Steel Fangs: Blood of the Machine
Season 2, Episode 22 — Leviathan of the River
Timeline: Three nights after Ep 21. Zack = Level 42. Ledger active. The city's pulse is a war drum. The river wants a bite back.
⸻
Cold Open — The River Holds Its Breath
You can hear it before you see it—the strange quiet that sits on top of a city like a lid. No sirens. No horns. Just a big animal making itself small right before it jumps.
Zack stands on Pier 84 with Luna and Silas, coffee gone cold in his hands. The Hudson looks like a bruise that finally healed wrong. Far out, a wedge of black rises, not water and not wind. His Hearthbreak Vow scrolls warnings he doesn't need:
MAJOR EVENT: Hydrodynamic Anomaly — "Leviathan" (Broker-class)
Threat Envelope: Citywide (Hudson → East River conduit)
Civilian Density: Extreme (bridges, riverwalks, ferries, subways)
Recommendation: Command node disruption + evacuation corridors + bell suppression
Zack exhales, steam and resolve. "We end it here."
Luna rolls her shoulders, the axe on her back shining like a bad idea that works. "Let's make the river sorry it learned nouns."
Silas doesn't smile. His coin taps once on his knuckle, bright as a lighthouse for lies. "He'll ring small bells all over town to scatter you. Choose wisely. And don't drown angry—it's embarrassing."
Zack drops the cup. "Prestige or die."
The water bulges. The river opens its mouth.
Title card.
⸻
Act I — Small Bells, Big Teeth
They don't get one siren. They get twenty.
— Williamsburg Bridge: crowd at sunset, tourists, joggers, a bus dead in the center lane;
— Battery Park: a pop-up concert's PA howls, people stream toward the railing like moths;
— Roosevelt Island Tram: stalled mid-span;
— East River Park: field lights glitch strobe → panic kindergarten;
— Harlem River Drive: jackknifed box truck turns lanes into a puzzle with anger management issues.
Marrow's text lands like a birthday punch. "We're ringing together, Zack. Be a conductor."
Zack answers by moving.
"Split," Luna says.
"No," Zack says, feeling the Ledger weigh choices with knives. "We sequence. Bridge, then Battery, then Tram. Silas, keep me a lane."
Silas nods, voice low and iron. "The river will try to make you a noun. Be a verb."
Zack runs. The city opens.
Williamsburg Bridge
Night wind tastes like steel and maybe a storm. The bridge trembles—not from traffic. From something sliding along its piles, teasing rivets loose with ancient, bored fingers.
A bus sits crooked, hazard lights winking like a doomed flirt. People press railings. A man in a yellow beanie holds his girlfriend's face in both hands and tells her it's fine while his eyes say it isn't.
Zack hits the deck at a sprint. Oathwave (R2) hums in his ribs. He throws it in an arc that shoals panic into already-open lanes, stalling stampede without freezing it. Hearthchain (R7) spits micro-tethers like sparks—click click click—latching to a stroller handle, a backpack, someone's belt. He drags a row of five away from the edge and into motion with the current instead of against it.
+500 EXP (mass flow/evac)
EXP: 500 / 1000 (L42)
Luna vaults the bus roof, boots thumping, yelling clear profanity and clearer instructions. She body-checks a Shade in an MTA windbreaker right as it reaches for a manually locked bus door and headbutts the lock for good measure. It pops. Twenty people spill out like a sigh.
Silas steps onto the catwalk and lifts a hand. The bridge's sway changes by half a breath. It doesn't fight them anymore.
The river tries the teeth play: a sleeve of water rises and licks over the pedestrian path. Zack Anchor-Lines the railing, a light pole, and the bus chassis—hold. The sleeve slaps and slides off like it hit manners.
+250 EXP (Anchor save)
EXP: 750 / 1000
"Battery next," Silas calls. "Concert's becoming a baptism."
Zack blasts Oathwave one more time in a clean crescent, shaping the flow toward the Manhattan side egress. The crowd obeys a story they don't know they're reading.
They go.
