Chapter 5: The Junkyard

The alleyway exhaled its stale breath against them as they stumbled into its shadows, the walls slick with decades of dirt and grime. Lucent's boots skidded on something greasy—oil, or maybe blood—before his knees cracked against the uneven pavement. The pain barely registered through the burning sensation behind his eyes.

Every nerve ending screamed. His left eye pulsed with a sickening rhythm, as if something behind it had swollen too large for the socket. When he blinked, jagged afterimages of the warehouse burned across his vision—the way the shadows had moved wrong, stretching like taffy before snapping forward with predatory hunger.

He never should have rawcasted.

The thought came too late, bitter as the copper taste flooding his mouth. He spat, watching the dark spatter shimmer faintly against the concrete before dissolving into the grime. His hands shook, the glyph-burns along his fingers throbbing in time with his pulse.

Across the narrow space, Kai collapsed against a rusted fire escape, his breathing coming in ragged. The kid's pristine jacket was smeared with soot and something darker where the warehouse debris had grazed him. His hands—smooth, unmarked by glyph-work or hard labor—clutched empty air where his Conduit should have been.

"They just—" Kai's voice broke as his fingers spasmed, grasping for the device Lucent had destroyed. "The shadows moved and then they were just—" A full-body shudder wracked him. "Gone."

Lucent pressed his forehead against the cool brick, letting the rough surface ground him. The kid was slowly taking in what happened earlier, his carefully constructed elite composure crumbling like wet paper. He'd probably never seen a man die before tonight, let alone whatever the hell happened at that warehouse.

Kai's breath came in short, panicked bursts as he pressed himself against the alley wall. When he finally spoke, his voice carried that particular Spire-brat mix of arrogance and terror - the sound of someone who'd never faced consequences until they came biting at his throat.

"You don't understand what they offered me." His fingers twitched toward his jacket's sleeves, the movement instinctive. "Full reinstatement of my family's access privileges. A seat back in the executive lounges. Do you have any idea what it's like to be cut off from everything that matters?"

His polished accent cracked on the last word, revealing the raw fear beneath. The warehouse's horrors had sandblasted away his carefully cultivated detachment, leaving behind something younger and far more desperate.

A distant siren cut through the night. Lucent's head snapped up, his good eye scanning the alley's mouth. The Nimbrix squad might be gone, but their backup wouldn't be far behind.

The kid was still talking, the words tumbling out in a frantic whisper. "They said if I brought them the Conduit, they'd reinstate my access privileges. My father would have to—"

Lucent moved before the thought fully formed. His hand clamped over Kai's mouth, the other pressing them both deeper into the shadows as searchlights swept across the alley entrance. The kid's breath came hot and panicked against his palm, his body rigid with shock.

For a long moment, neither moved. The light passed. Somewhere above them, a drone's rotors whined as it continued its grid search.

When Lucent finally pulled back, Kai's face was slick with sweat and something else—thin, glowing cracks radiating from his hairline, so faint they might have been a trick of the neon light.

The kid didn't seem to notice. His eyes were wide, unfocused. "They lied to me," he whispered, more to himself than Lucent.

Lucent wiped his bloody mouth with the back of his hand. The rawcast's aftershocks still rattled his bones, but the immediate fire in his skull had dulled to a manageable roar. He studied Kai's face—the trembling lips, the dilated pupils, the way his hands kept flexing as if searching for a device that was now just another piece of debris in a ruined warehouse.

A liability.

But one that might still be useful.

"On your feet," Lucent growled, hauling Kai up by the collar. The kid stumbled, his polished boots slipping in the alley's filth. "Unless you want to explain to Nimbrix why their squad's missing."

The threat landed like a punch. Kai's breath hitched, but he nodded, his fingers digging into Lucent's arm for balance. The glowing cracks along his skin pulsed once, then faded as if they'd never been there at all.

Above them, the city's artificial lights bleeding through the smog, painting the alley in shades of rust and regret. Somewhere beyond the maze of concrete and steel, something in the Aethernet stirred—answering a call no human voice had made.

***

The alley's shadows clung to them like a second skin as Lucent pressed his palm against the damp brick wall, steadying himself against another wave of nausea. His migraine had sharpened into a white-hot blade carving through his optic nerve, making the neon signs across the street smear into toxic halos. He blinked away the afterimage of the warehouse - those unnatural shadows moving with purpose, swallowing armored men whole - and focused on the more immediate problem of staying upright.

