Kai shifted on the opposite bed, his breathing uneven with interrupted sleep. "You... alright?" The kid's voice was groggy, but there was an edge to it now that hadn't been there before - the first fragile cracks in his naivety.
Lucent didn't answer. He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes until colors burst behind his lids, trying to erase the afterimage of his sister's collapsing form. It never worked. The memory had etched itself into his bones three years ago, and like all the best wounds, it refused to heal clean.
The dream always started the same way, one of the last good moments before everything went to shit. That quiet suburban street with its artificially maintained cherry blossom trees, the way the rain made neon signs bleed color onto the pavement. His sister's hopeful voice as she pointed to the Aetherion spires, her fingers still stained with engine grease from her part time job. They'd been saving credits for three years at that point, dreaming of the day they could afford Conduit training licenses. A way out. A way up.
Then the glitch in reality.
The way her words stretched like like a rubber band until it finally snaps.
The wrongness that crept in at the edges of his vision, subtle at first - a streetlight flickering out of rhythm, a puddle reflecting something that wasn't there. By the time he realized what was happening, it was already too late. The void didn't so much consume his sister as unravel her, piece by piece, like a line of code deleting itself from existence. And young, stupid Lucent had reached for the only thing he thought could stop it - raw, unfiltered Aether.
The explosion had taken out half the block.
His sister had still been gone.
A metallic click echoed through the clinic as Rena adjusted something in her equipment cabinet. Lucent didn't need to look to know she was watching him - that augmented eye of hers missed nothing. He could feel the weight of her gaze like a physical touch, the unspoken question hanging between them.
He ignored it.
Instead, he focused on the dull ache of his stitches, the way his ribs protested each breath. Physical pain was simple. Manageable. Unlike the memory currently crawling through his veins like poisoned code.
Outside, the Junkyard groaned its endless mechanical lament. Somewhere in the distance, metal screeched against metal - maybe scavengers working through the night, maybe just the bones of this place settling deeper into its own decay. The sound was almost comforting in its familiarity.
Kai's body surrendered to exhaustion before his mind could, his breathing evening out into shallow, even rhythm. His stitched lip twitching with whatever nightmares plagued in his mind. Lucent envied him that much at least - the kid still had the capacity to be shocked by this world.
Reaching into his pocket, Lucent pulled out his Conduit, turning it over in his hands. The cracked screen reflected his face back at him in cracked fragments - the dark circles under his eyes, the fresh scar along his cheekbone from, the permanent tension in his jaw. Three years since the incident, and he still looked like a man waiting for a miracle to drop.
He knew better than most that some doors, once opened, could never be closed again.
The Eclipse glyph in Kai's files proved that much.
Sliding the Conduit back into his pocket, Lucent leaned his head against the clinic's cold metal wall and watched the first gray light of dawn creep through the high, grime-coated windows.
Morning would come whether they were ready or not.
And with it, all the consequences he'd been running from.
Lucent reached across the narrow space between the beds and shook Kai's shoulder—hard. The kid jolted awake with a gasp, his body tensing like a live wire, eyes wild and unfocused in the dim light of the clinic. For a moment, he simply stared at Lucent, his breath coming in short, panicked bursts, his pupils dilated so wide they swallowed the irises whole. Then, like a crashing wave, the memories of the previous day rushed back in—the Nimbrix warehouse, the Black Unit, Nex's steel talons raking across his face—and the fear in his eyes sharpened into something more visceral.
"It wasn't a dream?" Kai croaked, his voice rough with sleep and lingering terror. His fingers instinctively went to his stitched lip, probing the wound as if to confirm its reality.
"Unfortunately," Lucent muttered, pushing himself up from the cot. His ribs protested the movement, the fresh stitches pulling tight, but he ignored the pain. Dawn had come and gone while he'd been lost in thought, the clinic's high windows now glowing with the sickly yellow light of a Junkyard morning.