⸻
Act II — Battery Park: Choir vs. Axe
The band never saw it coming. No one does when a park turns into an altar.
Hollow Priests stand among food trucks with lanyards and benevolent smiles, microphones wired into small bells hidden in speaker stacks. Their throats are already open. Their song is faux-ambient—safe—and everything near the water leans forward a step at a time.
Zack skids across grass still slick with kids' spit and soda. Hearthchain lashes the bell rig—click—and he yanks the whole speaker tree into the lawn, cords vomiting plugs like worms. The song stutters.
Luna hurls herself at the nearest Priest. Axe down. A robe opens like a tent that has decided to change careers. Bloodfire licks a napkin dispenser and regrets it.
Silas points casually at a bell half-buried behind a churro cart. "Bad bell." It forgets ring and remembers paperweight.
+400 EXP (bell suppression + evac)
EXP: 150 / 1000 (L43)
LEVEL UP → 43
Gain: Oathwave arc precision ↑; micro-tether accuracy ↑
A real cop—sweaty, overwhelmed, not corrupt—tries to hold a line. Zack throws Oathwave past him in a ghost S-curve that turns a crush into three manageable trickles. The cop looks at him like the rumor has hands, nods once, and keeps going.
The river pusssssshes. Inland sprinkler heads go off—in reverse—spitting brackish onto the grass as if the city pipes decided to be estuaries. Kids scream, adults slip, chaos yawns.
"Silas!" Zack barks.
Silas twitches two fingers and the water chooses the drain instead of legs. "Go," he says.
"Tram," Luna replies, already running.
⸻
Act III — The Tramline and the Tongue
The Roosevelt Island Tram hangs like a swallowed scream, mid-span. One car full of tourists and grumpy locals; the other empty, swaying. Below, the East River makes circles it shouldn't.
Inside the car, a pregnant woman breathes in tiny, angry huffs. A kid with braces records everything, shaking. An old man mutters, "Shoulda taken the F train," like a spell.
Zack doesn't overthink. He Hearthchains the car's roof corners—four bright tethers singing—and reels himself along the lines like a spider that doesn't care about physics. He hits the roof, drops through a maintenance hatch, and lands in the tight car like a rumor falling true.
"We're okay," he lies with compassion. "We're about to be okay."
The operator stares at him, face white. "The drive's—" She gestures; the panel oozes condensation that smells like tidepool.
"Got it," Zack says, and doesn't. But he does have Oathwave and a crowd that wants to be told how to not die.
He throws an arc that turns panic into ready. "Seat belts or handholds. Knees bent. When I say now, trust me like he's your cousin." He nods at the operator. She nods back. Not belief—decision.
Below, the river lifts. A tongue of water rises, long and patient, aiming to lick the car and taste twenty snacks.
Silas appears on the opposite cable tower, one hand on the beam, the other holding nothing like it's a switch. "Not your snack," he tells the river.
Zack bristles his Anchor Lines into the tram frame. Luna, on the tower with Silas, plants a hauling line into a winch that only existed a second ago because Silas told reality it should.
"Now!" Zack roars.
He reels the tram up as the river tongue swipes underneath. The car scrapes past the worst of it. The tongue bites air, furious but not as stubborn as Zack's oath.
Inside, the pregnant woman laughs a hysterical, relieved sob. The kid with braces almost drops his phone. The old man says, "Okay. Fine. You win," to no one.
+600 EXP (tram rescue)
EXP: 750 / 1000 (L43)
Zack climbs out and slides down the tether to the tower, landing beside Luna with ankles that complain and steel that doesn't.
Silas's coin stops tapping. The air changes. The river stops fidgeting.
"Brace," he says, eyes distant. "He's tired of little bites."
⸻
Act IV — The Leviathan Surfaces
It arrives without fanfare. It simply is, and the mind takes time to catch up.
A spine uncoils the length of a city block, vertebrae of rusted hull plates and barnacled bones. Ribs arc outward, knitting water into flesh into wave. A head like a barge chews up under the bridge shadow and opens a maw that isn't a mouth so much as a decision about where things go (inside).
