CHAPTER 2.

The Word That Follows.

He woke to the stubborn smell of coffee—the cheap kettle doing what it always did when he remembered to set the little mechanical timer before passing out over a soldering diagram.

He blinked at the ceiling, every tendon in his neck loosening like a curtain on a pulley, and reached for his phone without opening his eyes.

A message sat in the top bar: b_elle — kid is safe. Mercy House took him. photo attached.

His thumb opened it. The picture was small and perfect: Luke folded under a donated blanket, breath shallow and even. A volunteer’s hand rested on the boy’s shoulder. A caption: “they’ll keep him. will call if anything changes.”

Gianni let out a noise that was half laugh and half relief. It felt ridiculous and enormous at once—the way a knot unties when you weren’t sure you had hands left to do it. He sat up, the couch protesting in familiar creaks, and let the light of a new day pool across the table where sketches and parts and the metallic case from Claymore had been dumped like a small, functional altar.

He brewed coffee—tap, kettle, a cheap pour-over he’d jury rigged with an old plastic funnel and an elastic band. He didn’t have anyone to make it for him; that was the simple truth that sometimes felt like a sentence and sometimes like armor. He liked the ritual: heating the water, the slow bloom of grounds, the small steam that rose and fogged his vision for a brief second. It tasted of grit and hope.

He drank standing, leaning on the counter, thinking of Luke’s small, slack mouth in the photo. The kid’s name snagged in his chest like a hook. He should have called Mercy House, arranged something official, put his contact into a folder labeled Follow-up. He didn’t. Instead he shoved the mug into the sink and pulled on his hoodie.

***

The roof smelled of sun warmed tar and the neighbor’s plastic basil pot. He shoved the visor into his backpack and checked laces until they were too tight and his toes went numb on purpose. The test sequence was meant to be short, clinical—a check list: tether, stabilizer, emergency release, LED matrix. Nothing heroic. Just metrics.

First pass: a hairline delay on the retraction. He cursed—under his breath, through the modulator—and re-soldered a frayed splice. The second pass was cleaner; he caught a better rhythm and felt the easy smile of muscle memory. The visor’s eyes blinked ^_^ and for a moment the city felt like a place that would let him stay.

Then, on the fourth set, a connector slipped under the harness. There was a hot snap like a violin string breaking. He hit the deck, knees scarring on gravel, the mask skittering away so the visor flashed : ( in a small, wounded way. He lay with the sky pinned to a narrow rectangle above him and felt every small failure in his body like a tally: the city’s indifference, the kid who’d slept under blankets, the three-week promises of official techs.

Memory came in small things: the click of a vending machine, a summer crackle of heat against tiles, a laugh from a kid who’d thought jumping off a roof was a good idea. None of it formed a sentence. It was all color and edges—an impressionist tile of being small and scared and stubbornly alive. The kid he’d pulled out last night fit into that collage, but he wasn’t the center; he was a mirror of something Gianni knew too well.

He peeled the helmet off with fingers that trembled—not from the fall so much as from the thing that had been building from behind his ribs for months. He pressed the plastic foam to his forehead, then slid it down to his knees and let his hands fall heavy on his lap.

When the sob came it was abrupt and not cinematic. His shoulders tightened and his breath hit the wrong rhythm—short, then a grate of air—and the first sound was small, a raw press of noise. His face scrunched inward, eyes narrowing, lashes clumped with wet, the brows folding like someone trying to fold a thing that wouldn’t flatten. Tears tracked down the planes of his face, catching the light on the dark of his skin, leaving bright, wet paths that flashed then dimmed. The salt made his brown skin darken where it ran, like paper soaked by rain. His jaw worked, a hard, thin motion. His hands clenched the helmet rim until his knuckles lightened. He let out a single sound, rough and private: “Damnit.”

It wasn’t a long breakdown. It was the sort that does the precise job of removing a mask you didn’t know you were wearing: grief and stubborn little fury and the thin seed of guilt.

He cried until his chest trembled with the inhale-exhale that happens when lungs remember how to be brave again.

