4. exterminators must be SOFT-HEARTED!

"So, how were the new recruits?" Sabrina muttered, flipping through the pages of a clipboard. "Creme de la creme, I assume?"

"They were useless."

She sighed, lifting a few sheets and scanning the text. "Multiple witnesses say that Dahlia dealt what seemed like the killing blow." She raised an eyebrow, finally looking up at him.

Massiah exhaled, glancing toward the door.

The citizens of Khankar could file detailed reports to Sabrina, but somehow, none of them could accurately identify a Myutant. Typical.

Sabrina dropped the clipboard onto her desk with a dull thud. "Look, Massiah. You've been doing this for four years. Every time we give you recruits, you shut them down. Eventually, they reach your grade, become your partners, and move on to higher ranks. So why are you still doing this?"

Massiah's gaze drifted across the cramped office.

Everything in the company was small, rundown, patched together with whatever resources they had left. But even in its state of decay, Sabrina's office had its own charm.

The walls were lined with photographs of Exterminators, both old and new. Some were posed proudly next to Myutant corpses, their grins frozen in time. The company treated its Exterminators as nothing more than statistics—disposable fighters. But Sabrina?

She cared.

At least, to some degree.

Her voice softened slightly. "Is this about those two?"

Massiah's palm slammed against the desk, the sharp crack echoing through the small office.

Sabrina barely flinched. Just as quickly as she'd brought it up, she dropped it.

Clearing her throat, she shifted gears. "Well, regardless of the specifics..." She flipped through the papers on her desk. "You're grade four now. All three of you. Or are you refusing the rank-up?"

Massiah glanced at her, saying nothing.

But his silence was answer enough.

She leaned back in her chair. "Took you four years to move up a single rank, but hey—progress is progress." She gestured vaguely. "How does this magnificent achievement feel?"

Massiah stared at her. Blank. Dry. Unimpressed.

She sighed. "I see it doesn't mean much. But anyway—" she waved a hand lazily, "you know what they say: greater rank, greater missions... same pay."

"Uh-huh," Massiah muttered.

Unbothered, she flipped to the next page. "You've got a joint mission beyond the Depths—flying Myutant, caged in some cave or something. Locals claim it ate their kid." She shrugged. "Threat level two. Or so they say."

Massiah rolled his shoulders. "We can handle it ourselves."

Sabrina snorted. "With your track record against flying Myutants?"

(His record was zero and forty-six. Flying bugs? Up huge.)

Massiah said nothing.

She smirked. "Your backup team is Gran and Quem. Old buddies. Cute reunion, huh?"

Without a word, Massiah pushed himself up and strode toward the door.

The door clicked shut, the sound of the bolt locking echoing through the small office as Massiah disappeared.

Sabrina exhaled, watching the empty space where he had stood.

After a moment, she pulled open her desk drawer.

Inside was a small, old frame.

Three figures stared back at her—a younger, grumpier Massiah and two others at his side. She traced her fingers over the image, a soft, distant smile tugging at her lips.

Then, with a sigh, she slipped the picture back into the drawer.

"You can't run from the past, Massiah."

Her fingers lingered on the edge before she shut the drawer.

"None of us can."

Massiah stood by the door, his fingers brushing against the cold metal frame. Sabrina was right. Eventually, he'd have to face his demons. Persecute them. Or worse—

Forgive himself.

He needed to let it go, to move past it. That was the only way to keep going, to survive. But was shedding this burden truly the right thing? If he erased the scars that had shaped him, what would be left? Could he live with that—live with the guilt that followed?

He didn't know.

Massiah sighed, making his way down the grime-covered halls of Dead End Solutions. He needed to talk to someone—to get his mind off... all this. And he knew just the person.

New Haven at night carried echoes of the old world—neon lights, drunken laughter, the hum of a city pretending it still thrived. But most people alive today had never known the world it mimicked.

The pulsing glow of pubs lined the streets, spilling intoxicated cheers into the alleys. At the edges, brothels stood in the limelight, their girls leaning against doorframes, calling out to whoever was desperate enough to listen.

