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Chapter Text

Enjin, still breathing hard, his mouth dry and sweat running down his back after finishing off a Trash Beast, watched from several meters away as Rudo tore one of those creatures’ legs clean off, one that was particularly large, using a silver hairpin, now transformed -thanks to 3R- into a kind of double-tipped electric javelin. The strike was precise, fast, brutal. A metallic crack rang out like contained thunder, followed by the hiss of severed cables and the heavy crash of the lifeless limb against the scrap.

Impressive, if you asked Enjin. He’d have to congratulate Zanka on his fine work as a mentor; he could clearly recognize the unmistakable blend of styles in the attack: polished technique, steady and calculated rhythm, fused with Rudo’s wild, erratic inexperience.

He slid Umbreaker back under his coat, satisfied with a job well done, and began walking toward the boy, determined not to interfere. So far, Rudo was handling things well on his own, and challenges were always exciting. The air, while not as clean as near the town that had hired them, wasn’t dangerous enough to worry about the masks destroyed during the fight. It smelled of dry earth, ozone, and ash, with an almost viscous density that clung to the skin, but otherwise posed no real health risk… hopefully.

Halfway there, he ran into Tomme, who was brushing the worst of the grime from her jacket and pants. Her face carried the calm expression of someone who had just survived something extremely dangerous, but given how constant that scenario was in this line of work, she looked utterly unfazed and almost radiant.

“The others are dealing with the last two Beasts,” she told him, falling into step beside him with a crooked smile. “Although, based on the details Gris gave about the situation, they look more like a pair of hyperactive pups playing cat and mouse with Zanka and Riyo.”

Enjin let out a short snort of laughter as he stepped around a chunk of protruding concrete.

“This mission has been particularly interesting,” Tomme commented, pulling her notebook from her pants pocket, its edges warped from moisture and use. “I think this is the first time I’ve seen Beasts organizing into a pack.”

“Don’t most Beasts do that?” Enjin asked, glancing absently toward a spot where electrically charged gusts of air were kicking up lazy spirals of dirt close to the ground.

“No, no.” Tomme shook her head, animated, slipping into that more academic tone Gris always mocked. “It’s one thing for them to group together by place of origin, you know, specific contamination zones give rise to Beasts with shared traits that tend to attack in groups. But it’s something entirely different for there to be a concept of hierarchy within those groups.”

She gestured for him to focus on Rudo. The boy was still fighting -and doing well- surrounded by a rain of crackling white sparks.

“Look,” she continued, pointing. “That Beast, along with the second one you roasted a while ago, were huge but slow. You could say they were the leaders. And they only became truly defensive once Riyo and Zanka went after the smaller ones.”

“The pups?” Enjin clarified, his deep voice thoughtful.

“Exactly.” Tomme flipped a page in her notebook, revealing a small pencil sketch: circles connected by lines, brief notes scribbled in the margins. “Two leaders, five juveniles, and two pups. Both the leaders and the juveniles did everything they could to keep us away from the pups. And look at the result, if Rudo is able to handle that Beast, it’s probably because it believes the pups are safe.”

She carefully put the notebook away and then added, more as a murmur than a direct comment:

“It’s a shame they try to kill us the moment they see a human… In a way, Trash Beasts are fascinating animals.”

Enjin nodded, though not because he truly agreed. It was difficult, almost impossible, to find fascination in something that tried to tear your head off every time you crossed its path. Maybe that was why he liked Tomme. To him, Trash Beasts were just that: a nuisance, yet another threat in the shitty world they’d been born into and learned to survive in. Creatures born from excess, bad feelings, and human negligence. An ugly reminder of the absolute degradation of an entire species, and the punishment dealt for the cold-blooded murder of the planet that had conceived them…

“Who killed the planet?” Glob had once asked one afternoon, half-jokingly, years ago.

Enjin took a slow drag from his cigarette, letting the smoke linger in his lungs a second longer than necessary before exhaling through his nose. He shot Glob a sidelong look, unimpressed, tired even.

“And why do you think I should know something like that?” he shot back, more aggressively than he’d intended.

Glob froze for just a moment, long enough to catch the edge in the response. Then he clicked his tongue, as if deciding not to take it too seriously. He shook a can of purple paint with a firm metallic rattle and signed the lower right corner of the graffiti he’d just finished with a quick, confident motion.

“Man, no need to get like that,” Glob said, shrugging. “It’s just something my grandma used to say… Forget it, it’s stupid.”

He waved a hand vaguely, as if he could brush the comment out of the air and make it disappear. But Enjin already knew he’d fucked up. He bit the inside of his cheek, annoyed with himself. Glob adored his grandmother. It was one of the few things he always defended without irony, without sarcasm, without that layer of distance he used for almost everything else.

Enjin took a step back to take in his friend’s finished work, searching for a silent way to make amends. The paint, still fresh, ran down the wall in places, forming small, uneven rivers where lines met and overlapped. The graffiti depicted a humanoid figure painted entirely in a bone-white hue, almost organic, standing out violently against a deep, dark blue background speckled with hundreds of tiny yellow dots that evoked a sky possible only in children’s stories.

