The hum of machines usually drowned out everything inside FAWS headquarters. The buzz of grinders, the pop of welding arcs, the chatter of technicians ribbing each other to keep their spirits up. But lately, even that noise felt thinner, quieter.
It wasn't the machines. It wasn't the people. It was Sirius Blake.
Where once his manic laughter and wild outbursts had made the workshop feel alive—even terrifyingly so—now there was only a hollow silence. He worked the same hours, sometimes longer, bent over schematics or fiddling with a weapon's guts. But no outbursts. No jokes. No sudden giggling fits that left people rolling their eyes and muttering, "Renegade's at it again."
Without his storm of chaos, FAWS felt wrong.
The murmurs started at the far benches first.
"I don't like it. He hasn't laughed in a week."
"Better than cackling like a lunatic every five minutes."
"No, you don't get it. That madness kept us going. Without it… he looks like a ghost."
"Maybe he burned himself out. Can't keep a fire like that forever."
One tech leaned closer to another, speaking in a hushed voice: "What if he's planning something worse? He gets that look in his eye sometimes. What if he's cooking up another monster like Shatterstorm, but meaner?"
The other swallowed nervously. "Then we're screwed. Because this time he isn't laughing. This time, he's serious."
The nickname that had once spread like wildfire—Renegade Blake—was whispered now like a curse.
His friends saw it too. They tried to pull him out of it in their own ways.
Stone Varga cornered him by the firing range. "Hey. Remember when you made me lug those prototype drums across half the damn base 'just to see if they rattled right'? You laughed for three hours while I sweated. Where's that guy?"
Sirius gave him a faint grin, but his eyes stayed distant. "Guess he grew up."
"Bullshit," Stone growled, grabbing his shoulder. "Don't you dare 'grow up' on me, Blake. You're Renegade. You're the spark in this pit. Without you, FAWS feels like a morgue."
Sirius just patted Stone's hand lightly and walked away without another word. Stone stared after him, fists clenching, a low curse rumbling from his throat.
Whisper Kade tried a gentler approach. She found him at his bench late one night, head down over glowing schematics. She placed a ration coffee beside him.
"You look like you haven't slept in days," she said softly.
Sirius didn't look up. "Sleep's overrated."
"You haven't laughed either," she pressed.
That made him pause. He smirked faintly, but the smirk looked wrong. "Maybe I'm saving it for later."
Whisper's chest tightened. She touched his arm gently. "Don't save it too long. Some of us need it now."
But he didn't reply. He just went back to work.
By the second week, even the mess hall had turned sour. Conversations turned inevitably toward Sirius.
"Something's broken in him."
"No—he's scheming. That smile he gives sometimes? It's worse than his laugh."
"I'll take crazy Renegade over quiet Renegade any day."
"What if he never comes back?"
Bear Ivanov, towering over the table, slammed his tray down with enough force to rattle cups. "He's not broken. He's carrying something heavy. That's all. You think laughing like a maniac every day doesn't take its toll?"
Shade, quiet as always, muttered from the corner: "He's not carrying something. He's lost something."
The table went silent at that. Because everyone knew Shade was right. They just didn't know what Sirius had lost—or how to get it back.
Chief Engineer Loras had been watching the change closely. He stood often at the catwalk, arms folded, looking down at Sirius hunched over his bench. Normally, he would scold the boy for his reckless antics, for scaring his technicians half to death with his wild grins. But now?
Now he missed them.
In his office one evening, he spoke quietly into his recorder. "Sirius Blake has gone quiet. Not the usual obsessive quiet of invention, but something heavier. The men whisper. They're unsettled. His friends are unsettled. If this continues… FAWS morale may fracture."
He sighed, rubbing his temples. "The irony is, I once prayed for him to shut up. Now I realize—without that madness, he's not Sirius. He's just a boy carrying too much."
That night, Sirius didn't sleep. He wandered the halls until he found himself on one of the outer balconies of FAWS HQ. The night sky stretched above him, stars muted by the haze of distant artillery smoke.
He leaned against the railing, Carbine X slung across his back, and stared upward. For the first time in years, he let himself stop. No schematics. No cackling bravado. No pretending.
A single tear slipped down his cheek before he even realized it.
"I hate you," he whispered to the sky. He didn't know if he meant ARI for going silent, or his father for leaving him those cursed recordings. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
The night answered only with distant thunder.
The next day, the rumors had grown bolder.
"I heard he's done. Burned out."
"No, he's snapped. He's planning something darker. You see the way he stares at us? Like we're tools."
"Maybe the council should take him off FAWS. Put him in a cell before he does something we regret."
Sirius overheard some of it. He didn't respond. He just smiled that hollow smile and kept walking, which only made the whispers louder.
Even his friends couldn't deny the truth anymore. In private, they spoke about him in hushed voices.
"He's slipping," Stone admitted, slamming a fist against the table. "I've seen men break before, but this… it's different."
Whisper shook her head. "He's not broken. He's… grieving. For what, I don't know. But grief looks like this."
Bear exhaled heavily. "And grief can kill as surely as any bug."
Shade's eyes narrowed. "So the question is—do we wait for him to crawl back out, or do we drag him out?"
The question hung in the air like smoke.
Sirius knew they were talking about him. He wasn't stupid. He caught the glances, the whispers, the uneasy silences whenever he entered a room.
And part of him almost laughed at the irony. The Renegade Blake they'd once called dangerous, unhinged, insane—now they wanted him back. Now his absence was the danger.
But he couldn't laugh. Not really.
He sat at his bench one night, hands shaking as he held a half-assembled burst-limiter. His reflection stared back at him from the polished metal. Hollow eyes. Tight jaw. No spark.
"I don't even look like me anymore," he muttered.
The silence that followed was unbearable.
One late night, Sirius stood again at the outer balcony. The stars above blurred in his eyes. He didn't bother wiping the tears this time. His hands clenched the railing until his knuckles whitened.
That's when he heard it.
A voice. Not ARI's, not his father's recordings. A real voice, carried softly on the night wind.
"Sirius…"
He turned sharply, eyes wide, heart hammering.
Someone stood in the shadows behind him.
And for the first time in weeks, Sirius felt something other than emptiness.