And in the fractured light of a god’s broken house, the herald of flesh and the wanderer of steel rested side by side, waiting for the world to hunt them again.
For the third time that week, Ace jolted awake in a cold sweat. Their body lurched sideways, tangled in the thin blanket, before dropping from the cot with a dull thud. The impact rattled throughout their body, chased by a wheeze of breath that misted in the stale, freezing air.
For a long moment they stayed there, sprawled on the cracked tile floor, staring at the ceiling where frost crept in branching patterns across the plaster. The silence pressed down, heavy and absolute, broken only by the faint tick of cooling metal from the dead dryers lining the wall.
Their heart pounded, too loud in their ears. A dream lingered at the edges of memory, shadows, smoke, the flicker of old voices, but dissolved before they could grasp it. What remained was the cold, sinking weight in their gut, the certainty that someone, somewhere, was still hunting them.
Ace dragged a hand down their face, wiping the sweat beading on their brow. The skin there was clammy, flushed hot even as the rest of their body ached with the chill or didn’t feel anything at all. They flexed their fingers, the augmented hand whirring faintly, joints stiff from disuse and cold.
With a low grunt, Ace pushed themselves upright, blanket falling from their shoulders in a heap. The cot creaked as they sat back on its edge, elbows on their knees, breath clouding faintly in the lamplight. The jury-rigged bulb overhead buzzed weakly, its glow pooling in uneven patches across the cluttered laundromat.
They glanced around the room, cataloging the details the way they always did upon waking, as if to make sure it hadn’t all changed while they slept. The patched walls of insulation and cardboard still held. The shelves of scavenged parts were still in their place, neatly organized, tools lined like soldiers waiting for orders. The yellowed piece of paper was still jammed in between the doorway, unmoved.
All normal. All safe. For now.
Ace rubbed at their temple and let out a shuddering sigh. Sleep wasn’t worth it anymore. The city outside was dangerous enough without giving the ghosts in their head more chances to claw their way back into waking hours.
They rose, pulling on their coat from where it hung over the cot’s back. The lining was stiff with old grease and frayed at the cuffs, but it kept the worst of the cold at bay. The familiar weight of it settled across their shoulders like a second skin.
Ace grabbed their pack, slung it over one arm, and paused by the door. Their eyes traced the jagged cracks in the tile, the faded detergent smell that clung to the walls, the silence that always felt just a little too thick.
Then they slid the lock back with a muted click.
⚙︎
The ever-present fog of the ruined city swirled and snaked in between the buildings as Ace crept in between the alleyways. The air was as cold as ever, seeping deep into both the flesh and metal of Ace. They shivered slightly, even buried under the several layers of patchwork cloth as they pressed onwards.
Ace still needed a few more parts to finish their latest augment, mainly pressurized gas. Maybe they’d get lucky and find a Reforged corpse that hadn’t been stripped down to wire and bone yet.
Ahead, the alley narrowed, choked with frozen trash and the skeletal remains of fire escapes that had collapsed some weeks ago. A sagging chain-link fence, half-buried under snowdrifts, blocked the way forward. Ace hooked a gloved hand into the links and pulled themselves over, boots crunching into the drift on the other side.
That’s when they saw movement.
Ace froze, one hand slipping instinctively toward the wrench holstered at their side. The green pulse in their left eye flickered on, scanning through the fog until shapes sharpened: the outline of a small figure huddled in the shadow of a collapsed storefront.
The figure seemed to be a young girl. Her head was down, hair matted with ice, knees pulled up against a body too thin for the cold. Rags clung to them like she'd been scavenged from a dozen different closets and never washed.
Ace didn’t move closer.
Their gaze swept the rooftops, the broken windows, the gutted cars lining the street. This was a Reforged trick, leave something helpless in plain sight, let sympathy do the rest, and when the mark steps in, the snare tightens.
No drones. No patrols. That didn’t mean it was safe.
It was stupid, Ace knew. Why would there be an ambush here of all places? And who would it be for? Ace wasn’t that egotistical to believe that the Reforged would wait around here just to catch them.
The figure lifted their head slightly. Pale eyes locked with Ace’s for half a second, wide and unblinking. No cry for help. No words. Just a stillness that made the air between them feel heavier.
Ace’s jaw tightened. They eased back, keeping their steps quiet, and slipped into the cover of a side alley.
If it was bait, they weren’t biting.
If it wasn’t…
They pushed the thought away and kept moving.
Snow hissed faintly under Ace’s boots as they cut through a narrow service lane, the wind threading between shattered walls. The girl’s face, those pale, unblinking eyes, kept pressing into their thoughts despite every effort to shove it aside. They focused on the search instead, scanning for scrap, batteries, intact sealant canisters.
A faint metallic rattle drifted through the fog.
Ace slowed, listening. Not the rhythmic hum of a drone, this was irregular, strained, punctuated by the faint scrape of metal on stone.
They followed it, hugging the shadow of a collapsed awning until the lane opened onto a half-buried courtyard.
There she was. The same girl, tangled in a mess of razor-thin wire strung between two frost-crusted pipes. The Reforged’s handiwork, industrial snare traps, the kind that tightened the more you fought.
She wasn’t making a sound. Her breath steamed in quick bursts, shoulders jerking as she tried to work one arm free. The wire had already bitten deep, fraying the cloth at her sleeves and staining it dark.
How had she gotten here? Ace wondered. Did she follow them?
Ace’s first instinct was to walk away. The trap might be monitored. Hell, it might be rigged.
But the snow around her was unbroken, no boot prints, no recent signs of anyone laying in wait. The scarring at her throat caught their eye, pale lines under the grime. She couldn’t call for help even if she wanted to.
“Damn it,” Ace muttered under their breath.
They scanned the rooftops one last time, then crossed the courtyard in a crouch, wrench in hand. The girl’s eyes locked on them again, still wide, still silent, but this time there was something sharp there. Fear, but not the kind that freezes you in place.