When the tremors eased, he stayed bent over the visor for a long moment, forehead resting on foam as if the thing itself could hold him steady. He breathed through the aftershocks until his hands uncurled. He scrubbed his face with the heel of his palm and tasted salt and solder on his skin.

Then he did the thing he always did: he built.

He pulled a sheet of stained cardboard from a stack and found a pencil that had only the shadow of an eraser. The sketches began as shaky measures—tether collar here, a secondary safety catch there—then cadence found him. Lines grew purposeful. He annotated the drawing with small, brutal notes: “double-check pull weight”, “heat-shield insert—thin, flexible”, “move LED driver to side cavity”. Where he’s been hollowed by helplessness, something like agency stitched up in neat, angry seams.

The act of planning steadied him more than the coffee or the shallow sleep or the adrenaline had. Creation felt like protest: if the city would not fix the holes, then he would make tools that meant fewer people fell through them. He measured something on the page with one finger as if the blueprint were a map back from the edge.

He taped the sketches into a tube, slid them into his backpack, and tightened his laces until the numbness in his toes was a deliberate reminder. He checked his phone—no new messages about Luke beyond the photo, but a couple of friends had pinged back with locations where a couch might be found tonight. He smiled a quiet, crooked smile and sent a terse: i'll pick up parts. bring ramen if you can.

He should call Claymore, he thought. He should line up official channels. But the city’s bureaucracy was a slow animal; he knew how many things died in the waiting rooms. For now, there were parts to order, a prototype to work on, and a kid somewhere who might sleep safer tonight because a stranger in a mask had been stubborn enough to make a messy choice.

He slung the backpack on and pushed toward the stairwell. The day was loud and anonymous beyond the roof, but for the first time in a while Gianni felt like the noise had an edge he could work with. The world wasn’t healed, not by a long shot. But his hands had an answer he could make, and that was enough to crawl toward something like hope.

***

The South Rail sector always smelled like rust and wet concrete, like a wound the city had decided not to dress.

Claymore moved along the platform with measured steps, helmet tucked under one arm. The uniform carried weight even without the faceplate; people didn’t linger when they saw the insignia on his shoulder. Not that there were many people here. Only the hum of sodium lights, the squeak of rats nesting in vending machines that hadn’t spat change in years, and the faint mechanical whine of the provisional rig strapped to his belt.

The replacement was heavier than his own, less balanced. The coils made a low whirr whenever he shifted his weight, as if complaining about the task. He ignored it. He always ignored equipment he didn’t trust. His own reflexes were steadier than any alloy.

Patrol procedure was simple: sweep the south tunnels in thirty-minute passes, scan for movement, tag suspicious entry points. Simple didn’t mean safe. Three months of disappearances had turned this sector into a whisper network. Someone’s cousin never came home. Someone’s sister stepped off the last train and was never seen again.

Claymore’s boots thudded against the tiled floor, echo stretching longer than it should. The air here carried strange acoustics—sounds lagged behind, doubled back. His jaw tightened, but his pace didn’t falter. He checked a half-collapsed stairwell, logged it into the wrist console: unstable.

At the bottom of the next ramp, a barrel sat cooling, faint heat still coming off its rim. Ashes inside. He leaned over just enough to catch the edge of a paper not yet consumed: a corner of print warped by fire. Letters still legible in black ink.

“The Mass does not belong to hands. It is the hand.”

His fingers brushed the char. The ash smeared. The words clung.

He straightened.

Far down the tunnel, deeper than his line of sight, came out a sound too faint to classify. A chorus, maybe. Or a ventilation fan misfiring. Or just the way concrete sometimes spoke when it carried the weight of water and steel.

Claymore froze. The sound wasn’t loud, but it had direction, a pull. He could feel the line of it tugging at the edge of his hearing. He pressed two fingers against the rig at his belt, grounding himself in its weight.

His eyes drifted to the dark edge where the lights ended. For a moment, something small and old surfaced—the memory of being still, of listening too hard, of waiting for a voice that never came. He clenched his jaw until the sensation receded.

