and made my blood boil, but the fury could not find a place to live.

It cooled in the cavern and drained away with the meltwater and the dark.

When sleep finally hooked me, I dreamed of a heaven built from moldy wonder bread and mushy protein ham.

I woke up late.

Not the kind of late a clock could show, but the kind that settled in your joints and told you the day has already slipped its leash. There were no clocks here anyway. Just a cave, a tunnel, and a dark that hid nothing from me. Still, the certainty sat in my bones that I had slept through something important. I lay there a few breaths, listening to the slow drip somewhere behind me, and let the feeling pass through like a cold draft.

When I sifted through the list of little projects I had going, I found no real urgency hidden among them. Useful, yes. Pressing, no.

The truth was simple and painful. Nothing I could do from here would nudge the disaster playing out a few dozen meters overhead. My anger tested the walls again, pushing at old cracks, and I set it aside by habit.

Hunger made the case for getting up better than duty did.

I crawled out of my niche, claws gritty, armor whispering against stone, and tried not to think about how broken things had become or how small my tools were compared to the mess.

This was the routine I had whittled for myself this past week or so. Spend the first stretch of waking convincing my face to wear that mental customer-service smile. Line up tasks. Pretend the shape of order was the same thing as progress. The motions were old, learned long ago, and they still worked well enough to get me moving.

The world did not care how you felt, only whether you did something about it.

I warmed up with slow stretches, ignoring the tight pull and the quiet crinkle where obsidian plates met each other. Ankles, knees, hips, shoulders. Every piece protested, then remembered its job. When my breathing settled, I turned to the district map I had scratched into the tunnel wall. Lines, arrows, little notes marking entry and exit points, where scavengers nested, where I had found something worth remembering. I traced a path with a fingertip, chose a sector I had not visited in a while, and made a small mark to commit to it. If luck behaved, I would turn up enough trash and enough monsters to quiet my stomach for the day.

My train of thought went still. Shadow was standing around the bend, waiting like she had always been there.

Oh.

Right.

She gave me a look that could have filed edges off metal. No lecture followed. She simply lifted one hand and twirled her fingers. A textile television popped into being, folded on itself like a flag. Another twirl brought a boxy battery pack with ports along its side. Another brought a spill of cables. Then she flicked again and set an oil drum down with a soft thump. Steam rolled out of it in lazy curls. The smell hit a second later and made my nose twitch. Broth. Fat. Protein I could not name but trusted.

"Sit."

I sat, crossing my legs. Stunned or not, the promise of that soup cut through everything else. My body listened first. My thoughts promised to catch up.

Shadow worked with quiet efficiency. She unfurled the screen, anchored its corners, set a speaker on each side, and fed the cables through like she had done this a hundred times. When it was all in place, she glanced at me. Her brow tightened. "Can you make yourself fluffy?"

"What? No." It felt like I could not, but also I did not want to try. I was already sore about all of this and not in the mood to put on a show.

She huffed once, small and sharp, and twirled again. A violently pink faux-fur beanbag appeared and swallowed her the moment she dropped into it. I grimaced at the dust and grit it would pick up and how long cleaning it would take. "Now eat, watch, and do not ask questions," she said. "If you have anything to do, it has been waiting ten hours already. It can wait two more."

I hugged the warm drum and found a metal straw clipped to the rim. My mouth was too stiff for it, so I let it hang and sipped from the edge instead. The heat ran down my throat and settled in my stomach like a small sun.

I vaguely realized it was the first warm meal in days and quickly tamped down on the notion, but the growling backed off by degrees.

The screen brightened to life. I frowned at the assassin meguca turning a storm drain into a theater, then looked at the title she had queued up. "Oceans 2,413; The robocop time heist."

"...but you see, you fell straight into my trap, for you are in fact me! I traveled to the past, underwent genetic muto-treatment, and hypnotized myself to forget. Now that you have the diamond, I need only speak the trigger to restore the suppressed memories."

"Ronaldo, no! If you do this, you will paradox yourself out of existence!"

"Do you not understand? Anything is worth the cost for the ultimate prize. Pineapple umbrellas!"

Ronaldo's body thinned into a storm of temporal static, edges fraying like tape torn off too fast.

BWAAAA. The screen went black. Mechazilla's roar bled into a wash of soft music.

I sat there and stared at the wall while the credits climbed past.

I could not find a better word than awe for what I'd just seen, and it was not the flattering kind. It was the kind you feel while watching a sky-scrapper fold in on itself, then somehow land as a neat pile of debris that spelled out a fart joke. A wreck with choreography.

Shadow said nothing as she tidied the mess. I caught a glimmer of wetness on her cheek, too quick to be sure, gone when I blinked. The meguca hovered near me with a worried tilt to her head, concern mixing with an odd kind of expectation, like she was waiting for lightning and counting the seconds to thunder.

"What?"

"This is worse than I thought," she muttered.

"What?" I said again, slow and flat.

She let out a breath and squared her shoulders. "I did not want to tell you because awareness can make it worse, but it is clear we need more extreme measures." She crossed her arms and looked up at me, stern and steady. "Axel, you are overstressed."

