CHAPTER 1.

South Rail Isn’t Safe For Curiosity.

ALPIRE had recently unveiled a new Public Security unit: the Black Wardens. Dressed in dark, sleek uniforms with mirrored helmets and armed with a flashy grappling-hook maneuvering system, they’d given the city plenty to talk about in the weeks following the incident. Gianni sprawled across the couch of his cramped apartment, one leg dangling lazily over the edge. Posters clung to the walls in uneven lines, and a week’s worth of half-finished electronics cluttered the desk by the window. He absently scratched at the stubble on his chin, eyes locked on the glowing screen of his phone as he scrolled through a local forum buzzing about the Wardens.

“Meatshields,” one commenter wrote.

“Government lapdogs,” said another.

Gianni smirked faintly but didn’t join in. He wasn’t sure what to think yet — about the Wardens, the city, any of it. These days, he was spending more time watching than acting, lurking behind screens instead of rooftops. A pair of worn down rollerskates by the door had gathered a thin film of dust. Every morning, the same ritual: Notice them. Tell himself he’d go out again soon. Stay home.

Graffiti paint cans rattled softly whenever the wind nudged the windowpane, reminders of nights spent chasing adrenaline and outrunning cops — of a seemingly distant version of himself.

Gianni barely looked up when the doorbell buzzed. Visitors were rare; most people avoided this building entirely. But something about that persistent, quiet buzz put a frown in his face.

He swung the door open.

A tall, white-haired man stood there, helmet tucked under one arm. Even in casual posture, he appeared unnervingly composed — except his gaze lingered too long, sharpened by the darkness smudged in his eyelids… Is that eyeliner? Eyebags? Both?

Gianni leaned against the doorframe, scratching at his chin. “If you’re selling enlightenment crystals, you’re late. I just spent my last paycheck on cup ramen.”

No reaction. Then, finally, the man held up a slim, silver badge between two fingers. ALPIRE PUBLIC SECURITY. A sharp silver insignia reflected the hallway’s dim light.

“Claymore,” the man said evenly, as if the name alone should be sufficient.

Gianni blinked at the badge, then at him. “…Cool,” he said after a beat. “Do you want… a sticker? I’ve got Hello Kitty ones somewhere.”

The man didn’t rise to the joke. He stepped forward instead, gaze flicking once around the room — the posters, the dust-caked skates, the mess of wires — before settling back on Gianni. His voice was calm, clipped, but not unkind.

“My grappling system’s locking mid-flight,” Claymore said calmly. “I heard you work with retrofits.”

Gianni frowned, dragging a hand through his messy hair as he shut the door. “Retrofits, yeah. Government-grade toys that can snap a lamppost in half? That’s… different paperwork.”

“The official techs will take three weeks,” Claymore said. “If they answer at all. And when they do, they strip half the rig for ‘security reasons.’” A faint crease settled between his brows — not frustration exactly, but wear, the kind that comes from repeating the same dead-end argument too many times.

Gianni studied him for a second, caught off guard by how human that crease made him look. He pushed it down with a smirk. “So, what, you just tracked down the weird guy in the condemned building because he’s fast and cheap?”

Claymore didn’t flinch. “Because you’re good.”

The flat certainty in his tone pulled Gianni up short. He glanced at the badge again, at the helmet under Claymore’s arm, at the faint scorch marks running along the grappling rig clipped to his belt.

“Fine,” he said, stepping back and sweeping an arm toward the chaos inside. “But if this thing blows a hole in my wall, you’re explaining it to the landlord.”

Claymore walked in without hesitation. His boots made dull, solid thuds against the floorboards. unclipping the grappling rig from his belt and setting it carefully on the desk. Gianni crouched over it, fingers brushing lightly across the casing. Sleek, heavy, faint traces of heat-stress along the coils. He popped the panel open and whistled low under his breath.

“Fancy,” Gianni muttered. “But whoever designed the stabilizers deserves a Nobel Prize in ‘Making Stuff Overheat and Kill People.’”

“They’re mass-produced,” Claymore said simply, arms folding across his chest. “We’ve had five failures this month.”

Gianni paused mid-reach, eyebrows shooting up. “Five?” A beat passed. “…Wardens having a rough month, or is this just user error?”