Kai sat up slowly, wincing as his muscles protested. His once-pristine clothes were stiff with dried blood and grime, his jacket torn at the shoulder where Nex had grabbed him. He looked down at himself, his expression twisting into something between disgust and disbelief. "I... I can't go back like this," he murmured, more to himself than to Lucent.
Lucent didn't bother responding. He'd already made it clear—there was no going back. Not for either of them.
Rena emerged from the back room. She took one look at Kai's disheveled state and snorted. "Bathroom's down the hall," she said, jerking her chin toward a rusted door. "Don't clog the drain."
Kai opened his mouth—probably to protest—but Lucent cut him off with a sharp look. The kid swallowed whatever complaint had been forming and stumbled to his feet, his movements stiff and uncoordinated. He paused at the bathroom door, casting one last uncertain glance back at Lucent before disappearing inside.
The sound of running water echoed through the clinic, followed by a muffled curse—probably Kai realizing there was no hot water.
Rena crossed her arms, her gaze fixed on Lucent. "You're really dragging him into this?"
Lucent didn't answer. He didn't need to.
They both knew the truth.
Kai was already in deeper than he realized.
And there was no getting out.
Kai emerged from the bathroom looking marginally more human, though his clothes were still a lost cause. His face was damp, water dripping from his hairline down to his collar, and the angry red line of stitches stood out starkly against his pale skin. He'd tried to clean the blood from his jacket, but the fabric was permanently stained, the dark smears now faded to rust-brown.
Lucent pushed off the wall where he'd been waiting. "Let's go," he said, heading for the clinic's door without checking if Kai followed.
"Go where?" Kai hurried after him, his steps still stiff with lingering pain.
"Food."
The morning air outside was thick with the Junkyard's usual cocktail of burning rubber and chemical runoff. Overhead, the sky was a sickly gray, the light filtered through layers of smog and the ever-present shimmer of distant Aethernet nodes. The narrow alley outside the clinic was already bustling with early-morning scavengers and black-market dealers, their voices overlapping in a constant hum of negotiations and threats.
Lucent moved through the crowd with the ease of long familiarity, his shoulders angled to slip through gaps without brushing against anyone. Kai wasn't so lucky—he flinched every time someone passed too close, his hands twitching toward pockets that had long since been emptied of anything valuable.
"Keep up," Lucent said without turning around. "And don't stare. You look like a mark."
Kai quickened his pace, his polished shoes slipping on a patch of something slick and iridescent. "Where are we—"
"Here." Lucent stopped in front of a stall wedged between two gutted mag-lev cars. The metal counter was streaked with decades of grease, the surface barely visible under piles of wrapped protein bricks and steaming cups of synthetic broth. The vendor didn't look up from the portable glyph-compiler she was tinkering with.
Lucent tossed a credit chip onto the counter. It was one of the last they had, the balance dangerously low. "Two."
The woman pocketed the chip without checking the amount and shoved two protein bricks in their direction. The wrappers were faded, the printing on them so worn it was impossible to tell what flavor they were supposed to be. Not that it mattered—everything tasted like salted cardboard anyway.
Kai picked his up gingerly, turning it over in his hands. "This is... food?"
Lucent unwrapped his in one practiced motion and took a bite. The texture was gritty, the aftertaste faintly metallic. "Eat. You'll need it."
Kai peeled back the wrapper with considerably more hesitation. His first bite was tentative, his expression cycling through disbelief, disgust, and finally resignation as he chewed. "This is the worst," he muttered.
"Welcome to the real world." Lucent finished his brick in three more bites and crumpled the wrapper. "Now move. We've got work to do."
Kai swallowed the last of his meal with visible effort. "What kind of work?"
Lucent didn't answer. He was already walking away, his boots kicking up puffs of metallic dust from the Junkyard floor.
Behind him, Kai hesitated for only a second before following.
The kid was learning.
Slowly.
But he was learning.
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