I stared at her and felt irritation crawl up my spine.

She grimaced, the expression small and honest. "That part is on me as your teacher. I misread your power. I thought your abilities were quantized, neat, stiff, controlled." Her voice softened without losing focus. "But every time you transform, you take a new shape. Even when you try the same route, it does not fit the same. The form bends to your feelings, your goals, the room you are in. It is a hybrid power. That gives your emotions more leverage than your plans. Obvious in hindsight. I should have known."

I processed the information for a moment. "You… thiiiink I want to stay sssstuck?"

"No, I think you're stuck because you can't relax." Shadow met my eyes, dark and earnest. "Do you want to stay stuck? Do you feel you cannot or should not go back? I thought you might be missing a sense of safety, but your choices have leaned reckless, not cautious. And the movie is the best option to-" Her lips pressed thin then sighed. "Stay down here another day and sit with it. I will bring more food. Warm food. We can test other approaches before we consider anything extreme."

"…exxtreeme?" My claws ached.

"It is not death," she said at once. A flicker ran through her, and she went a shade paler, as if a memory had brushed past her shoulder. "But it would make you wish it had been." She shook her head hard, cutting that path off. "We will not reach that point. You are in control. You are clear-headed. We will find something. I promise."

She vanished, the air closing where she had stood.

Silence took the room.

I'd been left alone with nothing to do but think.

Great.

They slipped through the arch and gathered around the moss that pooled on the rubble where the roof had caved in. The obsidian flowers rose clean from the green, sharp and wet with old light. Their breath hung in the air and fell back to their scarves. No neon reached this place. There were no electronic eyes here, and that was why the signs had coalesced in this one place.

"Take the open ones," said the broad-shouldered man with the scissor haircut. He held a rag like a priest might hold a relic.

"All of them," said the old woman whose pockets rattled with mint candy. "The monster blessed by Summer's Wrath left them for us for a reason."

"Not all," said the woman with the cherry-pattern lining inside her hood. "Greed is the way of the Machine God, humility is the path to salvation."

"As was foretold," the girl with the highlighter-sigil whispered. She sniffed and smeared her nose on her sleeve, then squared the cardboard in her hands.

They knelt. Fingers tested the slick petals. The man with the plastic lunchbox unhooked the tired rubber band and opened the lid. Inside lay a square of bread wrapped around something sweet and a coin taped to the plastic. He removed both with a guilty glance and tucked them into his coat. "For nourishment, just in case," he said, laying the bread wrapper flat, then adding moss until the box looked like a small green field.

For anyone else, this box would be worth a fortune in the market. For them, it would be worth their lives to keep away from the wrong hands.

"Reject the Machine God," the scissor-cut man said as he lifted the first blossom with the rag. Blood winked at his thumb where the glass had scratched. He smiled through the sting and placed the flower in the box.

"The coming of the end," breathed the cherry-hood woman. She gathered two smaller blooms and cupped them with trembling hands.

"As was foretold," murmured the old woman, and her voice hitched on a cough. The mint candy cracked in her teeth and she made a face.

"Do we take the buds?" the girl asked, leaning so close the glass reflected her freckles.

"Leave the tight ones," the lunchbox man said. "They still have growing to do."

"Growing into what," the old woman said, not as a question. "Summer's Wrath only dwindles, it never grows."

"But the flowers bloomed," said the girl, and the old woman paused.

"Leave the smaller blooms," lunchbox man repeated, insistent this time. "So the seeds of corrosion may spread."

"As was foretold," the girl said, louder now. Her cardboard squeaked where her grip had worn away the marker.

They worked in a slow circle, picking each flower with reverential slowness. Someone muttered a number and lost it. Someone else counted by tapping a knee. The scissor-cut man reached for another and the cherry-hood woman caught his wrist before letting go. They made sure their every move needed to be made four times, each iteration intentionally jagged and irregular or getting into someone else's way.

It was a slow defiant dance against the Machine God's mandates of efficiency.

"One stays," the girl spoke as she pushed her own hand in the path of a blade to stop them from their goal.

The scissor-cut man looked at the flowers, at the box, at the last bright petal pulling daylight into a thin line. "The chosen one," he said, and did not sound convinced but wavered under the intense gaze of the others.

"As was foretold," they answered together. The lunchbox man used that beat to nibble the corner of the bread he had saved. He chewed, swallowed, then bowed his head, embarrassed when the other's eyes turned his way.

"The monster blessed by Summer's Wrath," the old woman said. She placed her palm on the moss. "The coming of the end."

"Reject the Machine God," the scissor-cut man added, softer than before.

They closed the lunchbox. The rubber band stretched and held. The box looked small in his hands. The cherry-hood woman adjusted her hood and lifted her chin toward it. "For the chosen one," she said.

"As was foretold," the others replied. The girl hiccuped on the last word, then laughed once with the elation of their task having been completed.

They left as they had arrived, careful and light on their feet, voices tucked away.

The lone black flower stood atop the pile of rubble-covered moss.

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