People on the FDR pull over because their brains insist on it. Ferry pilots forget training and remember prayers. On the Brooklyn shore, kids point and scream and laugh because they were promised monsters and finally, a monster.
The Leviathan turns an eye—if that's an eye—to Zack's tower. In it is the glint of accountants. It knows about ledgers.
Zack clamps Anchor Lines to tower girders and asphalt, bracing without thinking. "Silas?"
"Not a demon," Silas says softly. "A Broker. It answers to contracts. It can be out-lawyered."
Luna grins with teeth. "Or axed."
"Also that," Silas concedes.
The Leviathan breathes. Every drain on Roosevelt Island reverses, gushing street water uphill toward the river like a subpoena. The small bells Marrow planted—under benches, in park lamps, inside ferry speakers—start to ring without sound—ideas slipped into ears: Step forward. Water is safety. Float. Be carried.
Zack feels the city lean.
He throws Oathwave (R2) with both arms, arcs crossing like scythes. The bells stutter in their silent ringing; the lean becomes a bend away. He points, shapes, yanks an entire block's worth of motion toward upland stairs with an invisible rope.
+800 EXP (citywide crowd control)
EXP: 550 / 1000 (L44)
LEVEL UP → 44
Gain: Oathwave cost ↓ in complex arcs; Ledger visualization overlays pathing
The Leviathan's head reels as if insulted. It likes when cities obey. It tries again, rising, water bulking into a second ridge. Its tongue—a causeway of current—lashes for Ellis Island, aiming to scoop the ferry loading zone like a kid popping a zit.
"Not on my watch," Zack growls. He sprints down tower stairs, hits street level, and runs hard enough to make pigeons reconsider their god.
Luna rides the railing down like a demon gymnast, cackling wild because fear is a party too. Silas takes a ladder gravity doesn't remember approving.
They reach Battery as the tongue arrives.
Zack doesn't have time to think and that's fine; thinking is for next episodes. He slams Anchor Lines into three light poles and the corner of a stone war memorial, Hearthchains a row of park benches, throws Oathwave in a spiral that grips and spins the stampede away from the water, and holds.
The tongue hits his makeshift moor like a couch hitting a doorframe. The impact is an argument with mass and sorrow; Zack wins the first clause.
Silas walks along the tongue as if it's a dock, taps twice with his coin like a judge with a cheap gavel, and the current destabilizes at key eddies. It loses its one job for a heartbeat.
Luna keeps the mouths off the bodies—because the Leviathan brought mouths in the water, little ones, opportunistic and fast. She kicks one like a water polo tournament from hell.
+900 EXP (mass interception + anchor)
EXP: 450 / 1000 (L45)
LEVEL UP → 45
Gain: Hearthchain Rank 8 (split 8; block-wide range for 2s); Anchor duration ↑; Shield Yank dual-intercept window ↑
The Leviathan changes tactics. It listens. It hears the bells fail and sends a contract instead: a false amber alert across phones—"Flood Warning: SEEK LOW GROUND." Screens bloom with the city's betrayal.
Zack's HUD spears an angry banner:
CONTRACT HACK: Civic advisories spoofed.
Counter: Overwrite w/ City Acknowledgement + Trusted Nodes
"Call them," Zack snaps.
Silas lifts the radio he stole fair and square from Station 9 and speaks in a tone that bends bureaucracy: "All houses, all boroughs: HIGH GROUND. Repeat: HIGH GROUND. Steel Fang team on scene. Follow our flow." He flicks his coin once. That lie becomes true enough to ride.
Dispatchers believe who's in front of them. Sirens re-route. First responders move with Zack's arcs, not across them.
The Leviathan hates that.
It dives.
The water around the Battery falls away—fast—like a breath sucked in by a lung the size of a neighborhood. The void yawns.
Silas's eyes snap to Zack. "Get ready."
"Ready," Zack says, and isn't. None of them are.
The wave comes back six seconds later, and it is taller than mistakes.