Kai's breathing came in short, panicked bursts beside him. The kid's pristine jacket was streaked with alley grime, his carefully styled hair now matted with sweat. Lucent could smell the sharp tang of his fear cutting through the alley's usual reek of stale urine and fried circuitry.

"Your place," Lucent ground out, each word sending fresh pain through his jaw. "How far?"

Kai blinked, his fingers twitching toward the empty spot on his wrist where his Conduit should have been. "My apartment's in the Aurora Spire," he said, that automatic Spire pride coloring his voice even now. "West residential tower, but—"

"Stupid question." Lucent cut him off with a gesture that made the world tilt dangerously. Of course the kid lived in one of the corporate citadels, probably with biometric scanners at the door and security drones patrolling the perimeter. The Black Unit would have already flagged his access, if they hadn't simply taken over his entire floor. He could picture it too clearly - Nimbrix operatives lounging in Kai's expensive furniture, their boots leaving scuff marks on imported rugs while they waited.

The silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant wail of a mag-lev train. Kai opened his mouth, then closed it. Lucent watched the realization dawn in slow motion - the privileged Spire brat suddenly understanding that every corporate perk, every carefully cultivated connection, had just turned into potential danger.

A rusted ventilation fan clattered to life above them, making both men startled. Somewhere beyond the alley mouth, searchlights swept across the pavement.

"Think quieter," Lucent muttered. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, the blood darker than it should be, shimmering with something that wasn't quite red. The rawcast's aftershocks were getting worse - his left eye saw phantom movements in every shadow now, the darkness twisting when he looked directly at it.

He studied the alley's exit points through the pain. The main street was suicide, but the service tunnel to the left reeked of old garbage and stagnant water. Perfect. "We'll head underground."

Kai's head snapped up. "What?" His nose wrinkled at the imagined stench. "Is that—"

"Only place they won't send corporate sweepers." Lucent grabbed his arm, feeling the fine tremors running through the kid's muscles. The expensive fabric of his jacket was softer than anything Lucent had touched in years. "Try not to get us killed, kid."

As they slipped into the neon-drenched night, the city seemed to hold its breath around them. The ever-present hum of the Aethernet nodes took on a new cadence, their pulses synchronizing into something that almost sounded like speech. Lucent kept his good eye on the shadows ahead, but the damaged one kept catching glimpses of things moving just out of sight – dark shapes with too many angles, flowing like oil across the edges of his vision.

Behind them, the alley exhaled, its secrets settling back into place. Somewhere high above, in the gleaming towers of the Spire district, alarms were being silenced and records purged. The game had changed, and the board was being cleared for the next move.

***

The sewer grate screeched as Lucent forced it open, the rusted metal flaking under his grip. A gust of stagnant air rolled over them—thick with the reek of decay, chemical runoff, and something else, something sweetly rotten that clung to the back of the throat.

Kai recoiled, slapping a hand over his nose. "God—what is that?" His voice was muffled, his face already paling. "We can't go through here. There's got to be another way—"

Lucent didn't answer. He was too busy trying not to gag.

The stench was worse than he remembered. Worse than the Pit's back alleys after a flood, worse than the time he'd cracked open a fried Aether battery and inhaled its toxic guts. His eyes watered. His migraine pulsed in agreement.

No choice.

He thumbed away his Conduit awake, the cracked screen casting a sickly glow over the tunnel's slime-slick walls. Battery was low. Every glyph counted.

But Christ, he wasn't breathing this shit the whole way.

The spell unfolded in jagged lines—a bootleg AirFilter, ripped from the same black-market cache as his AquaFilter. It stuttered to life, a hazy shimmer forming around their heads like a second skin. The stench dulled, replaced by the sterile tang of overworked Aether.

Kai gasped like a drowning man breaking surface. "Why didn't you do that immediately?"

Lucent's eye twitched. "Because it drains the battery twice as fast as a water filter." He shoved past him, boots splashing through ankle-deep runoff. "Move. And if you complain again, I drop the spell."

Kai shut up.