“Hold still,” Ace murmured.
They slid the wrench between wire and skin, twisting to lever the strand up just enough to slip it free. The tension in the trap eased with a soft ping as the last loop fell slack.
The girl crumpled forward into the snow, catching herself awkwardly on her hands. She stayed there for a moment, breathing hard, before looking up at Ace.
Ace straightened, scanning the perimeter again. “If you’re smart, you’ll stay out of sight and bandage that up.”
No reply. Just the quiet crunch of her following as they moved back into the fog.
⚙︎
The girl was following them.
She wasn’t even subtle about it. Ace could hear her footsteps, uneven and soft, crunching faintly through the snow no matter how padded the drifts were. Every few steps, she’d quicken her pace to close the gap, only to slow again when Ace glanced back.
Ace didn’t say anything at first. Tire herself out following them, or maybe she’d get bored and wander off to do… whatever it is that kids do. Not that there was much to do, in a frozen, dead city.
Hands buried deep in their coat pockets, Ace kept moving, pretending not to notice the small shadow trailing in their wake. But each crunch of her boots seemed to follow a little closer than the last.
The fog thickened between the buildings, turning the world into a tunnel of grey. The girl’s presence pressed in at Ace’s back like a second heartbeat, quiet but constant.
They told themselves it didn’t matter. She’d go her own way eventually. She was a kid, how exciting could a lone wanderer really be?
And yet, Ace found themselves slowing their pace without thinking.
A slanted row of frost-crusted shopfronts emerged from the fog ahead. One window hung in jagged shards, its display floor littered with toppled mannequins and scraps of yellowed fabric. Ace ducked inside without a word, brushing past a curtain of ice where the roof had collapsed.
The girl hesitated at the threshold, gray eyes sweeping the street before she stepped in after them. She didn’t speak, but she moved with wariness, skirting broken glass and shifting her weight so the boards didn’t creak.
Ace ducked behind a rusted shelving unit, breaking line of sight with the girl. For a moment, they simply listened, boots still, breath low, waiting to hear if she’d keep going or hesitate.
The crunch of her footsteps stopped.
A faint scuff followed, then silence. Ace leaned just far enough to catch a glimpse of her through a gap in the shelving. The girl stood in the middle of the storefront, looking around and looking confused.
Her gaze swept the interior, walls bowed with damp, the ceiling sagging under the snowfall. A cracked display case lay on its side near the door, its glass spiderwebbed and dusted with faint frost. She moved toward it, fingertips trailing over the cold metal frame, like she was trying to read the place through touch alone.
Ace stayed where they were, half-hidden, watching. She didn’t rummage through shelves or make for the exit. Instead, she knelt beside a toppled mannequin, brushing frost from its plaster hand with an odd kind of care.
A faint chill crept down Ace’s spine, not from the cold, but from the deliberate slowness in her movements. The same way Ace searched themselves. They didn’t know how to feel about that.
Ace let out a brief sigh, their breath visible, before speaking.
“You planning to follow me all day?”
The girl didn’t answer, only shifted her stance, arms folding loosely across her chest. Her expression didn’t change, but she blinked once, slow, as though weighing the question.
Ace’s hand stayed in their coat pocket, fingers brushing the cold metal of the wrench. Not a threat, just habit.
“You don’t talk, do you?”
Nothing. Not even a twitch.
They clicked their tongue and turned away, stepping toward the back of the shop. “Fine. Suit yourself.”
The floor groaned under their weight as they crossed into a narrow hallway. Shelves lined one side, sagging with the remains of rotted boxes and rust-flaked tins. Ace tested each step before putting weight down, eyes scanning for anything salvageable. A half-crushed can of coffee grounds went into a pocket, seemingly still good.
Behind them, the faint crunch of snow and whisper of fabric followed.
“You’re gonna have to stop doing that,” Ace muttered over their shoulder. “Makes my hair stand on end.”
Still no reply. But, she did fidget with something in her hands.
At the far end of the hall, a door hung half off its hinges. Ace pushed it open and ducked inside. The roof here had partially caved in, letting the pale daylight spill through in soft, shifting beams. An old workbench sat against the wall, covered in a thin crust of ice and the brittle remains of paper. Tools were scattered across it, most too rusted to bother with, but a pair of needle-nose pliers went into Ace’s bag.
When they turned, the girl was there in the doorway. She’d picked her way forward without a sound this time. Impressive, compared to her previously shown capabilities. In her hands was something small, one of the mannequin’s plaster fingers, broken clean at the joint. She held it out toward Ace.
Ace blinked. “…What am I supposed to do with that?”
The girl tilted her head, eyes narrowing in a way that wasn’t quite hostile, but wasn’t exactly innocent either. Then she tucked the plaster piece into her own coat pocket and stepped inside, brushing past Ace with surprising confidence for someone who’d been caught in a trap minutes ago.
The girl didn’t look back after brushing past, just began scanning the workbench as though she owned the space. Her fingers moved methodically, touching, testing, weighing small bits of metal before setting them down in neat lines.
Ace watched from a few paces away, arms folded. “You planning on helping yourself to my haul too?”
No answer, though the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth might’ve been amusement… or contempt. Hard to tell with kids. Not that Ace had much experience with them.
Ace turned away first, rummaging through a low cabinet for anything salvageable. Their hand brushed something cold and cylindrical, a small, half-full canister of compressed gas. They slid it into their pack with a quiet sense of victory.
A sound broke the moment, the distant, metallic click of something shifting outside. Both Ace and the girl froze.
Ace’s gaze cut toward the window: the fog outside shifted unnaturally, rolling low between the buildings. In it, a silhouette passed, small, catlike, but with stiff, mechanical precision. A Reforged drone, pacing the street.
Ace gestured sharply for the girl to stay still. She did.