Zack plants. Anchor Lines to every anchor he's got, Hearthchain (R8) to eight posts and benches and bollards, Oathwave to curve human streams around objects like a calculator with fangs.
The wave hits.
For a second, all the sound in the world is one sound.
The anchors hold.
A century-old oak loses patience and peels out of the ground; Luna catches a kid who's suddenly where a tree used to be. Silas stands and refuses to fall, and the water's math changes just enough to miss six people who don't deserve their tragedies yet.
The wave drains back. It leaves fish confused on the lawn and a pretzel stand relocated to New Jersey.
+1200 EXP (catastrophe moor + crowd save)
EXP: 1650 / 1000
LEVEL UP → 46 → 47
Gain: Oathwave "lane-casting" (paint two safe corridors); Surge fatigue −; Anchor "web" (anchor anchors to anchors)
The Leviathan is still here. Angry. Curious. Hungry. It stops swiping and stares.
Zack stares back.
"Come on," he says to the river. "Eat me, then."
"Zack—" Silas warns.
But this is the move. He steps to the very edge, Hearthchains the Leviathan's tooth—a chunk of reef-bone wedged in its gumline—click—and drags.
The world lurches.
He's yanked off the Battery and into the mouth.
⸻
Act V — Inside the Contract
It's not a stomach. It's a room made of deals.
The walls are translucent, water and tissue and old ship hulls laminated together. Runes drift past like plankton: clauses, terms, indemnities. Things the river agreed to, or made others agree to: "All things flow toward me." "Those who slip are mine." "Weight yields to the patient."
Zack can't breathe by human rules. Good thing he hasn't been a strictly human rulebook for a while. The steel in him sings, oxygen beige becoming enough.
He sees bodies in membrane pockets along the wall—unconscious but breathing. Stolen swimmers. Ferry deckhands who took unwise selfies once. A jogger. Two cops. A kid in a life vest with a superhero band-aid on his knee.
His Ledger overlays their heartbeats as numbers. His oath makes them faces.
He flings Hearthchain in eight bright lines—click click click click click click click click—latching pockets, rip rip rip—tearing them open. Bodies spill into the chamber. He yanks them toward the mouth, toward that angled wedge of night outside. The Leviathan's throat flexes to swallow them back down.
"Uh-uh," Zack grunts, and throws Oathwave like a wedged door—holding the concept of out.
+900 EXP (internal rescue)
EXP: 550 / 1000 (L47)
The Leviathan changes the contract. The runes spin. One peels off the wall, crawls onto Zack's forearm, and tries to write "TITHED" into his steel.
Zack bares his fangs and bites the rune. It tastes like brine and the corner of a checkbook. He chews law.
It screams and dissipates.
"Your mistake," Zack says to a river, which is insane. "You assumed I can't read."
He can't—not this—but the oath can. It's a vow written in a language that always understood ledgers.
He slams his hand into the wall and signs NO.
Outside, dimly, Luna's silhouette lands on the Leviathan's upper palate like a cat with murder issues. She buries her axe in roof-tissue. "Spit him out!"
Silas is a wraith along the jaw hinge, whispering counter-terms. The hinge forgets clamp and tries release.
Zack kicks toward the mouth, dragging three bodies by tether and two by fist. The Leviathan bucks and heaves and vomits.
They burst out in a fountain of wrong. Luna yanks someone from Zack's grip without asking. Silas snags two with a gesture that convinces surface tension to be a hand.
Zack lands on the seawall and rolls to his feet, lungs screaming, steel singing.
The Leviathan rears one last time to swallow a pier whole.
Zack spreads his arms. Oathwave pours from him like a god learned to curve shame into traffic patterns. He paints two lanes away from the pier and across the field, then rakes Anchor webs across the pier footings and rails.
"Hold," he tells wood and stone. "Hold for them."
They hold.