Massiah kept walking, heading toward a shop at the street corner—a spare parts store owned by his friend Timaeus. Tim. A scrap enthusiast with a love for unusable junk and broken down material, trying to rebuild even a fraction of what the old world had lost.

And in his spare time—he was the best person to talk to.

Settling onto a worn-out chair outside the shop, Massiah glanced through the shops window, toward the garage, where Tim worked beneath a rusted train car, welding sparks bouncing off the metal like dying stars.

Massiah smiled.

In a world that changed every day, that fell apart piece by piece, there was never a doubt Tim would be here, knee-deep in scrap, working on some new project.

"Tim," Massiah muttered.

The welding noises cut off, and a moment later, Tim rolled out from under the train car, wiping grease off his hands.

"Mass!" he bellowed, his voice gravelly and hoarse, like he'd spent the whole day breathing in rust. Stepping through the back door, he made his way to the window, grinning. "Didn't know you were back. Heard you went to Dragstead."

"Yeah." Massiah's gaze drifted to the half-dismantled train car, the metal scarred and rusted with age.

They had met two years ago, assigned to different squads on a joint Extermination mission. It was supposed to be routine—until Tim got the brilliant idea to bring live dynamite to the fight and shove it straight down a Myutant's gullet.

The explosion had been spectacular.

The cleanup? Hell.

Even now, Massiah wasn't sure if his overcoat was free of Myutant guts.

Tim squinted at him, arms crossed. "I know that face."

His voice lost its usual gruff energy, settling into something more measured.

"What's wrong?"

"Sabrina got me some new recruits."

Tim scoffed. "She's still pushing them on you? Thought she'd get the memo by now."

"Yeah."

"You don't wanna let them rank up ahead of you, like usual?"

Massiah exhaled. "I like this bunch."

From the corner of his eye, he caught the faintest crack of a smile on Tim's face.

"So that battle-hardened exterior finally got chipped, huh?" Tim muttered. "What are they like?"

"One of 'em's a real menace," Massiah muttered, memory flickering back to the battlefield. "Took out the legs of a T-level three the other day. Lifts Joe's obsidian hammer like it's a twig."

He hesitated.

"But the other one..." His mind drifted to Ansel, "He's a flower on the battlefield."

Tim's brow furrowed. "Trauma?"

"Most likely. I didn't want to pry into their personal lives, but..." Massiah exhaled. "If this keeps up—"

"You don't want to see him die."

Massiah shook his head.

Tim's lips curled into a small, knowing smile. He reached over, ruffling Massiah's dark hair with his giant work-gloved hands, shaking him slightly like an older brother teasing his kid sibling.

"You wanna help him." His voice was quiet, but firm. "But you still think about them, don't you?"

Massiah stilled.

He had wondered, more than once, if Tim was somehow telepathic. He always knew. Always asked the right questions, at the right time.

Massiah shoved his hands into his pockets, fingers pressing deep into the fabric. "I feel like—"

Tim didn't push. He simply turned, gaze drifting toward the train car through the shop window. Massiah wasn't the kind of person to share—he'd rather fight a twenty-foot Myutant than talk about his feelings.

So when he did, all you could do was wait.

"I feel like..." His voice dropped lower, his face sinking further into his coat, the collar swallowing everything except his eyes. "I feel like I'm betraying them."

Tim didn't move.

"If I take on these recruits... If I start working with them... it feels like I—" Massiah hesitated. The words caught in his throat.

Tim didn't interrupt. Didn't even blink. He just listened.

Massiah swallowed. His grip inside his pockets tightened.

"I feel like I should've died that day."

His voice was quiet. Barely above a whisper.

"Why was I the only one who survived? Why was I the one who got to live, to keep going, when they—" He stopped, exhaling sharply.

"Why me?"

"Mass."

Massiah's fingers curled inside his pockets. "I remember that day perfectly—the smell of the air, the heat of the sun, the way everything looked bleached under the light. I can remember their voices, every word they spoke like they're still here."

His breath hitched slightly.

"But their faces..." He hesitated, eyes unfocused. "Whenever I try to picture them, whenever I look up—they're always staring back at me. Blaming me. For their deaths. For my inaction."