Claymore’s jaw shifted almost imperceptibly, gaze sliding briefly past Gianni before snapping back to the rig. He didn’t answer right away, but the silence carried weight, his squared shoulders and locked posture betraying pressure simmering beneath the surface.

Gianni dropped into his chair and started working with a screwdriver, the casing snapping back under the tool. The faint smell of burnt metal curled into the air. “Looks like you tried to swing from something way above your pay grade,” he said without looking up.

“No,” Claymore replied, tone steady. “I tried to stop someone from being pulled into a tunnel.”

The screwdriver stilled. Gianni looked up, but Claymore’s face stayed composed, save for the slightest tightening around his jaw. “…That supposed to be cryptic, or are you telling me the city’s opening an underground tourism program?”

“People are disappearing,” Claymore said, quieter this time, though the weight behind it landed hard. “South Rail sector. Dozens in the last three months.”

The screwdriver slipped, clattering against the desk. Gianni scooped it up fast before Claymore could comment.

“Disappearing,” he echoed, aiming for casual and missing by inches. “As in… skipped town, or—”

“As in they were taken,” Claymore said flatly. “We patrol. We search. But there are too many places to hide in a city this size. Too many blind spots.” His gaze drifted for the briefest second, unfocused, before locking back onto the rig like forcing himself there. “This equipment is all that keeps us ahead of it. And it fails.”

Gianni worked a screw back into place, movements sharper now, the tool clicking softly against metal. The buzzing of the city outside bled faintly through the window, restless and distant.

“Right,” he said finally, voice low. “Totally casual dinner conversation.”

“You asked,” Claymore said simply.

That faint crease returned between his brows, sharper now. Urgency. Something heavier than his flat tone betrayed.

Gianni leaned back, letting the chair creak beneath him, eyes on the open panel but mind racing somewhere far past it.

Claymore’s gaze lingered on the rig one last time, then he reached into a side pouch and pulled out a slim, metallic case. He placed it on the desk with a faint clink.

“Payment,” he said, voice neutral, “for your time and for—” He paused, eyes flicking to Gianni. “…ensuring this works. Enough for... enhancements, if that’s your style.”

Gianni’s eyebrows shot up, a slow grin creeping across his face. “You… pay people?”

Claymore’s jaw shifted slightly. “Not often. Not frivolously. Consider this a professional necessity.”

Gianni raised his hands in mock surrender, though he was already imagining the upgrades he could make to his Web Beat gear. Neon LEDs flickering along reinforced rollerskate wheels, a sturdier belt to hold his spray paint cans, maybe even the digital screen mask he'd been sketching. Excitement sparked in his chest.

Helmet in hand, Claymore turned toward the door, but paused mid-step. Something in the corner of his eye — a small, half-torn poster flapping against the wall, the faint glow of the city reflected in its tear — made him tilt his head. “Keep the window locked,” he said quietly. “And… be aware. South Rail isn’t safe for curiosity.”

Gianni blinked. “Noted. And—uh… thanks?”

Claymore didn’t respond. He let the words hang unacknowledged, the tone neither kind nor dismissive, simply matter-of-fact. Then, almost as if compelled by some residual hesitation, he turned back for a fraction of a second. “It’s not time to be reckless... That's all.”

Gianni smirked, hiding his racing pulse. “...Reckless is sort of my middle name,” he said, watching Claymore leave.

The door clicked shut, with the faint echo of boots receding down the hallway. Gianni sank into his chair, fingers twitching with impatience. He glanced at the rig on the desk, then at the rollerskates by the door. The smell of burnt metal mingled with old paint and the city air drifting in.

He crouched back over the rig, tinkering again, imagining testing it outside, in the chaos of the streets rather than cramped apartment air. “Alright, Web Beat,” he muttered to himself, “let’s see if you still got it.”

Gianni stared at the closed door a second longer, then snapped the metallic case open. Neat rows of polymer bills nestled inside like they were posing for a commercial. He let out a low whistle.

“Claymore pays in lunch money and life choices,” he muttered, already calculating what he could cannibalize or replace. Stabilizers. New bearings. And—finally—the mask.

