The clinic door screamed on rusted hinges as they staggered inside. Lucent's boots left smears of Junkyard filth across the tile floor. The air hung thick with the aether from Rena's sterilization glyphs, their faint blue pulses casting jagged shadows across the peeling walls.
Across the room, Rena didn't look up from her workbench where she was elbow-deep in the guts of a syringe. Her mechanical fingers moved with methodical precision, the steel joints whirring softly as she realigned components too small for human hands to manipulate. The overhead light buzzed like an angry insect, its sickly yellow glow pooling in the hollow of her collarbone and glinting off the polished lens of her eye.
Lucent crossed the clinic in measured strides. He stopped just short of Rena's workspace, close enough that the faint smell of her medicines stung his nostrils.
"It's done," he said, his voice rough as gravel. The words tasted like iron - he must have bitten his tongue during the fight.
Rena's head snapped up, her eyes narrowing. The gaze flicked from Lucent to Kai's hunched form behind him, lingering on the dark stain spreading through the kid's jacket sleeve. The fabric clung wetly to his arm, the synthetic leather stiffening as the blood began to dry at the edges.
"On the table," she ordered, jerking her chin toward the examination slab. The vinyl covering was cracked with age, split in places to reveal yellowed foam beneath. A fresh sheet of sterilized plastic crinkled as Kai lowered himself onto it, his movements stiff and careful like an old man's.
Lucent leaned against the wall near the door, his shoulder blades pressing into the cool metal. He could feel each breath move through his damaged ribs. The pain was a familiar companion, an old friend whispering warnings in his ear.
Rena peeled back Kai's jacket with hands that were surprisingly gentle for all their mechanical precision. The fabric made a wet, tearing sound as it separated from the wound beneath. Three parallel gashes ran at Kai's shoulder, the edges ragged where the Hollowed's claws had caught and dragged. But it wasn't the depth that made Lucent's stomach tighten - it was the way the torn flesh shimmered faintly at the edges, like gasoline on wet pavement.
"You didn't mention it got him," Rena said, her voice flat.
Lucent crossed his arms, feeling the old burns throb across his forearms. "He'll live."
The lie sat heavy between them. He'd seen the wound happen, had watched in that terrible slow-motion of combat as the Hollowed's talons raked across Kai's arm. Had seen how the blood welled up too slowly, how it clung to the kid's skin. But naming it would make it real, and Lucent wasn't ready to have that conversation yet.
Rena's fingers - cold steel and warmer synth-flesh - probed the injury with clinical detachment. Kai hissed through clenched teeth, his free hand gripping the table's edge hard enough to bleach the color from his knuckles. The tendons in his neck stood out like cables, sweat beading along his hairline despite the clinic's chill.
"Not deep," Rena muttered, more to herself than to them. "But it's tainted."
The word hung in the air between them, swollen with implication. Lucent's fingers found the vial of Q-Serin in his pocket without conscious thought, his thumb tracing the smooth curve of the glass through the fabric. The stabilizer was cool against his skin, a tiny promise of safety in a world that offered none.
Rawcasting without Q-Serin was like juggling lit dynamite - one slip and your brain turned to mush. The compound would stave off the worst of it - the seizures that left you foaming at the mouth, the reality bleed that made walls breathe and shadows whisper, the way the world sometimes rippled for days after like a stone dropped in water.
But the safety came at its own price.
Rena caught the motion, her lips curling in a smile that showed too many teeth. "Thinking of using it?"
Lucent didn't answer. He didn't need to. They both knew the truth - if he kept rawcasting, he'd burn out. And if he burned out, Kai was dead weight.
Across the room, Kai's breath hitched as Rena dabbed antiseptic over the wound. The clear liquid sizzled where it touched the shimmering edges, releasing a thin curl of smoke that smelled like burnt copper, something that crawled up the back of the throat and clung there.
"What is that?" Kai's voice was strained, his pupils dilated with pain and something else - something like fear.
Rena didn't look up from her work. "Aether-rot. Your blood's trying to reject the corruption." She pressed the gauze harder, drawing another hiss from Kai. "It's losing."
Lucent pushed off the wall, the movement sending fresh pain spiderwebbing through his side. "Can you fix it or not?"
Rena's fingers stilled. For a heartbeat, the only sounds were the drip of condensation from a leaking pipe overhead and the distant groan of the Junkyard outside. Then -
"I can cut it out."
Kai's head snapped up. "What?"
"The infected tissue." Rena reached for a scalpel, the blade catching the light as she turned it between her fingers. "Or you wait and see if your body purges it. Might work." She leaned closer, as her breath tickled his ears. "Might turn you into something else."
Kai's throat worked as he swallowed. His gaze darted to Lucent, searching for - what? Reassurance? A way out? Some expectation that there was always another option, always a cleaner solution?
Lucent met his stare, unflinching. "Your choice."
The kid looked down at his arm, at the shimmering corruption creeping through his veins. Outside, the Junkyard groaned again, its metal bones shifting in the perpetual twilight. Somewhere in the distance, a train screamed on rusted tracks.
Kai exhaled, long and slow. When he spoke, his voice was steadier than Lucent expected. "Do it."
Rena didn't hesitate. The blade flashed in the clinic's light, its edge catching for just a moment on the scarred flesh of her own forearm - a reminder that she'd made this choice before, in her own way.
And as Lucent tightened his grip on the Q-Serin in his pocket, he wondered when he would need it.
***
The steel door of Nex's lair shrieked as Gristle slipped inside, the sound like nails dragged across rusted metal. The bunker's air sat thick with the stench of sweat and burned rubber, pressing against the skin like a physical weight.