The shadow paused in front of the shop, head tilting in short, mechanical jerks. The faint whir of servos leaked in through the broken window.
Ace crouched low, easing toward the hallway. The girl followed silently this time, her movements almost unnervingly fluid for someone her size.
They slipped back into the storefront, keeping low behind the shelving. The drone’s outline passed the window again, then stilled, head twitching toward the open doorway.
The girl’s hand brushed Ace’s sleeve, not a tug, just a presence. When Ace looked at her, her expression hadn’t changed, but her eyes were fixed on the doorway with an intensity that made the fine hairs on Ace’s arms rise.
The drone moved on after a long moment, vanishing into the fog.
Ace exhaled, tension loosening just slightly. “You see why this is a bad idea?”
Still no reply. Just that steady gaze.
⚙︎
The fog swallowed the street again, leaving only the creak of ice settling in the rafters above.
Ace waited another few heartbeats before straightening. “I’m leaving before it decides to circle back. If you're coming with, follow quietly.”
The girl didn’t need to be told twice. She fell in behind them, footsteps lighter than before, as though she’d taken Ace’s words to heart. Ace wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.
They cut west, skirting through a row of abandoned buildings whose interiors had been gutted weeks ago. Each doorway gaped like a hollow mouth, snow drifted deep inside. Eventually the street pitched downward toward a half-collapsed stairwell, the entrance buried under snow and rubble.
Ace crouched by the edge, brushing frost from a warped metal sign: SUBWAY ACCESS - PANDORA STATION
“Perfect,” they muttered, more to themselves than her.
Ace tested the first step with their boot, the concrete slick with ice.
“Watch your footing,” they said over their shoulder, before starting down sideways, one hand skimming the wall for balance.
The girl followed without hesitation, her pale eyes flicking from the stairwell to the gaping dark below. She moved light, testing each tread the way Ace had, but with an ease that made it seem instinctive rather than learned.
By the time they reached the tunnel, the daylight was little more than a smear above them. The air was colder here, heavy with the smell of old water and mold buried deep under the frost.
Ace pulled a small penlight from their coat and clicked it on. The beam caught a spill of snow drifting through the broken ceiling, glittering faintly before settling on the cracked tile floor.
Beyond, the tunnel yawned in darkness, its tracks warped and half-swallowed by the frozen water.
The pair moved along the edge of the platform, boots scraping softly over grit and ice. The light skimmed over half-collapsed support beams, peeling advertisements frozen to the walls, and the sagging remains of a turnstile bent almost in half.
Every sound carried here, the faint crunch of their footsteps, the drip of water somewhere deep in the tunnel, the muffled groan of shifting concrete above.
Ace swept the beam over the far wall, finding the frame of an old bench. Someone seemed to have built a fire here once, charcoal scattered across the tile, the rusted shell of a can kicked into a corner.
The girl lingered at the edge of the light, eyes scanning the shadows with that same still, measured attention she’d shown in the shop. Her breath misted faintly in the frigid air, but she didn’t shiver.
“Stay close to the wall,” Ace murmured, stepping down onto the tracks. Their boots crunched over a thin crust of ice as they crossed between the rails.
“This place echoes. If anyone else is down here, I’d prefer to not alert them to our location.”
The girl gave a small nod and dropped onto the tracks behind Ace. Her landing made the snow kick up in a gray cloud.
They moved deeper into the tunnel, the penlight’s narrow beam cutting through swirls of frost that hung in the stagnant air. The darkness pressed close at their backs, swallowing their trail as quickly as they made it.
Somewhere far ahead, a cracking sound rang out. Faint but sharp enough to make Ace stop mid-step. The girl halted too, head tilting slightly as though trying to pinpoint the sound.
Ace clicked off the penlight. The darkness was absolute, broken only by the faintest gleam of frost on the tunnel walls. They stood still, listening.
Nothing. Only the slow drip-drip-drip of unseen water.
“Could’ve been ice breaking,” Ace muttered, though their voice was barely above a breath. “Or not.”
Ace turned the light back on, keeping the beam low and tight to the ground as the two pushed on.
The tunnel widened slightly, and the remnants of another platform came into view, a collapsed stairwell spilling rubble down across the tiles, an old map warped into unreadable shapes by frost.
A thin shaft of daylight filtered in through a crack high above, barely enough to illuminate the space.
Ace scanned the shadows, their gaze catching on something at the far end of the platform. A shape, low to the ground, unmoving.
They lifted the light.
A body.
The man was frozen in place, half-buried under drifted snow that had worked its way in through the collapsed ceilings. His helmet was cracked, visor shattered inward, his gloved hand locked around the grip of a sidearm.
Ace’s shoulders tightened. They crouched, brushing snow from the man’s chest plate until the insignia came into view. Foundation insignia, clear as day.
The girl inched closer to the corpse, curiosity in her eyes.
“Don’t touch him,” Ace said, standing.
She didn't answer, but when Ace glanced over their shoulder, she was still staring at the corpse.
Was it fear? No, her emotions were completely unreadable.
They turned away, stepping off the platform toward the next stretch of tunnel. “Come on. The longer we’re down here, the more likely we run into company.”
The girl followed, but her gaze lingered on the frozen body until the shadows swallowed it whole.
⚙︎
The pair emerged from the labyrinthine subway system only several blocks from Ace’s current residence. The street above was quieter than when they’d gone under, just the wind threading through the husks of buildings and the muffled hiss of snow against glassless windows.
Ace took the lead, slipping into the cover of a narrow side street. The girl stayed close, her footsteps still audible but she seemed to be trying her best.
They moved quickly, hugging walls, cutting through gaps between buildings where the snow drifted deep and undisturbed. A pile of soot and snow formed a blockade down one alleyway, causing a minor detour before they finally reached the laundromat.
Before Ace could say anything, the girl stepped over the tripwire and headed towards the back entrance. She stopped just before it and turned towards Ace, waiting patiently.