A flicker at the corner of his vision: motion. He pivoted, rig ready. Only a rat scattering across the track, tail vanishing into trash. His pulse didn’t change, but he adjusted his stance, slower now, methodical.

He tagged the barrel location in his console, the device’s chirp too bright against the hush. His thumb hovered over the comms switch for backup. He didn’t press it. The rig at his side gave another small mechanical sigh, as though agreeing with the decision that no one had made aloud.

Claymore resumed the patrol, shoulders squared against the tunnel’s open mouth. He told himself the sound had been the fan. He told himself the words in the barrel were old print, scavenger trash. He told himself procedure was all that mattered.

But the words stayed burned into him longer than the smell of ash.

***

The solder smoke still clung faintly to the walls. Gianni sat cross-legged on the floor, visor cracked open beside him, wires spilling like veins from the mask. His hoodie sleeves were shoved to his elbows, hair sticking in uneven tufts from running his hands through it too many times.

A ping rattled his flip phone. New thread on a forum he only trusted half the time.

sth rail, chanting. flyers again. vessel talk.

The word snagged him. Vessel. He scrolled past blurry photos, graffiti daubed in thick black, chalk symbols half-washed by rain. He flipped to his messages, shot a quick ping to an old skate-crew friend.

you hear anything?

The reply came almost instantly:

white-haired warden’s patrolling alone again. sth tunnels. weird place to leave him, huh?

Gianni smirked, but it slipped quick. Alone again. Something tightened behind his ribs. He tugged the visor close, thumbed the LED awake until it blinked :P at him, like it was daring him to follow through.

By the time he laced his skates and shoved his notes into his pack, he’d told himself it wasn’t about the Warden, not really. Just curiosity. Just poking the weirdness. But the way he cut toward the southern blocks had an edge that didn’t look much like casual.

***

Claymore’s boots echoed sharp in the rail tunnels. The provisional grappling rig whined at his hip, every coil-spool a reminder of its age. He trusted his balance more than its weight.

The street below fractured into motion. Claymore caught it first in the corner of his eye — three figures slipping from an alley, their hoods loose, clothes patched, faces shadowed but unmistakably human. Not soldiers. Not trained. He recognized the way their shoulders hunched, the twitch of uncertainty in their steps. People pushed into a role they weren’t built for.

Still, their eyes locked on him with a brittle, fevered purpose.

“You don’t belong here,” one spat, voice cracking more from fear than rage. Another’s hand trembled as they pulled a length of pipe from under their coat, knuckles white.

Claymore adjusted his stance, weight centered. His provisional rig whined faintly, a note of weakness threaded through steel. He didn’t trust it, but he trusted his body. His stare—sharp, pale, cut into them with a quiet warning.

“Leave,” he said. The single word landed like a door shut in a storm.

They flinched, but desperation won. The first lunged.

Claymore moved—efficient, precise. He knocked the pipe wide, shoulder driving the attacker off balance. It should have ended there, but another rushed in, swinging clumsily, as if trying to ward off something larger than a man. Claymore caught their arm, twisted, dropped them into the pavement. His movements weren’t cruel, only necessary, but the scuffle had noise now, the sound of bodies and metal and fear drawing more figures out of shadow.

Half a dozen. Maybe more.

One voice rose above the fray, brittle and raw: “He’s a false vessel! If he lives, we all burn!”

The words rippled through the group like a charge. Some repeated it, mantra-like, as if they needed to believe it. Others faltered, eyes darting to exits they didn’t take. Claymore caught a glimpse of a woman no older than Gianni, hands shaking so badly she nearly dropped the knife she carried. A boy with patched sneakers hesitated on the edge, muttering, “We shouldn’t—this isn’t—” before being shoved forward.