The drainage pipe vomited them out into the Junkyard with a final metallic groan, its rusted edges snagging at Lucent's jacket as he forced his way through. He landed in a crouch, boots sinking into a graveyard of shattered glass and the brittle exoskeletons of creatures that had no name before the Aether Incident. Behind him, Kai stumbled out with considerably less grace, his polished shoes slipping on a patch of iridescent sludge that shimmered like oil on water.

The AirFilter glyph sputtered one last time before Lucent's Conduit died completely, the screen going dark with a quiet, resigned flicker. The sterile bubble of filtered air popped, and the Junkyard's true smell hit them—a thick, choking miasma of burnt plastic, corroded metal, and something else underneath, something sweetly rotten that clung to the back of the throat.

Kai gagged, pressing his sleeve to his nose. "God—those things in the tunnels—"

Lucent wiped his own face with the back of his hand, smearing grime across his cheek. "They're just rats."

"Rats don't have teeth like that," Kai hissed.

He wasn't wrong.

The creatures that slithered through the sewers these days were only rats in the loosest sense. The Aether had twisted them, warping their bodies into something sharper, hungrier. Their eyes glowed faintly, pupils slit like a cat's, reflecting light that wasn't there. Their fur had fallen out in patches, replaced by thin, translucent membranes that pulsed with stolen energy. And their teeth—too long, too many—clicked together in a sound like breaking circuitry.

Lucent had seen one chew through a steel cable once.

But the rats were the least of what lived in the dark now.

There were other things.

Things that had no shape before the Aether bled into the world.

Like the Glowmites—pale, many-legged insects that clustered around broken Conduits, their bodies swollen with stolen charge. They burst when stepped on, releasing a puff of acrid smoke that made your teeth ache.

Or the Dripfeeders, gelatinous masses that clung to the ceiling in the sewer's oldest tunnels, absorbing condensation and the occasional unlucky rodent. They pulsed faintly, their translucent bodies veined with blueish light, and if you listened close, you could hear them humming.

And then there were the Hollowed.

Not animals. Not anymore.

People who had lingered too long in the wrong places, breathing in the Aether's runoff until it hollowed them out from the inside. Their skin turned gray, stretched too tight over bones. Their eyes clouded over, but they never stumbled, never faltered. They just shambled, drawn to the scent of active Conduits like moths to a flame.

Lucent had put one down in the Pit last year.

It had taken three glyphs to make it stop moving.

The Junkyard stretched before them, a wasteland of dead technology and things that had grown in its corpse. The air hummed with residual energy, the ground uneven underfoot, crunching with glass and the brittle remains of things that had scuttled and died.

Kai's breath came too fast, his fingers twitching at his sides like he wanted to claw the stench out of his lungs. "This place is wrong," he muttered.

Lucent smirked, though the expression lacked any real humor. "You get used to it."

***

The sound came an hour before dawn, when the Junkyard's perpetual twilight was at its thickest. Not the usual scuttling of glowing rats or the distant groan of settling metal—this was something far worse. The rhythmic clanking and screeching of hydraulics and grinding steel, punctuated by the hiss of overworked pistons. A sound Lucent would recognize anywhere, even half-asleep with his skull still pounding from rawcast backlash.

He was moving before his eyes fully opened, fingers closing around the jagged length of shrapnel he kept tucked in his boot. The metal was cool against his palm, its uneven edges biting into his calluses. Across the dim interior of the shipping container, Kai twitched in his sleep, his breath hitching in that fragile way of someone caught in the throes of a nightmare. The kid's face was smeared with grime, his once-pristine jacket now a canvas of sewer filth and fear-sweat.

Closer now.

The noise set Lucent's teeth on edge. He remembered the last time he'd heard it—a year ago, in the Pit, with the crowd roaring and blood slick between his fingers. The way Nex's knee had given out with a sound like snapping cables. The way he'd screamed.

The container door shrieked open, its rusted hinges protesting violently. Dawn's sickly light spilled in, painting the interior in shades of bruised purple and industrial orange. The figure framed in the doorway was massive, shoulders nearly brushing either side of the entrance. But it was the leg that drew the eye—a monstrous construct of scavenged hydraulics and reinforced plating, the foot ending in three sharpened steel talons that had left those distinctive scratches in the metal outside.

Nex.

King of the Junkyard. The man who'd walked out of the Pit missing a limb, and come back twice as dangerous.