Ace’s boots crunched softly as they crossed the alley, eyes narrowing at the unbroken wire the girl had just stepped over. They gave the girl a quick glance before opening the door to the laundromat, feeling a slight bit of relief from seeing the piece of paper in the doorway.
Inside, the stale warmth of the laundromat closed in around them. The patched walls muffled the outside world, muting the wind until all that was left was the soft shuffle of boots on tile. Ace shut the door, sliding the lock with a practiced click.
The girl lingered near the entrance, scanning the cramped space like she was cataloging it, cot wedged in the corner, scavenged shelves stacked with tools and scrap, jury-rigged lamp casting dim light across the dead dryers.
Ace shrugged off their outer layer and tossed it over the back of the cot. “This isn’t a shelter. It’s where I work, and sometimes where I sleep. You’re here because the streets are worse right now, not because I’m starting a boarding house.”
No reaction. She just drifted toward the shelves, fingertips brushing along the edges of a dented toolbox before stopping at a heap of stripped wiring.
“Don’t touch anything unless you know what it is,” Ace warned, crossing the room to set their pack down. “And don’t break anything.”
The girl glanced at Ace briefly, then plucked a mess of wire from the pile. She rolled it between her fingers, examining the frayed copper ends.
Ace kept one eye on her while unzipping their pack pulling out the small canister of compressed gas. The wiring and metal spike were still there as well, along with various tools. Each piece was set on the workbench in a neat row.
“You’re not staying here,” Ace said, voice flat. “One night, maybe two, and then you find somewhere else. I’m not running a daycare, and I’m not looking to attract attention.”
The girl didn’t answer, but she didn’t look away either. Her gaze was steady, unblinking, in a way that made it hard to tell if she was ignoring Ace or listening intently.
“Listen, kid. I’m serious. I’m not some guardian angel. You’d be a lot better off out there then with me.”
The girl’s expression didn’t change. She just stood there in the half-light, looking down at the bundle of wires intently, like she was weighing something Ace couldn’t read.
Ace exhaled through their nose, turning back to the workbench. The clink of metal on wood was the only sound for a while, pliers sliding aside, the hiss of the compressed gas being checked for leaks. They tried to ignore the feeling of the girl following their every movement.
After an hour of progress, Ace looked down at their newly upgraded arm and made sure that everything worked as it should. The carbon skin covering their augments had long since been torn off, exposing the mechanical internals beneath.
Now, nestled in between the steel bones of their wrist, laid the spike. Ace would have to test it later, preferably when there wasn’t a child around.
Ace flexed the fingers of their augmented hand, watching the spike slide forward and retract with a smooth hiss. Satisfied, they set their arm back on the bench and reached for the pliers again.
Before continuing to work on their arm, Ace turned to see what the girl was up to. She had seemingly long discarded the wiring and was now hunched over… something, her body covering exactly what it was.
Ace made their way over to the crouched figure of the girl, trying to peer over her shoulder. The girl’s head snapped up to look at Ace and her hands quickly slammed down on whatever the thing had been.
Ace stopped mid-step.
“Move your hands,” they said, voice low but edged.
The girl didn’t. Her palms stayed planted firmly on the floor, shoulders stiff, eyes locked on Ace with a guarded, almost feral stillness. For a long moment, neither moved.
Ace took another step forward, angling to get a better look. The girl shifted with them, keeping the object hidden beneath her small frame.
“You hiding something from me?” Ace asked.
Still nothing. Not even a flicker of expression.
The faint smell of iron drifted up, sharp and out of place in the laundromat’s stale air.
Ace’s gaze narrowed. “Whatever it is, if it’s dangerous, it’s going out that door.”
The girl’s eyes flicked down for a heartbeat, just long enough for Ace to catch a glimpse between her fingers. It appeared to be a small bug. Though, Ace couldn't tell what kind it is.
It twitched once, its legs stiff and wrong, like wire bent too many times. A faint glisten marked where one of the limbs met the body, wet, but not with snowmelt.
Ace’s brow furrowed. “That yours?”
The girl’s shoulders hitched, a movement so slight it could’ve been a shrug…
“Move your hands,” Ace said again.
Slowly, she lifted them. The bug squirmed, its segmented body slick with something darker than water. Too many joints along its legs, too many angles in its carapace. It looked as though it had been broken apart and put back together without care for symmetry.
Ace crouched, looking closer. “Where’d you find it?”
The girl didn’t answer. She just extended one finger toward the thing, almost gently. The bug’s legs flexed at the contact, a faint sound issuing from it. Not a chirp, but a wet click that made whatever remaining hair Ace had stand up.
They leaned back slightly. “You keeping pets now?”
Her eyes flicked up at that, and there was nothing childish in them. No denial, no guilt. Just an odd, steady watchfulness, as if waiting to see whether Ace would crush it or leave it alone.
Without breaking eye contact, she cupped her hands around the bug and pulled it close to her chest.
The smell of iron sharpened.
Ace stood slowly, deciding not to push the matter, not yet. After all, the kid would be gone soon.
“Fine. But it doesn’t stay here if it starts acting strange.”
She blinked once, slow, and turned away, retreating to a corner of the laundromat with her prize. The dim lamplight caught the edge of her coat as she crouched again, the bug hidden in her shadow.
Ace went back to the workbench, but their attention kept drifting. Every so often, a soft, irregular clicking whispered from her direction, almost masked by the wind outside.
They told themselves it was nothing.
But when they glanced over, the girl’s back was still, her head bent just enough to hide whatever she was doing, exactly the same way she’d hidden the bug in the first place.
⚙︎
Ace flailed wildly against their blanket as they woke up from another nightmare. The cot creaked, one leg scraping harshly against the tile, before Ace finally wrestled free and sat hunched forward, sweat slicking their hairline. Their breath came in short bursts, clouding the cold air.
They stared at their shaking hands, wondering if something was wrong with them. Who were they kidding? This was them, flesh and bone failing once again.