Claymore’s rig snapped him upward just in time to avoid a strike from behind. The hook bit metal, but the motor groaned, slower than it should have been. His white hair lashed loose around his face, ponytail half undone, strands sticking to the sweat at his temples. His gaze stayed locked, unblinking, reading angles, anticipating blows. He was still in control—but the rig betrayed him in small ways. A lag here. A drag there.

Below, one of the Emissaries hurled a brick upward, missing by inches. “He’ll ruin the Mass’s will!” they cried, voice hoarse, as though conviction alone could fuel their throw.

Claymore dropped back down, catching another by the wrist. He shoved them aside, not killing, never killing—but each takedown fed the others’ panic. They weren’t trained. They weren’t coordinated. But they were many, and desperation makes numbers dangerous.

Then the hook stuttered. Mid swing. The provisional motor locked half a second too long. Claymore’s stomach lurched as momentum pulled him wide, slamming him against the rusted siding of a warehouse. Pain burst hot through his ribs. He landed in a crouch, breath clipped, jaw tight. Blood tickled the edge of his nose, black-dark in the sodium light.

The emissaries surged.

“Now! He’s failing—!”

They rushed him as one, voices ragged. Not soldiers. Just people breaking themselves against the belief that destroying him would save them. And for the first time, Claymore calculated the angles and didn’t like the numbers.

The shout cut through the chaos: high, bitcrushed, filtered through a mask.

“HEY!”

A blur struck from above—neon visor flashing, skates sparking against concrete. Web Beat hit the nearest attacker with reckless momentum, sending them sprawling. His rig screamed but held, tether snapping taut as he swung wild into the fray.

The Emissaries reeled back, caught between fear of him and fear of failing their cause. One muttered “Another mask—another lie”, retreating with a stumble. Another tried to rally them: “It’s a test! The Mass is watching!” But their strikes grew sloppier now, rhythm broken by the sudden, chaotic force of Gianni’s arrival.

Claymore pushed himself upright, ribs burning, blood running faintly from his nose. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, eyes never leaving the fight. Web Beat fought like someone relearning his own bones—messy, fast, desperate—but effective. The visor blinked XD one second, then ERROR the next, a chaotic rhythm as he barreled through.

Between the two of them, the tide broke. The Emissaries scattered, leaving only echoes of their whispers behind. Vessel. False. The Mass will judge.

Silence was jagged and raw. Dust hung in the beams like smoke. The rig ticked faintly at Claymore’s hip, coils sighing down. Claymore steadied his breath. He should have said thank you. Instead, the word stuck. His nose bled darker now, drip catching against his lip. Web Beat, still panting, froze.

Claymore straightened, shoulders squared, but his breath didn’t quite sync to his composure. A dark line welled suddenly at his nose, stark against pale skin.

Web Beat froze. The visor blinked :O. “That’s broken.”

“It isn’t,” Claymore said, steady, but quieter now.

Gianni dug through his pockets, breath quick. The only thing he had was a folded square of fabric, faded from too many washes, printed with a bright yellow cartoon dog. He almost shoved it back, then pushed it out instead.

Claymore accepted without hesitation. The handkerchief looked too small in his grip, but he pressed it neat against his nose. When he lowered it, blood smeared the dog’s smile red. He stared at it longer than the act required.

“I ruined it,” he said at last. His voice carried an edge that wasn’t cold—something close to uncertain.

Gianni’s throat hitched. “Oh—no, that’s… that’s okay. I can wash it.”

Claymore looked at him then, stare ready and strange. “You would do this for me.”

Not a question. It landed heavy, like a vow he hadn’t meant to make.

Gianni stammered under the modulator, caught between bravado and the awkward weight of it. “...Yeah. Sure. I mean, it’s just a handkerchief.”

The pause stretched. For a flicker, Claymore’s gaze softened. Then it shuttered. “I see.”

Gianni steadied himself, visor blinking into a deliberate ^_^. “Web Beat,” he said, firm, planting the name like a flag.

Claymore inclined his head once. “Claymore.” His tone was precise, colder now. His eyes sharpened. “Listen carefully. Don’t intervene again. If you cross my path in uniform, I’ll treat you as interference, not an ally.”