He slid into the chair, spun to the parts wall, and started pulling boxes like a magician with a grudge. A salvaged micro-LED matrix from an old bus ad. A voice mod kit he’d never finished. Two cracked visors he could laminate into something that wouldn’t fog up on a sprint. His hands moved on instinct; his brain kept circling back to a single phrase: South Rail isn’t safe for curiosity.

Curiosity was choking him.

He propped the visor in a clamp and soldered in the matrix strip by strip, the tiny squares lighting in shaky rows as he tested them. The first phrase he made it display was : ). It looked a little deranged. Perfect.

Between solders he scrolled the forum again, then slid into a smaller chat with three handles he trusted more than most:

mkid: u see the symbols at south rail? sigil tags moved inward

tinheart: friend in maintenance says platform C has new tape. not city tape. black, no print

kr0: rumor is a vigil tonite. “emissaries.” they don’t take phones

Gianni’s mouth went dry. Emissaries. A word that sounded polite while hiding teeth.

He typed, then deleted, then typed again.

webBeat?: where

mkid: south rail, soot stairs. night. look for the paper hands

He left the chat without replying, heat prickling at the back of his neck. Paper hands? The building breathed around him—pipes knocking, a baby crying two floors down, somebody working through scales on a badly tuned guitar. He snapped the visor’s housing shut, cut foam to line it, and stuck the voice mod in with double-sided tape like a sinner. When he flipped the switch, the mask blinked a crisp HELLO across the eyes. He tried “test,” and the modulator dropped his voice half an octave into something cooler than he felt.

“Nice,” he muttered to the empty room. “You’re insufferable.”

He shoved the visor and a patch kit into his backpack, pulled on a hoodie, and scooped up the skates. Dust smeared his palms. For a moment his chest squeezed with an unnamed feeling—the faint echo of afternoons spent clinging to rooftops, pretending the world was smaller. At the stairwell hatch, a scrap of paper caught his eye, half-tucked beneath a loose tile. He bent down, brushing away grit to reveal a faded flyer, its edges frayed and ink smudged. At its center: a crude semicircle symbol he knew at once. He tore off a corner carefully, tucked it into his pocket, and headed down the stairs two at a time.

***

The rooftop was a rectangle of cracked asphalt ringed by a low wall and three skeletal antenna towers. The city breathed on all sides—billboards looping neon, trains yawning through tunnels, the ocean sending a cold sheen of air up the avenues. Someone had dragged an old couch up here, now more spring than cushion. Pigeons had declared it a republic.

Gianni set his skates down, tightened laces, then clicked the hidden switch on the helmet. The visor woke, pixels rolling from HELLO to a simple pair of eyes: o_o. He grinned despite himself.

“Okay. Trial one,” he said, bitcrushed voice mod softening his consonants. He clipped a test line from his belt to the nearest antenna. “Please don’t yeet me into a lawsuit.”

He pushed off. The first lap around the roof was clumsy—wheels catching on pebbles, balance a hair left of where it should be. He hopped the couch, clipped it, and pinwheeled with a squeak he would deny under oath. The line went taut and yoinked him back into a graceless slide. The visor flashed : ( “Rude,” he told it, breathless and laughing. He rolled his ankles, reset, tried again.

The second pass he timed the jump, tugged the line at the right moment, and felt the old rhythm shimmer through him—weightless for a heartbeat, then landing with knees loose and wheels singing. The visor’s eyes arced into ^_^ of their own accord, which was technically his own code but felt like the city winking back.

He tested the tether’s retraction, the emergency release, the new stabilizers he’d spliced from Claymore’s rig design, then ran a final systems check. The voice mod hummed. The visor dimmed to a low glow. Below, somewhere, a siren wailed and cut off too quickly.

He unclipped, skated to the ledge, and looked south.

From here, the South Rail sector crouched like a sleeping animal—yards of track, rusted catwalks, a black seam of tunnel mouths opening into nothing. He could almost overlay the city map onto his mental one of shortcuts and safe drops: ladder here, broken fence there, the gap where Maintenance never fixed the grate because no one complained loud enough.

His phone buzzed. A photo from mkid: a stack of flyers like the one in his pocket, taped to a utility pole near a soot-black stairwell. In the corner of the frame, two figures with paper handprints smudged onto their jackets were tacking another one up. The caption read: tonite. no false vessels.