“Damn it,” they whispered, pressing both palms to their face.
Ace sat there, palms pressed to their eyes, the nightmare still clawing at the edges of thought. Shadows, smoke, voices that weren’t theirs. Always the voices. The chorus that would never let them go.
The sound of movement broke through. A faint scuff on tile, too soft to be their own.
Ace lowered their hands. The girl was awake.
She sat cross-legged on the floor near the wall, still wrapped in Ace’s coat, watching them. Not moving, not speaking, just watching with those pale eyes that never seemed to blink often enough.
Ace’s gut twisted. “How long’ve you been sitting there?”
No answer, only the slow tilt of her head, as if the question didn’t matter.
Ace rubbed the back of their neck. “It was just a dream. Nothing you need to-” They cut themselves off, shaking their head. “Forget it.”
Pushing themselves off of the cot, Ace made their way over to their food supplies. Coffee always seemed to calm their nerves when they had bad memories raking down their mechanical spine.
They pulled out a battered tin, rattled it, then pried it open. A thin grind, stale but serviceable, clung to the bottom. Ace muttered under their breath and set to work.
The girl watched as they scavenged together a makeshift brew, water from a plastic jug, a rusted kettle set over a coil wired to a scavenged car battery. It hissed and steamed reluctantly, filling the laundromat with the faint smell of roasted beans.
Ace poured the bitter sludge into a tin mug, then caught her staring. They hesitated before rummaging for a second cracked cup. They poured half the drink and set it on the floor between them.
She looked at it, then at Ace, then inched forward. Her small hands wrapped around the cup, lifting it carefully. She didn’t drink right away, just held it close, letting the steam raise up past her face.
Ace leaned back against the cot, their own mug warm between steel hands.
“Not much of a breakfast,” they muttered. “But it keeps the cold off.”
The girl drank in small sips, steady but deliberate, like she was testing every mouthful. Ace couldn’t help but watch her from the corner of their eye. For all her silence, she carried herself with a strange composure, like she wasn’t a child sitting in snowy ruins but something older, heavier, crammed into a frame too small to hold it.
Ace rubbed at their temple. “You know, most kids your age would’ve spat this out by now.”
She blinked at them slowly, then took another sip without breaking eye contact.
Ace let out a faint huff of air. Half in amusement, half nerves and stared down into their own mug. The bitter sludge coated their tongue and the warmth did what it always did: anchored them, gave their hands something to hold.
Ace stared into their mug, letting the dark ambrosia steady them while the girl nursed hers in silence. The laundromat hummed faintly with the wind slipping through patched seams, but otherwise it was just the two of them, each lost in their own thoughts.
After a while, Ace set their cup down on the workbench. “You planning on staring holes through me all night?”
The girl blinked once, slow. Then she looked down at her cup and blew across the surface, though the steam had already faded.
Ace snorted. “Guess that’s a no.”
They busied themselves with the shelves, checking inventory: wires, screws, bits of random metal. Tools that barely deserved their name. Anything was better than remembering.
The whole time, the girl did what she always did. Observing silently, her coffee long forgotten.
The hours dragged by. Ace tinkered at their workbench, no real goal in mind. Just keeping busy. Though, with the girl burning holes into the back of their head, it was rather difficult to stay focused.
Ace tried to ignore her, focusing on the familiar motions. But the silence pressed at them, soon heavier than the cold.
Finally, they set the scrap down with a clatter. “You’re not gonna sleep?”
The girl shook her head once, slow.
“Figures.”
The lamp buzzed overhead. Outside, the wind howled through the ruined city, rattling glass shards still clinging to their frames. For a moment, the laundromat felt smaller, like the walls were inching in.
The girl shifted. She drew her knees up beneath Ace’s coat, folding into it until she was almost swallowed whole. But her eyes stayed fixed on them, pale and steady.
Ace exhaled hard. “You're like a cat, you know.”
A flicker of something passed over her face, maybe amusement, maybe nothing. She reached into her pocket and drew out the small plaster finger she’d taken from the shop. Holding it carefully between her palms, she placed it on the floor between them, pushing it forward until it rested at Ace’s boots.
Ace stared at it. Then at her.
“…What am I supposed to do with that?”
She tilted her head, offering no explanation.
Ace leaned back, sighing. “You’re a strange one.”
The girl just curled tighter into the coat, eyes finally breaking away from them, gaze fixed instead on the dim glow of the lamp. For the first time since Ace had met her, she seemed smaller. Not silent in defiance, not cold, just quiet, fragile.
Ace picked up the plaster finger, turning it over once in their augmented hand. The edges were sharp, broken, jagged. Still, they slipped it into a pocket.
When they looked up again, the girl was already drifting, eyes half-shut, her breath rasping faintly in the stale air.
Ace sat there for a long while, listening to the rise and fall of her breathing.
⚙︎
When Ace got up the next morning, the girl was gone.
The cot across the room was empty save for a faint hollow in the blanket, still warm when Ace pressed a hand to it. The corner where she’d crouched the night before was bare, the bug nowhere in sight. Only a few faint marks scuffed the dust on the tile, small footprints half-faded where she’d moved around in the dark.
Ace should have felt… happy, right? The girl had left like she was supposed to and Ace was now alone, once more. This was a good thing, Ace would have only made the girl’s life miserable.
Who would want to stick around with someone like them, after all?
Ace shook their head to cast away the unwanted thoughts, but their eyes still lingered on the corner of the room.
They busied themselves with routine. Pack. Check gear. Make sure the spike hasn't jammed overnight. Small rituals to push back the silence pressing in on the laundromat walls. But even as the tools clinked against the workbench, Ace kept glancing toward the door.
By midday, they couldn’t sit still. The stale air of the laundromat gnawed at them, the quiet too thick, too empty. Ace slung their pack over one shoulder and stepped out into the frozen street. The fog had thinned, leaving the city stretched pale and desolate beneath a washed-out sky.