The words cut clean, surgical as his strikes.

Gianni’s breath hitched. The visor tried to cover it with a sly ;), but his throat was tight behind the filter. “...We’ll see,” he said, lighter than he felt.

Claymore didn’t answer. He turned, boots ringing sharp against tile, the cartoon dog handkerchief folded in his hand like a secret he didn’t know yet to hold.

***

Next day. Gianni tested the line again and this time it held.

Not perfect—there was still a hitch when the reel tightened too sharp on the last arc—but the jump landed clean, knees folding into the roll like they’d been taught months ago. The visor LEDs blinked >:) and, for a beat, Gianni grinned back at his reflection. Web Beat looked ridiculous and absolutely, gloriously ready.

He skated the roof twice more, each run adding polish. A quick hot-fix steadied the voice modulator, a rerouted cable kept grit from frying the LED strip. The hoodie zipper jammed once, and he swore, then laughed and nicked it with a multitool until it slid smooth. Little things. The gear felt like him: patched, loud, and trying.

When he paused, he pulled out the fresh sketchbook and started sketching the full getup—less fantasy, more work-worn charm. Notes crowded the margin: “visor = signature face (big emoticons),” “belt rig = spray cans + multitool loop,” “hoodie = zip-up, deep pocket, reinforced shoulders,” “headphones = old studio cans, Special Sticker on right earcup.” He circled the LED skate bars twice. He imagined the lights cutting corners, the visor emoticon flashing across a rooftop, the hedgehog sticker winking like a protest: a reminder that under all this was a person.

He slid the visor on, thumbed the LED awake, and told his reflection out loud—because that was part of the ritual now—“Web Beat… assemble.” (still working on it). The visor spat out a squeaky HELLO, then settled to an expression he’d coded as shorthand for “I’m okay.”

A ping on his phone.

horselover16: caught footage. leds. web beat?

rustjunkie: wb back? :O

starlingxo: he’s the one who pulled that kid out, right?

Gianni thumbed a reply into a private thread—nothing he couldn’t take back. His chest fizzed warm at the thought of someone catching the glow of his skates on camera. He almost typed something flashier, but deleted it, posted instead to a throwaway: back on the map. Half-performance, half-truth. The noise was background; the work mattered.

Another buzz. b_elle: luke’s ok. mercy house says he smiles more now. thanks.

The relief was a quiet thing, soft as a handprint left on skin. He folded the message closed. Luke would fade from the day now, the way people you saved sometimes did. Small victories had to be carried fast, practical, and pocketed.

***

Gianni’s phone buzzed… Again?

A single word lit the screen: Outside.

He blinked at it, then snorted. He jogged his way to the door, cracking it open. Claymore leaned back against a wall, waiting.

“You ever heard of knocking?” Gianni said, leaning in the frame, grin tilted.

“I did,” Claymore replied. “Twice.”

Gianni blinked, then shrugged. “Must’ve missed it. Too busy being legendary.”

Claymore’s expression didn’t shift, but his silence almost felt like the world’s driest rebuttal. As Gianni let him in, his eyes darted to the rig.

Gianni brightened, waving toward the emptied case upstairs. “It held. Barely. Not that you’ll send me a thank-you note.”

Claymore clipped the harness across his belt, tested the joint with a single flex. The weight settled differently now—balanced, obedient.

“It’ll do,” he said, voice clipped, though the faint edge of relief could almost be mistaken for gratitude.

Gianni crossed his arms. “That's it? No confetti, no applause?”

Claymore’s eyes swept past him, scanning the workshop in silence—the LED strip on the skates, the hedgehog sticker on the headphones, the visor code for a grin printed on a scrap of paper. For a second, his white hair fell forward and caught the light—curly, strands that always seemed half-untucked, half-intentional.

“You put too much power in the spools,” he said finally, flat as ever.

Gianni barked a laugh. “You break it, you buy it. Oh wait—you already did.”

Claymore adjusted the rig once more, wordless. At the door, he lifted a hand in a slow half-wave. Deliberate, unmistakable.