Gianni’s mouth tilted. “Warnings are invitations,” he told the wind. “And insults are RSVPs.”

He pulled the hoodie up, settled the visor. o_o blinked into >:) for half a beat—too much—and he tapped it back to neutral. He flexed his fingers. His palms were sweating.

“Web Beat is back, baby,” he said softly, and pushed into a run.

He jumped the ledge, hit the line, swung out over the alley, and dropped clean onto a fire escape two floors down, wheels catching perfectly. The city opened under him—alleys stitching into streets, streets into arteries, every corner humming with possibility and bad decisions. He moved like he’d never stopped, the rust burning off in the rush.

As he cut toward the South Rail, the city changed texture. Lights thinned. Walls held onto sound too long. He saw the first sigil painted low on a service door, tiny, almost shy. Another under a bridge, drawn with a child’s care. A third chalked onto the curb at a bus stop where no bus had come in three years.

He slowed near the soot stairs. The flyers were plastered thick as scales. The air smelled faintly sweet, like crushed flowers rolled in ash. A figure stood at the bottom landing, hood up, hands tucked into sleeves. A paper handprint ghosted the back of their jacket. When they glanced up, their eyes slid past him without interest, like he was one more moving piece of city wildlife.

Gianni stepped into the shadow of the stairwell and listened.

Down in the tunnel, a voice spoke low, steady, like someone reading a bedtime story to a room full of frayed nerves.

“…not a weapon to be chained. Not a tool for scaffolds or vessels. We return what was borrowed. We cleanse what was spoiled. No more delay.”

The murmured reply wasn’t a chant so much as a collective exhale. Vulnerable. Frightened. People who had been left behind by something, building a god out of the gap.

Gianni’s chest tightened. Strange fragments of memory brushed his mind: sun-bleached tiles, the smell of wet concrete, laughter bouncing down empty hallways. Something about this echoed them, pulled at the part of him that had once clung to rooftops and wind. He swallowed.

He reached for his phone—habit—and stopped. They don’t take phones.

Right. So he just stood there, a shadow with a stupid blinking visor, and made a choice he already knew he’d make the second Claymore told him not to be reckless.

Somewhere beneath the city, the “emissaries” were promising a better world at the price of the one that existed. Somewhere else, a white-haired man who didn’t say please or thank you was walking a patrol alone.

And Web Beat, rusty but grinning, went to collide with both.

***

He dropped into the tunnel like a rumor—soft, then suddenly a body taking up space. The echo swallowed his boots and the whoosh of his wheels smoothed into a heavy hiss against concrete. Light from the visor picked out damp bricks, old graffiti, and, further on, a ring of dim candles shoved into bottle necks.

Voices braided low ahead—words folded into one another so you only caught meaning by feeling the rhythm. A woman’s throat, rough as sand. A child humming discordantly. A man counting in a whisper. The emissaries moved like a sleepwalker’s prayer: careful, brittle, committed.

Gianni slid behind a pillar and watched.

They weren’t monsters. Not the way cheap news made monsters—no masks of teeth, no obvious cruelty. They had tired eyes and knuckles like someone who’d been climbing a life that kept slipping. A boy no older than nineteen set a paper handprint against a wall with the sort of reverence someone saved for a photograph of a dead parent. An older woman tied thread around another’s wrist in a knot that was more blessing than binding.

They had a “vessel” in the center—a hunched figure sitting on a milk crate, jacket zipped up to their chin, eyes fixed on nothing. The person’s hands trembled as they gripped a small bag. They looked like someone who’d waited too long for the world to answer.

Gianni’s chest did a little flip. He thought of bright tiles underfoot, the smell of old summer rain on concrete, laughter ricocheting against an empty corridor. Memories shivered at the edge of his mind, fragments of being small and sure enough that rooftops could be kingdoms. He felt the tug that had always pulled him toward places where other people were falling apart.

A voice rose, the leader’s, soft and soldier-quiet. “No vessels. No scaffolds. The borrowed must be returned as it was given.”

The kid on the crate looked up and mouthed something like a plea. The emissaries leaned in. For a heartbeat, the whole ring stilled, as if the city paused to listen.

Gianni moved because he couldn’t not. It felt less like a plan and more like the only thing breathing in his chest deciding it had had enough of watching.