The footprints outside the laundromat were faint, half-filled with drifting snow, but Ace could make them out. Small, uneven, threading down the alley and toward the main road. She hadn’t gone far.
Ace shook their head once more and went the opposite direction of the footsteps.
They kept their eyes forward, forcing their boots to crunch in the opposite direction. The snow bit at their face, stinging at what parts could still feel the cold. Every step away from those faint tracks should’ve been a relief, should’ve meant freedom from responsibility.
Hell, she would be a lot safer even wandering the snowy streets of Victoria than sticking with them… for multiple reasons.
But the silence pressed in harder than before.
The city was too still. Even the wind seemed to have died down, leaving only the faint groan of metal in the rafters above the empty streets. Ace told themselves it was nothing unusual, just the lull of winter. Yet their shoulders itched the way they always did when the Reforged were near, that primal instinct that came from too many years in their shadow.
They pushed on, weaving through the streets and buildings, but their focus kept slipping back to the girl, her gray eyes watching them work, her hands clamped over the strange bug, her blank defiance in the laundromat’s half-light.
Ace stopped, breath steaming. “Damn it.”
The words rang flat in the empty street.
For a long moment they stood there, caught between two directions: the city’s open avenues ahead, and the faint, uneven trail of a child threading back toward Mehkane-knows-what.
Their ponderings were shattered in a single moment as the whirr of a drone came into earshot.
Ace scrambled behind a car to avoid the drone’s perception, kicking up snow in the process.
Breathing heavy, they stayed low to the ground as they waited for the bird-creature to move on.
However, Ace instantly stilled when the drone began to speak, in an all-too familiar intonation.
“Ma lumière,” the drone spoke in a discordant harmony, too many voices saying the same thing. “I knoweth thou art hither, thou art not nearly as covert as thee desire to beest.”
Ace quickly covered their ears, trying to block out the voice to no avail. Unwanted memories were dug up as the voice continued.
“Thee has't did discover a most fascinating creature. T is a shame yond they shall lief beest did capture by the worshippers of the veil.”
Ace grimaced at that, but also wondered why now of all times she was speaking to them.
“I would suggest thee hie if 't be true thee wish to rescue thy ward. Not only from the secret-keepers, but our own family shall anon converge upon this waste. I shall not stop you, no matter your decision.”
The drone’s whirr faded into the distance, swallowed by the fog, but the words clung in Ace’s skull. Their breath came sharp and uneven. Their gloved hands shook and clutched at the snow beneath them. Ace felt like vomiting, but bit back the vile building in their throat.
They pressed the heel of their palm against their temple until the words blurred into the hiss of their breath. It didn’t matter who had spoken through the drone. What mattered was the warning.
The girl.
Ace’s jaw tightened.
They peered over the rusted car’s hood, scanning the sky for any sign of the drone. The air was empty, only the faint wisps of the fog draped across rooftops.
Slowly, Ace rose, brushing off their coat. Their eyes flicked down the street, toward the open avenues.
But, what would that achieve? The girl was now being hunted by the Reforged and the Foundation was about to find her. Was she an anomaly?
If she was…
Ace cursed under their breath, the sound sharp in the still air. They could just walk, stay away from this whole mess. No one would be there to judge them for leaving a child to the wolves. Hell, maybe that was the merciful thing. Maybe the Foundation had changed over the years.
But the image of her in the laundromat, eyes steady and unblinking, it dug into Ace like a rusted hook.
She’s already in their sights. She won’t last a day alone.
Ace adjusted the strap of their pack and turned toward the snow-drifted avenues, boots crunching once in that direction. Then they stopped, shoulders tight, and exhaled a long, misting breath.
“Mehkane take me,” they muttered.
Their boots turned back the way they had come. Back towards the girl’s tracks.
The girl’s tracks wound unevenly through the snow, sometimes disappearing into drifts before reappearing farther down the road. Each step felt heavier, their body screaming to turn back, but Ace’s boots pressed forward anyway.
The prints led toward a collapsed overpass, a tangle of rebar and concrete that spilled down into what had once been a multi-level parking structure.
Ace crouched at the edge of the street, scanning the ruin. No sign of her at first. Only the groan of wind through twisted beams, the occasional rattle of loose metal. Then, faintly, a shadow shifted between rows of rusted cars. Small. Moving low.
Ace swore under their breath and moved, keeping close to the wall as they descended into the ruin.
The deeper they went, the colder the air became, breath steaming in the dim light filtering through cracks above. The sound of footsteps echoed faintly somewhere ahead, too many to be the girl’s alone. Boots, disciplined and deliberate.
Foundation.
Ace pressed themselves flat against the wall of a half-collapsed stairwell, pulse hammering. The faint drip-drip-drip of water was soon mixed with voices. They drifted through the concrete, muted but clear enough to make out the clipped cadence of radio chatter.
“Negative on contact… moving to lower levels…”
Ace clenched their jaw. If the patrol was sweeping here, then the girl hadn’t just wandered into danger. They had been expecting her.
Ace’s grip tightened around the strap of their pack, every instinct screaming to turn back. Let the Foundation sweep this place clean. Let the girl be their problem.
But then came the sound, sharp, panicked, muffled by layers of concrete. A scuffle. A cry that wasn’t a voice, but the ragged scrape of breath against a scarred throat.
Ace’s teeth ground together. They slipped along the stairwell, boots whisper-quiet, the green pulse in their left eye flaring faintly as they scanned for motion.
A large, faded -2 was painted on the wall as Ace stopped at the landing where the noise was coming from. Hiding behind the doorway, Ace could see the current scene.
A team of five Foundation agents moved between rows of discarded cars, visors glowing faintly in the dim. Their rifles were raised, steady, scanning the shadows. One of them crouched low, gauntleted hand gripping the girl’s arm as she struggled against the hold, silent and thrashing.