Something stirred in Gianni’s chest. Relief, maybe. He almost waved back—then stuffed his hand into his pocket instead. “Bye,” he managed. The visor on the bench blinked a cheeky ^_^, like it had caught the whole thing.

Outside, phones buzzed. Clips ricocheted through feeds: a wheeled blur, LED arcs, a visor emoticon flashing.

citywatcher: caught it. web beat on sth rail run.

helldiver42: reckless kid. cool skates tho.

mintdrop: saved a kid, didn’t he? respect.

Gianni skimmed, thumb hovered a beat too long, then he liked one or two before shutting it all down. He wanted the work to be the engine.

***

Claymore’s patrol that night took him into a building so hollowed the city seemed to have forgotten it existed. Old industrial floors, a smashed skylight. He eased through the doorway with the rig quiet beneath his coat, scanning in low sweeps. This was the kind of place that held grief like grit.

On a lower floor, candles had been shoved into bottle necks—little rings of light among spilled ash. Chalk symbols, small and repeated, crawled up a column. Bowls held plain things: a folded bus token, a toy soldier with a leg ripped off, a photograph crumpled in the corner. People had set down what they owed the world.

The voices were low, ritual soft. No pageantry—just a woman counting off in a whisper, a child repeating after her. The leader’s words moved like an undercurrent: “Not a tool. Not a scaffold. Return as returned.” The phrasing was careful, used like a medicine.

Claymore did not announce himself. He stood at the mouth of the stairwell and watched the small theater of it: hands tying threads, a youth pressing a paper handprint to the wall, faces that looked like they had been squeezed by life and kept coming back. No one here was armored with certainty. They look tired and certain at the same glance.

The word rose in the circle: vessel. Dropped heavy, rippling outward. A softer voice repeated it: “the vessel must be whole.”

He leaned in a fraction and felt it: a small pressure under his sternum, like the muscles tightening before a long sprint. He willed it away with training and habit, with the mechanical steadiness that had always been his ally. He stamped his boots to be audible, to remind himself of the ground.

Then a faint warmth touched the inside of his nostrils. He ignored it. He’d felt that before—like a warning bell under glass. The warmth pooled, a dark bead blooming at his nostril. He wrapped the glove around his mouth, tamping down the instinct to rub. For a moment he could feel the dark under his eyelids thicken; the soot shadows there were only shadows, he told himself. His fingers clenched on the railing.

He dabbed at the wetness with the edge of his sleeve. The smear came away darker than normal blood—an almost ink-like smudge that left a line across the cotton. Claymore smelled faintly of dust and candle smoke and something else he did not want to name. He lowered his head, breath even. No one noticed. The ritual continued; the people in it were small, mundane, focused on their own aching.

Claymore tucked his sleeve back into place. He stared at the chalked word on the wall and, for the first time that night, his steady eyes lost a fraction of their distance. The word "vessel" looked different when someone else wrote it.

He stepped back into the dark, sliding away along the corridor just as quietly as he had come. The flare—if it had been one—had not broken him, not this night. He kept his face level, his coat buttoned, the repaired rig harnessing his body like a promise that still had to be proven.

Outside, lights blinded and familiar, the city breathed neon. He moved like a man who had seen a small thing and decided to hide it. The sound of the ritual dimmed behind a concrete mouth. Somewhere, someone chalked again.

He would have time to think. There were files to run, reports to file, a line of protocol to follow. For now, he walked the platform with his jaw set and a faint taste of iron lingering in his mouth. That word. Vessel. It clung under his ribs like a bruise that wouldn’t fade. Vessel. He walked on, jaw set, each step deliberate, but behind his eyes the bruise kept darkening.

The night closed with the small, human fact of it: Claymore left the ritual unseen and unremarked. He had the rig in hand, steadier than the night before. But the night had touched him—soft, precise, and oddly intimate—with a thing that did not belong in city patrols. He tucked the handkerchief into the rig’s pouch and kept walking.