Flickering lights cast sickly green reflections across puddles of stagnant water that had seeped through the ceiling's cracked seams. Somewhere in the darkness, a loose pipe dripped with rhythmic precision, each drop hitting a makeshift oil-drum drum with a hollow sound that echoed through the chamber.
Nex sprawled across his throne - the salvaged cockpit chair from a crashed military transport, its once plush upholstery now stained with blood and synth-lube. The hydraulic pistons in his prosthetic leg hissed as he shifted position, the steel talons scraping fresh grooves into the grated metal floor.
The dim light caught the network of scars that webbed across his bare arms, each one a pale, raised testament to battles won and lost in the underground pit fights.
Gristle's elongated shadow stretched across the wall as he approached, his too-long limbs folding at unnatural angles to navigate the cramped space. The man's breathing came in wet, labored rasps - the aftermath of a punctured lung that had healed wrong. His augmented jaw clicked with each hesitant step, the poorly calibrated machine whining as he spoke.
"Boss." The word came out distorted, filtered through damaged vocal modulators. "Got eyes on them."
Nex didn't move, but his remaining organic eye - the other replaced long ago with a targeting lens - focused with predatory intensity. The fingers of his left hand, half-mechanical and twitching with residual nerve damage, drummed an uneven rhythm against the chair's armrest.
"Talk fast," Nex growled, the words vibrating through the metal plates grafted to his throat. "Before I lose interest."
Gristle swallowed hard, the motion making his neck flex visibly. He wiped greasy palms against his stained coveralls before continuing. "They came crawling back to the sawbones' place. Spire kid's bleeding bad - took a hit from a Hollowed." A nervous tic made his left eyelid flutter. "Argyr ain't looking much better."
The generator beneath Nex's throne let out a grinding whine as he leaned forward, the hydraulic lifts in his prosthetic leg extending with a pneumatic hiss. The dim light caught the fresh weld marks along the metal - repairs made after his last encounter with Lucent.
"Rena's clinic," Nex mused, his voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried through the entire chamber. His tongue flicked out to wet cracked lips. "That bitch always did have a soft spot for strays."
Across the room, the cracked viewscreen flickered with static-filled images of the Junkyard's labyrinthine corridors. Shadows moved in the distortion - scavengers picking through the wreckage, glow-rats darting between piles of refuse, the occasional twisted form of a Hollowed shambling through the perpetual twilight. None of them mattered. Only one image held Nex's attention, the frozen frame of Lucent together with the bleeding Spire brat going through Rena's reinforced doorway.
Gristle shifted his weight, his elongated fingers twitching at his sides. "We got a clean shot at the east wall. Place is rusted through near the old coolant pipes. Couple shaped charges-"
The explosion of movement came without warning. Nex's fist connected with Gristle's chest hard enough to send the man stumbling back into a stack of corroded Aether batteries. The impact sent a shower of sparks cascading to the floor as Gristle gasped, his lungs wheezing as they struggled to compensate.
"You dumb fuck," Nex snarled, looming over his subordinate. The lights reflected off the fresh weld marks crisscrossing his torso - souvenirs from their last failed ambush. "Rena's place is a goddamn fortress. You go in loud..." He grabbed Gristle by the throat, the mechanical hand whining as they tightened. "...you come out in pieces."
The threat hung in the air between them, underscored by the faint hum of overloaded circuitry and the ever-present drip of condensation from the ceiling. Somewhere in the distance, the Junkyard groaned its perpetual lament - metal shifting, pipes rattling, the bones of the dead city settling deeper into decay.
Nex released his grip, shoving Gristle away with a disgusted snort. The smaller man collapsed against a stack of rusted server casings, his breathing coming in ragged, static-filled bursts.
"But they gotta come out sometime," Nex murmured, more to himself than to his wheezing subordinate. His fingers traced the edge of a dented Aether canister resting beside his throne - the same model Lucent and Kai had been hunting. The metal was peeled back in jagged strips, the edges blackened where something had gnawed through the reinforced casing.
Gristle's eyes tracked the movement with dawning understanding. "That Hollowed wasn't normal," he rasped, wiping synth-blood from his split lip. "Moved too fast. Thought too clear."
Nex's grin revealed teeth filed to sharp points, the canister crumpling in his grip. "Smart boy." He turned the mangled metal over in his hands, the biolights catching the strange, oily sheen of the bite marks. "And I know exactly where it came from."
The silence that followed was broken only by the distant skittering of something moving through the ventilation shafts - something too large to be rats. Gristle's remaining eye darted toward the sound, his jaw clicking nervously.
"The old Myriad labs," he whispered, the words barely audible over the thrum of failing machinery.
Nex didn't confirm or deny. He didn't need to. The way Gristle's hands trembled told him everything he needed to know. Outside, the perpetual twilight deepened as another artificial night fell over the Junkyard. Somewhere in the maze of rusted corridors, something that wasn't quite human anymore stirred in the darkness.
"Get the bait ready," Nex ordered, his voice dropping to a whisper that slithered through the bunker like smoke. "And prepare the containment units." His fingers tightened around the canister until the metal screamed in protest. "I want the Spire kid alive. As for Argyr..." The canister crumpled completely in his grip. "...he can be in pieces."
As Gristle scrambled to obey, the viewscreen flickered again, the static resolving for just a moment into a clear image of Rena's clinic - its reinforced doors sealed tight against the gathering dark.
Inside those walls, Lucent stood watch over Kai's surgery, his fingers brushing the Q-Serin vial in his pocket like a holy relic.
Outside, the shadows are moving and slithering against their will.