“PoI secured,” a voice crackled beneath a helmet. “Requesting extraction coordinates.”
The scent of iron began to permeate through the air.
Ace’s breath came up short. There was no clean way through the five of them. The spike at their wrist slid forward with a soft hiss, but even that felt pointless against armor and rifles.
Frantically, the girl’s wide eyes searched around the parking lot before landing on the hidden form of Ace. A silent plea passed between the two.
Ace swallowed, every part of them coiled to move.
The worst happened right then. One of the agents followed where the girl was looking, spotting Ace.
“Enemy contact! Reforged!” they yelled to their team, all of them raising their rifles to where Ace was hiding.
Ace barely had time to curse before the first shots cracked. Concrete shards burst from the wall inches from their head, the stairwell ringing with ricochets. They ducked behind the wall, as they could hear the footsteps of the patrol become louder.
The spike in their wrist was ready to be used, but against five rifles and reinforced armor? Suicide. Ace knew how this ended: pinned, outgunned, dead.
The scent of iron grew stronger.
That’s when the footsteps stopped.
Ace took a chance and looked back into the parking lot.
The girl had stopped thrashing. For a heartbeat, she went completely still in the grip of the agent. Then her body convulsed once, hard, like a spasm. Twice.
“What’s wrong wi-” The agent holding her wrist got caught off as suddenly, he started to scream.
The sound of tearing flesh could be heard as they dropped to the floor, clutching at his wrist.
Fabric and kevlar split at the seams as something pushed outward from beneath his skin. White splinters of bone erupted through the glove, jagged and wet, writhing like broken fingers searching for purchase. The man’s screams echoed through the structure before another agent put a bullet through his visor.
Now without resistance, the deformed bones continued to grow and twist, forming vine-like structures. They lashed out at the other agents, cutting through the padded uniforms and into the flesh below.
The parking structure became chaotic. Rifles barked, muzzle flashes strobing in the gloom as the Foundation team tried to fight back against the whip-like bones. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space, ricochets bouncing off concrete, glass shattering as bullets tore through old car windows.
The girl collapsed to her knees, her small frame convulsing again as though wracked by seizures. From her arms and back, pale ridges pressed against the skin, splitting fabric as more jagged growths forced their way outward. They didn’t sprout cleanly, they tore through her flesh with wet cracks, branching like antlers, gleaming with blood.
That same smell of iron became almost choking.
One of the bone tendrils pierced straight through an agent's torso, leaving behind a gaping hole where her heart had been moments before. It wasn’t much later before the corpse started to thrash violently, the wound bubbling with flesh madly.
The woman’s body convulsed on the floor, her limbs bending at grotesque angles as if her own skeleton had rebelled against her. Her visor cracked against the ground as her helmet jerked back.
Then the thrashing stopped all at once. A heartbeat later, her torso ruptured in a blossom of pale, glistening flesh. Gnarled, twisted meat lashed outwards, soon joining the mass swirling around the girl.
The remaining agents fell back in disciplined formation, their rifles barking controlled bursts, bullets lodging into the mass of violent bone and flesh. One agent’s visor fogged red as a whip of ivory split it clean down the middle, his body falling limply into the spreading pool of crimson sanguine. The body was soon followed by another.
Ace ducked lower behind the stairwell wall, heart pounding in their throat. They’d seen violence before, dozens of times, hell, committed it, but never like this. This wasn’t combat. This was something primal, unnatural, a massacre pure and simple.
The girl was in the center of it, her small frame heaving with each convulsion. The tendrils writhed and lashed like they were half under her control, half moving on instinct. Her mouth opened, but no scream came out, only a broken rasp of air forced through her ruined throat.
Ace’s body hummed faintly, their wrist-spike still extended, trembling with the tension in their grip. The thought flickered, traitorous: End it now. Put her down before she turns on you too.
Another gunshot snapped their attention back. The last surviving agent, bleeding from a rent across his chest, had planted his boots and drawn a sidearm. He raised it not at the bone mass but at the girl herself, aiming squarely at her skull.
Ace didn’t think. They moved.
The spike launched forward, stabbing the agent’s wrist just as he fired. The shot went wide, sparking off a pillar. Ace pulled hard on the wire attached to the spike, twisting the man down into the ground. A bone tendril seized the opening and drove clean through his back. His breath left him in a single, wet gasp before the growth pulled free and let the body crumple.
Silence followed, heavy and absolute, broken only by the girl’s ragged, choking breaths.
Ace stayed where they were, collapsing to one knee in the muck, chest heaving. The bone growths quivered and retracted slowly, curling back into the girl’s body with sickening cracks. Her small shoulders shook as she wrapped her arms around herself, blood soaking into the tatters of her coat.
For the first time since Ace had met her, she looked less like something cold and unreadable… and more like a child. Terrified. Shaking.
Ace looked down, away from the carnage around them. The shredded bodies, the blood pooling black in the dim light.
For a long moment, they couldn’t bring themselves to look at the girl. Couldn’t risk seeing the thing that had torn grown men and women apart still flickering in her eyes.
But the silence pressed too close, too heavy, until they forced themselves to glance.
She hadn’t moved. She knelt amid the carnage, small frame shuddering, skin pale where it wasn’t split with raw seams. Only a cracked, rasping wheeze came out as she sobbed.
Ace’s chest tightened.
Ace pushed up from their crouch, legs trembling. The spike slid back into their with a hiss, leaving their hand empty.
The girl lifted her head at the sound, her gray eyes rimmed red, wide, and wet. Ace made their way over to the frightened child, before crouching carefully, close enough that their shadow stretched over her in the dim light.
“Hey,” they rasped, the word tight in their throat. “I know how you must feel right now.”
The girl just stared at Ace as they rubbed at their neck awkwardly before they continued.
