That Night
The knock that came at the door of my cramped dorm room wasn't Boss Rourke's rough, familiar pounding. This was different—three heavy, deliberate knocks, metal or something just as hard, each one rattling through the tiny space.
Tok. TOK. TOKK!!!
My heart jumped into a panicked rhythm, completely out of sync with that measured beat. I had just closed my journal, the ink still wet where I had tried—and failed—to capture the pain and the red light in words. I drew in a breath and opened the door.
Three figures. Two broad-shouldered men in plain black uniforms, no insignia, standing just behind a woman.
The woman's hair was silver, combed smooth like a helmet. Her face was a mask that looked untouched by emotion, her steel-gray eyes sweeping across my room in an instant, pausing only when they landed on my sketchbook—open, full of messy drawings of machines and Artifact parts.
"Kaelan?" Her voice was cold, efficient, like a scalpel.
I could only nod, my tongue suddenly dry and useless.
"We're from Aethelgard Academy. You'll come with us." The words were spoken as fact, not request.
"Why? What's going on?" I asked, though deep down, I already knew. It was all tied to this afternoon. To Rustbucket. To the pain.
She didn't answer me. Instead, she stepped forward into my room uninvited. Her long, pale fingers brushed the edge of my sketchbook.
"You have… a unique talent," she said. And the way she said it made my skin crawl. It wasn't praise. It was observation. The way a scientist might announce the discovery of a new insect. "A talent that cannot be wasted."
"This is a mistake," I stammered, fear gnawing at my voice. "I'm just a mechanic. I don't—"
"We don't see you as a threat, boy," she cut in smoothly, and for the first time, her lips curved into a thin smile. Cold. Empty. A smile that never reached her eyes. "We see you as an asset."
The word asset hit me like a stone in the gut. That wasn't a word for a person. That was a word for property. For something used until it broke, then thrown away.
They gave me five minutes—no more—to shove a few things into a backpack. Then we marched down the silent dorm hallway toward the exit.
Outside, Lena was waiting. Standing beside a black, unmarked car with its engine idling. She wasn't looking at me. Her gaze was fixed on the armored transport behind it, where my Rustbucket was already loaded. Through a crack in the door, I could see the faint, sick red glow leaking from its frame.
As I was pushed past her, she finally turned. Her voice was so soft I almost thought I imagined it.
"I didn't mean… for this…"
But her words were hollow. Her eyes—usually so calculating—were now tangled with something raw, something that almost looked like guilt. But it didn't change anything. She had reported me. And that report had delivered me here, into something far worse than any scrapyard.
One of the men shoved me into the back of the car. The windows were tinted black, cutting me off from the outside world.
But just before the door slammed shut, I caught a glimpse of the city bathed in lamplight. In the distance, massive silhouettes of Artifacts patrolled the skyline, moving with the grace of the women piloting them.
I wasn't a mechanic anymore. And I wasn't a pilot, either.
I was an asset. An anomaly. Something new.
And in a world that hated change, being new was the most dangerous thing of all.