His first approach was clumsy. He misjudged a stray puddle and the first skate spat, sending a tiny spray of grit into the candlelight. Heads turned. Eyes slid his way, startled—but not panicked. They expected fear. They didn’t expect a grin.

“Hey,” he said, voice mod lined his words with a playful rasp. “Party’s happening? I brought the tunes.”

Silence thinned. A young man at the circle sniffed. “Phones,” someone muttered—then: “He has a voice—”

An older emissary—her hair streaked silver, face full of pinched stories—stood. Her voice was small and brittle. “You… don’t have a right here.”

Gianni moved forward slowly. The visor’s pixels blinked o_o, then shifted to the small grin he’d mapped into code. “No rights, no wrongs. Just tired people doing tired things. I don’t want trouble” He kept his hands visible, palms out and empty except for the thin, folded corner of one of those flyers in his pocket. He’d meant to keep it as evidence; Now it felt like a confession.

One of the emissaries—maybe sixteen—walked to the crate, voice shaking. “We aren’t thieves. We aren’t killers. They said it would stop the hunger… They said it would quiet the noise.”

Something in that phrasing cracked the edge off Gianni’s anger. Hunger. Noise. Things people said to themselves to keep sleeping.

The leader’s eyes slid over Gianni’s visor. “We don’t take phones,” she said, as if stating a law. “We keep no records. We mend what was broken.”

“Mend what, exactly?’ Gianni asked. He moved with that half-confidence you get when adrenaline and guilt are both steering. “By stealing people off trains and disappearing them into the dark?”

“It’s not stealing,” the silver-haired woman said. “They are borrowed. They suffer. The mass speaks and we listen. Not for weaponry. Not for scaffolds. We return what was borrowed.”

“Sounds like a real estate argument,” Gianni said, as if humor would keep the nerves loose. “Look, if somebody’s in pain, you don’t get to decide—”

A flurry of motion: the youth at the crate pushed up too quickly, eyes glassy, trying to stand like his body disagreed with his courage. Someone nearest him grabbed his arm to hold him steady. He looked at Gianni with a need that looked like pleading or prayer.

“Please,” he whispered. “We’ll help. We’ll take less.”

That word—please—did something. It sounded not like a threat but as an entreaty. Like someone asking for a salvageable piece of dignity.

Gianni’s hands tightened on the rope retractor clipped to his belt. He had options, none of them perfect. He could scare them off, cause a scene, get information and vanish. He could pull the kid and run and hope the emissaries didn’t chase. He could leave and feel the weight of an empty conscience like a stone in his pocket.

Impulses won. He lunged.

It was messy and bright and immediate. He clipped the rope to a pillar and used it to launch a low, quick arc through the ring, sliding between two bodies with a spray of dust. The visor flashed a ragged :P. The crate toppled; the “vessel” stumbled; someone reached for Gianni’s shoulder.

Hands grabbed. Not all of them fists. One pair tried to pull the kid back toward the circle. Another shoved a thin, forked pole at Gianni’s midsection. He twisted, letting momentum carry him, a spray of ash in his face. In the split second where the world balanced on a blade, he saw the emissaries’ faces—guilt, fear, righteousness braided together.

He grabbed the kid by the wrist. “Run,” he hissed into the modulator.

They did. Web Beat’s skates ate concrete; he slung the kid up a service ramp, took the lead while the emissaries scrambled and shouted, voices frayed with anger and horror. A thrown bottle cracked, a shoe missed, a hand cauterized a pant leg. Behind him, someone shrieked—not a battle-cry but a grief-sob that made Gianni’s spine clench.

They burst into the open like they were leaving one life for another. Gianni barreled down an access road, dragging the kid like a half-hero. He vaulted a low fence, wheels squealing, and found half a streetlamp shadow to hide in. The kid sagged against his shoulder, breath coming in ribbons. He was younger than he looked—too young to carry the weight he carried.

“Who are you?” Gianni asked, voice suddenly small as well.

“Name’s Luke," the kid said, voice raw. “They—said it would be right. Said it would be quiet.” His eyes didn’t focus, like someone trying to look through a fog. “We weren’t supposed to take him… he just fell asleep.”