“Well, maybe, not exactly. But, I know you must feel like there’s something wrong with you. Like there’s a monster hidden beneath your skin. That, I do know what it’s like.”
The girl had stopped crying, her tears drying amidst the blood on her face.
“You’re still you,” Ace said, “No matter what you or anyone else thinks, you are still you at the end of the day.”
They extended a mechanical hand towards the quivering girl. After a moment of hesitation, the small hand of the child grabbed onto Ace’s fingers.
They rose as a pair, the girl swayed as she did, legs unsteady, but stayed upright.
“Come on,” Ace muttered, steadying her. “We need to move before the whole damn city comes down on us.”
The girl leaned into them, silent, her breath rasping faintly against the collar of the coat.
Together they moved their way through the wreckage, boots leaving shallow tracks in blood and snow.
⚙︎
The two rested in the midst of a mostly-intact church, having grabbed everything of value from the laundromat. The roof sagged in places, but most of the stained glass still clung to the windows, fractured panes catching the light and breaking it into dull fragments of color.
Ace sat slouched on a pew near the back, one arm draped over their pack, the other absently flexing the fingers of their augmented hand. The spike had been cleaned, the wire replaced, but the phantom weight of it lingered. Their eyes kept slipping to the girl, curled up at the far end of the pew. She was wrapped in Ace’s coat, swallowed by it, pale hair catching the dim light through the glass.
Ace dragged a hand down their face, breathing out slowly. They’d told themselves they’d leave her, a dozen times now. That she’d be better off on her own. That they weren’t built for this. But the way she’d looked at them in the parking structure, blood on her face, eyes wide with the same fear and uncertainty that was all too familiar…
They shifted, leaning forward, elbows on their knees.
“Can’t keep calling you ‘kid,’” they muttered, voice low in the cavernous stillness.
The girl stirred faintly, turning her head toward them.
“Do you have a name?” Ace asked.
She shook her head.
Ace flexed their hand once more as they thought of what to say next.
“How familiar are you with the Reforged and their teachings?”
The girl tilted her head at that question. Ace snorted at her response.
“Yeah, that makes sense,” they stated. “Well, you may have guessed but I’m pretty… knowledgeable about them. Would you like to hear a story that they told me once?”
A nod.
Ace straightened as they began their tale.
“There were once two mighty sibling deities, Važjuma and Mehkane. One of flesh, one of metal. One of chaos, and one of order. Važjuma was the stronger of the two, while Mehkane was the more cunning. One day, Važjuma became spiteful at Mehkane’s brilliant creations of brass and steel and so, it took it upon itself to create life in its own image.”
Ace paused briefly, glancing at the girl before continuing. She watched them in rapt attention.
“Važjuma tore a piece of their flesh off from its divine body, before molding the morsel like clay. The resulting creation was the first human, a nameless, wretched thing. It, much like its creator, was broken on the inside for it was made in an act of rage and spite. This infuriated the god-beast and Važjuma devoured the first human before restarting the process over and over again. Each time, the human came out wrong and each time, Važjuma ate its creation whole.
Until… It succeeded. After eight hundred and eighty-eight tries, Važjuma finally created something it was proud of. Basking in its greatness, it granted the true, first human a name. This name was… Iiûn for it meant ‘Herald’.
But Mehkane saw what Važjuma had done, a being of flesh and bone. They saw the true purpose behind the human’s creation, the underlying cruelty. A creation born only to prove a point. And they… felt sorrow for the human.
So, Mehkane whispered to Iiûn. Told her that even if she had been born from spite, even if her flesh carried that ugliness, she could still choose what she became. That the mark of creation isn’t the hand that shaped you, but the path you carve for yourself.”
Ace’s gaze slipped toward the girl. She hadn’t moved, still wrapped in the heavy folds of the coat, but her eyes held onto them with a quiet weight.
“And so,” Ace finished, “Iiûn became the herald not of Važjuma's power, but of her own.”
For a long while after the story ended, the only sound was the distant creak of the church roof and the faint hiss of wind threading through the broken panes. Light pooled weakly across the floor in fractured shapes, reds, blues, and golds painting the tiled floor in myriad colours.
Ace leaned back against the pew, shoulders sagging as if the tale itself had taken something out of them. They hadn’t spoken the old stories in years, not since they’d walked away from the Reforged and all the baggage that came with it. Saying it aloud now felt strange. Heavy.
The girl shifted, the coat swallowing her small frame as she sat up straighter. She raised a hand, tentative, and pressed her palm to her chest. Then she mouthed something, silent, broken lips forming the syllables as best as they could.
Iiûn.
For the first time since they’d met her, there was something in her eyes besides blank watchfulness or terror. A spark of ownership. Of choice.
“Yeah,” Ace said, voice rough. “That’s you now.”
They pushed off the pew and crossed the distance, lowering themself so they were eye to eye. She looked small, swallowed in their coat, streaked still with traces of dried blood, but she met their gaze unflinching.
“You’re not just some… thing they’re hunting,” Ace said quietly. “You’re not a freak, or a monster, or a mistake. You’re Iiûn. Remember that. Because they’re going to try and tell you otherwise.”
Her small hand crept forward, fingers curling into the edge of their sleeve. No words, no sound, just that touch.
Ace let out a long, tired breath, then reached over to clasp her hand with their robotic one. The metal hissed faintly as the joints flexed, but their grip was steady, human enough.
The silence lingered, almost comfortable this time. Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the fractured glass, scattering weak fragments of color across the church floor.
Ace glanced up at the sagging rafters, then back to her. “Rest while you can, Iiûn. Tomorrow, we vanish before either side finds us.”
Her eyes softened, and Ace thought they saw trust there. Fragile, uncertain, but real.
Ace leaned back against the pew, letting the cold and the quiet settle in. For once, they didn’t feel entirely alone.
And in the fractured light of a god’s broken house, the herald of flesh and the wanderer of steel rested side by side, waiting for the world to hunt them again.