Behind him, silhouettes shifted in the half-light—Nex's usual retinue of freaks. The air turned thick with the stench of stale synth-lube and old blood, undercut by something sharper, something chemical.

"Well, well." Nex's voice was gravel in a tin can, the words distorted by the scar that twisted his lips into a permanent sneer. "Lucent fucking Argyr." His hydraulic leg hissed as he stepped forward, the steel claws leaving fresh grooves in the concrete floor. "Heard someone was trespassin' on my turf." The grin that split his face was more a baring of teeth than anything resembling humor. "And here I thought you'd never set your foot here ever again."

Kai jolted awake with a gasp, scrambling backward until his spine connected painfully with the container wall. His eyes—wide and bloodshot—darted between Lucent and the newcomers, panic rising visibly in the rapid flutter of his pulse at his throat.

Lucent didn't move. Didn't blink. His Conduit, propped against his thigh where he'd been charging it, read a precarious 28%. Enough for maybe one glyph. Maybe.

Nex's gaze—cold and calculating—landed on Kai. For a long moment, the only sound was the rhythmic hiss-click of his prosthetic's pressure valves. Then he laughed, the sound like rusted chains dragging across concrete. "Oh, this is sweet." He took another step forward, the steel claws scraping ominously. "You drag some Spire prettyboy into my Junkyard?" His grin widened. "Guess I never thought you'd bring a present for me."

Kai's mouth opened—whether to protest or plead, Lucent would never know. His boot connected with the kid's shin hard enough to bruise, the silent warning clear: Shut the hell up.

Nex watched the exchange with undisguised amusement. "Cute." He cracked his knuckles, the sound unnaturally loud in the confined space. Behind him, his crew shifted—a wiry woman with a mag-lev rotor saw, a hulking brute with elongated limb augments, a third whose face was half-melted from glyph backfire. All armed. All smiling.

"Now," Nex said, the amusement bleeding from his voice like coolant from a cracked pipe. "You gonna tell me why you're here? Or do we do this the fun way?"

The steel fist flexed, catching the dim light. Lucent still silent and never answering him.

Nex's grin was an intimidating thing, carved deep into a face that had seen too many underground fights. A thick scar ran from his left temple down to his jawline, pulling his smile slightly crooked, giving him the look of a man permanently caught between amusement and rage. His mechanical leg whined as he shifted his weight, the pistons contracting with a sound like bones grinding together.

"Last time you stood across from me," Nex said, his voice like gravel in a tin can, "I walked away lighter." He wrapped his knuckles against the prosthetic. The dull clang echoed through the container. "You remember that, Argyr? Remember how the Pit smelled that night? Blood and burnt meat?"

Lucent remembered.

The fight had been supposed to end at first blood. But Nex had come in juiced on black-market combat glyphs, his eyes blown wide with something more than adrenaline. He'd broken three taboos before the match even started. Lucent had simply finished it.

Behind Nex, his crew fanned out—a guy with melted face twisted in something resembling a smile, the next guy looming near the ceiling with his elongated limbs folded like a spider's, and the last girl's bone saw idling with a low, hungry whine.

Kai pressed himself harder against the wall, his breath coming too fast. Lucent could practically hear the kid's pulse rabbiting in his throat.

Nex's gaze slid to him. "Spire rats usually don't last five minutes down here." He took another step forward, the steel toes scraping concrete. "What's your secret, prettyboy? You somebody's pet?"

Lucent moved before Kai could answer—just a slight shift of his weight, but enough to draw Nex's attention back where it belonged.

"You want to settle old scores," Lucent said, his voice low, "settle them. But the kid's not part of it."

Nex barked a laugh. "Still playing hero." He shook his head. "That's why you're stuck in the gutters, Argyr. No stomach for what it takes to really win."

The container felt smaller suddenly, the walls pressing in. Lucent's fingers twitched toward his Conduit— about thirty percent charge, one mid tier glyph, maybe two if he pushed it. Not enough to take them all. But enough to make an opening.

Then Nex's grin changed.

"Thing is," he said, leaning in close enough that Lucent could smell the stale stims on his breath, "I didn't come here for you." His meaty hand shot out, pointing his finger on Kai. "I came for him."

Kai made a sound like a stepped-on rat.

Lucent's vision tunneled.

The steel toes gleamed in the half-light as Nex walked towards Kai.