The streets behind them carried on, oblivious. The murmur of voices, the pitter-patter of footsteps over uneven stone.

"Do I deserve to move on when they can't?" Massiah finally asked, voice quieter now. His gaze turned toward Tim. "Do I deserve happiness when they no longer can?"

Tim exhaled, leaning forward, resting his hands against the windowsill.

"You know, when I quit Extermination to open this shop," he murmured, "a woman came to see me. Blonde, sickly. Pregnant."

Massiah's gaze drifted toward the train car, the both of them staring at the same rusted thing, their thoughts miles away.

"I knew her face, but I couldn't place it. Then it clicked." Tim's fingers flexed slightly against the metal. "She was the wife of my old partner. He used to keep a picture of her in his locket."

He paused, jaw tightening.

"He died in my arms."

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Massiah turned to him. "What did you do?"

"I apologized—or rather, I wanted to," Tim said. "But it didn't feel right. What would an apology even do?"

He exhaled, gaze distant. "So instead, I let her take it out on me. Every bit of anger, grief, hatred—I let her throw it all at me."

A small, breathy laugh escaped him.

"After that, I opened the shop. Kept fixing scrap. I mean... I've always been good at it."

Massiah didn't speak. This time, it was his turn to listen.

"When I worked, I saw the battlefield. When I picked up a hammer, I felt my old weapon in my hands. When I called out to my assistant, I saw my partner turning to answer me." Tim's voice grew quieter. "I considered ending it. Thought maybe, if she read my name in the obituaries, she'd find closure—maybe that would fix things."

He sighed, rubbing his thumb against the metal frame of the window.

"But that wouldn't fix anything. And we both know that." He finally glanced at Massiah. "Death has never fixed anything."

A long silence stretched between them.

Massiah hesitated, then asked, "Do you still see it? Him?"

Tim turned to him, and for a moment, Massiah had changed.

His hair lightened to a dusty brown, his eyes deepened into the same familiar color, his frame stretched just slightly taller—as if his body had molded itself into a perfect imitation of his partner.

Tim smiled softly.

"All the time."

"You can't fix it?"

"No one can," Tim muttered. "I can't—you can't—therapy can't. And death sure as hell can't."

"All we, the living, can do is carry on," Tim said. "We don't move past it. We don't forget it. We don't get to throw it away. We just learn to live with it."

Massiah's gaze drifted back to the train car, its rusted frame a relic of something long forgotten.

"And maybe," Tim muttered, tapping Massiah's shoulder, "just maybe—one day, we'll find happiness in something as stupid as scrap metal."

"Is that so?" Massiah let out a small laugh. "Well, I'll tell you one thing—I don't think scrap metal is stupid."

Tim chuckled, pushing himself to his feet. "Of course. Give me a few more months, and I'll have that train up and running."

"You so won't."

Tim lunged at him, throwing an arm around his neck and playfully roughing him up, shaking him like a misbehaving little brother. "You don't believe in me?"

Massiah, trying to pry himself free, scoffed. "You've been welding that piece of junk since Sabrina became a doctor."

Tim finally let him go, turning toward the window. "Has it really been that long?"

"Probably longer."

Tim smirked, arms crossed. "Fine. Give me a year then. You'll be the first passenger on the Timaeus Infinity Express!"

Massiah grinned. "Can't wait."

And then—

"Massiah Devereaux."

A voice cut through the moment, thick, deep, and familiar.

Both men turned.

Standing just beyond the window, to their side was a male and female pair, clad in white overcoats, weaponry strapped to their backs and waists.

Massiah's stomach turned.

He knew them.

His old recruits.

"Gran. Quem." His voice was quiet.

Gran held his stare, unblinking. "It's been a while."

"I heard you took on a pair of new recruits." His voice was calm, measured—too measured. "Even got promoted a rank."

Massiah exhaled. "Yeah."

"Is that so." Gran lowered himself into the chair beside him, his posture relaxed, but his words anything but.

"Since you didn't want to do the same with us—" he leaned back slightly, voice dipping just enough to sound like a challenge—"why don't you tell me what's so special about these recruits?"