+1400 EXP (final surge control + mass save)
EXP: 1950 / 1000
LEVEL UP → 48 → 49 → 50 → 51 → 52 → 53 → 54 → 55 → 56 → 57 → 58 → 59 → 60 → 61 → 62 → 63 → 64 → 65 → 66 → 67 → 68 → 69 → 70 → 71 → 72 → 73 → 74 → 75 → 76 → 77 → 78 → 79 → 80
Unlocked: Hearthchain R9 (city-block+ 3s; split 10), Oathwave R3 (city quadrant lanes), Anchor Mesh (area moor), Surge Phase 3 (brief city-sprint)
NEW: Oath Beacon — your position becomes a rally point; first responders auto-route to you; civilians "see" safest line (cost: high)
The Leviathan stops. Not beaten, exactly—denied. Its vast head dips, reading Zack's ledger with an eye full of math. Marrow wanted a city to obey. Zack gave it a city that flows around him.
The river decides to be pragmatic. It sinks, folding water over water, choosing to pretend it was never here this high.
It leaves behind… ribbons. Contracts cut into streamers that curl on the surface, ink bleeding into gray. One floats to Zack's boot. It reads, in a handwriting that looks suspiciously like his: Return what is not yours.
He looks up at Luna and Silas, both drenched, both grinning like lunatics with taxes paid. He looks out at the city he didn't let drown.
He breathes.
The city breathes back.
⸻
Act VI — Receipts and Rumors
They set up Oath Beacon at the Battery flagpole because it's public and that's the point. Zack stands under it for three minutes (no longer; he's not a statue), eyes glowing like fresh welds, and every boot, wheel, and bare foot in a ten-block radius routes away from bad ground like they've always known this game.
Firefighter Captain-from-47 jogs up, soaked to sternum, grinning like a dog that got the stick and kept it. "I don't know if you're human," she pants, "but if you ask me to run into the river again, I'll do it."
"Don't," Zack says, and actually smiles. "We made the river behave."
She cuffs his shoulder. "You negotiated with water. Sure. Why not."
Phones are out again. #SteelFangs and #AxeQueen and new ones—#CoinLaw, #BellBreaker. Someone spray-paints on a pier piling while cops pretend not to see: CITY > MARROW.
Silas watches the water, coin finally still. "That bought us time."
"How much?" Luna asks, squeezing river out of her hair with both hands.
"Enough for him to escalate," Silas says. "Markets and politics. He'll go after your self now."
Zack's HUD offers a line he hates and loves:
MAJOR OBJECTIVE COMPLETE: Leviathan repelled
CITY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: High → (Myth threshold approaching)
Self Lock: Unresolved
Forecast: Tribunal response imminent. Marrow pivot: markets + memory
A boy watches from the fence—nine, maybe, gap-toothed, wearing a cape made from a trash bag. He tugs his father's sleeve, whispers, "That's him."
Zack meets his eyes. The kid lifts a hand in a cautious wave. Zack lifts a hand back.
He didn't fix everything. He fixed this. He'll take it.
The river, out past the ferry lane, raises one small wave and lets it fall like a bow. On some level, it respects him. On many, it still wants lunch.
⸻
Stinger — Tribunal's Offer
Atop a skyscraper that pretends it's an altar, the Tribunal gathers against a wall of glass full of river.
Pearl-Eyes watches footage of Zack yanking bodies out of the Leviathan and sets down her glass untouched. "Myth threshold soon," she says. "City will open its lock for him."
Braid-Jaw scowls. "We take his self first."
The blurred one folds hands like a church folding a check. "He won't trade with us."
Silas's teacher voice floats in from the balcony—he's not there; he's never there when he's there. "Offer him what he can't save."
"What's that?" asks the boy-old one, smiling with no childhood in it.
The blurred one touches the glass with one finger. The river makes a face back none of them can read.
"A voice," the blurred one says. "Or the memory of one."
Pearl-Eyes rings the silver bell on the table—soft, smiling. It's not a sound; it's a calendar invite to the soul. "Set the meeting. Tomorrow night. Hospital roof."
Outside, the city shakes itself like a wet dog and gets back to work. It knows a war when it hears the drums—especially when the drums are bells you can't hear.