Gianni’s jaw throbbed. “Who is ‘him’?”

Luke blinked. “An old man. He kept going to the rail, looking at the gap. They said ‘return’ and he followed.”

Gianni’s mouth went dry. Not the spectacular vanish yet—just a man too lost and a cult too wounded and a city with too many corners where people could disappear between life and some other promise.

Sirens were faint, far away. No crowd, no cameras. No one’s livestream to make this a headline.

The emissaries rounded the corner a block away, voices raw with accusation. A woman’s voice called out: “Traitor!” and then, softer, to someone else: “We didn’t want this—” The words chopped off.

Gianni tucked his hand into Luke’s jacket and checked his pockets for anything useful: nothing but a folded photograph of a younger woman and a small, crumpled bus token. He rested a palm on the kid’s crown—gentle, protective, ridiculous.

“We get out of sight,” Gianni said. He looked at the flyer corner in his hand and then, for a long second, at Luke’s face. “Stay low. If they come near, don’t talk. Don’t look them in the eye. If they try to take you—run.”

Luke’s lip trembled. “I thought—”

“I know,” Gianni said. “That’s the worst part. People like to offer answers.”

They melted into the backstreets, Gianni leading with a quiet urgency that was almost tender. He kept thinking of the woman binding thread, of hands smudged with gray, of how sorrow bent people into new religions. He told himself the kid’s rescue was a small, rightful thing, and that whatever came next would be a bigger story to untangle.

When they were safe—an old laundromat with a flickering neon sign and the smell of detergent—Gianni sat Luke on a rusted bench and checked him over. No cuts, just a bruise along his temple and eyes that still wouldn’t focus.

“You okay enough?” Gianni asked.

Luke nodded slowly. “I don’t want to go back.”

“Good,” Gianni said. “We’ll find someplace. I know a couch that’s not mine but it’s presentable.” He was joking to keep the tremor out of his voice. “You want chow? Cup ramen? I have options, apparently.”

Luke attempted a weak smile. “Ramen.”

Gianni let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. The visor’s display dimmed to low and obedient o_o. He slipped the torn corner of the flyer into his jacket pocket—proof, or a talisman, or a reminder he was already too involved.

He should have called someone. The responsible thing: authorities, or at least an outreach group. But he pictured the emissaries’ faces, the way their voices folded with pleading, and a practical itch settled in his chest. The city’s systems were bureaucratic and slow—three weeks, Claymore had said, to fix a life-or-death rig. The city’s official answers would come too late for a lot of people.

He went to an old contacts list on his flip phone. He typed a string of handles, half to tell, half to triangulate, half to feel less alone. In a private window, he wrote: picked up a kid. emissaries. south rail. not public. need safe couch. He pressed send to a handful of friends who owed him favors and who would also enjoy that he was back in the game.

As the messages went out, a shadow moved across the alley mouth. Not the emissaries’ ragged shapes but the lean cut of a man in a dark coat, hair white enough to show in the streetlight. Gianni’s heart hiccuped. He had a half-formed thought—Claymore on patrol—but it was a reflex and not a certainty. He flattened into the shadow and watched.

The man paused half a dozen meters away, turned his head as if listening to the tunnel, and then moved on; his silhouette folded into the city like a closed page. Claymore moved alone tonight, and for now, he was only a shape in the dark.

Gianni checked Luke over one more time, then moved to the laundromat’s glowing window and watched the street. He thought of the emissaries, their hunger and their prayers; of the flyer corner in his pocket that smelled faintly of ink and ash.

Warnings were invitations, he remembered telling the wind. He slid the visor up a notch and let the night do its heavy work. Web Beat had come back for the thrill, but he was already in deeper than that. He’d rescued one person; the rest of the city was still waiting.

Somewhere in the dark, people were being taken. Somewhere else, a man would soon make a decision that might save someone and ruin his life.

Gianni laced his fingers together and felt the tiny, electric pull of purpose—not neat, not clean, but warm and immediate. He texted his friends and coordinates and told them to bring food. Then he turned and, for the first time since Claymore’s warning, thought about whether not following orders might be exactly the kind of recklessness the city needed.

He folded his jacket tighter around Luke and leaned back until the neon sign buzzed in a steady, imperfect glow. The night was only just getting started.