All of the figure’s discernible features were defined by delicate strokes in a slightly different white, almost imperceptible. It wore a kind of long tunic that fell in soft folds, and its head was distorted in an unsettling way: seven elongated points emerged from it like a crown. It had no mouth or nose, but its blue eyes -intense and unnaturally alive- seemed to follow Enjin as he observed it. The figure held a lush bouquet of forget-me-nots, the same small flowers that decorated the inside of the tunic, repeated over and over like an obsessive motif.

“Wow,” Enjin murmured, almost without realizing it.

He shook his head, pushing the memory and everything it implied aside. Both he and Tomme paused to watch Rudo’s movements more closely. Though he’d improved tremendously since officially joining the Cleaners, he still had much to learn. Each strike was accompanied by white flashes of electricity shedding from his javelin; he used the momentum to slide nimbly, narrowly avoiding disembowelment, and the same weapon served as a lever to keep his balance. It was a good jinki. A shame it would crumble into gray dust, turned into nothing, once it was done being used.

“He’s exaggerating,” Enjin complained, crossing his arms.

“Dramatic… almost theatrical,” she agreed, smiling with something close to affection, a patient calm. “Though… I admit it wouldn’t hurt him to start pacing himself. He’ll be exhausted by the time we get back.”

“Exhausted is an understatement. He’ll be bleeding from the nose-”

A particularly loud metallic sound cut Enjin off, putting them both on alert. Rudo, leaning on the javelin to stay upright, spun on himself to build momentum and drove the weapon, gripped with both hands, straight into the precise center of the Beast’s chest. The creature let out a distorted, agonized roar, a titan mourning its defeat with a deep, vibrating howl that made the ground tremble beneath the humans’ feet.

Rudo released the javelin and slowly stepped back, allowing the weapon to discharge electricity freely, seemingly indifferent to the Beast’s uproar.

Enjin grimaced. Tomme covered her ears.

With one last spasm, atrocious, cruel, the creature collapsed, completely impaled.

But… things never -damn it, never- were that easy for the Cleaners.

The satisfied smile beginning to form on Enjin’s face quickly twisted into a worried grimace when he saw a dense red cloud, carmine, dark as poorly fermented pomegranate wine, pouring from the Beast’s tubes, which must have formed some kind of mechanical respiratory system, a grotesque parody of organic structures. The cloud enveloped the creature and everything around it, Rudo included.

“What is that?” Tomme wondered aloud, her tone suddenly tense. “I’ve never seen a Beast-”

Enjin felt something in his stomach tighten, like a rabid dog gnawing at his ribs, splintering them down to the marrow.

“Rudo,” he murmured, and he was already running before he was even aware of what he was doing or the danger he was putting himself in.

His mind raced at a sickening speed, fabricating scenarios, each more terrifying than the last: the red smoke eating away at Rudo’s skin like corrosive acid, melting flesh and dermis; the red smoke raising massive blisters that filled his insides, oozing white and yellow fluid; or maybe the red smoke was a fast-acting poison, coursing through his veins, setting his nerves on fire and-

a corpse.

Enjin would find a lifeless body because he had been negligent as a team leader.

It was his decisions that had led a child to die.

A child who still had baby fat on his face.

A child who still lit up at praise.

A child who hadn’t even tasted beer yet.

No.

No.

NO.

No, damn it.

He wouldn’t let panic take over.

Enjin clenched his teeth and forced himself to imagine a near future where everyone returned to base safe and sound, all limbs still attached, took a shower, enjoyed a good restorative nap, and stuffed themselves with delicious food. There would be time to scold himself for his recklessness later.

The battlefield greeted him with the strange smell of melted plastic, old blood, and… burnt candy? thick in the air. The ground, soaked with the creature’s oily fluids, had turned slick. Every step was a struggle not to get stuck, accompanied by a sticky, wet sound that seemed to pull him down. And though most of the red smoke had already been carried off by the wind, slithering away in delicate spirals until it vanished, the burning in his eyes and the itching in his nose nearly brought tears to them.

All right. Message received: never underestimate danger, and always carry a spare mask.

The Beast’s remains, a tangle of hundreds of twisted pipes, kilometers of stripped cables, large warped stamped plates, and putrefying dead vegetation, lay scattered and inert. They still released small, spasmodic sparks, metal contracting in a postmortem, cadaverous reflex, as if the monster refused to die completely even after its core had been destroyed.

The javelin had already crumbled into dust during Enjin’s run.

“Rudo!” he shouted, his voice reverberating through the wreckage. “This isn’t funny, brat!”

The lack of response made the hair on his neck stand on end.

Enjin moved forward, scanning in every direction, awkwardly dodging fragments of pipe and sheet metal buried in the mud, remnants that must have belonged to some ancient structure.

“Come on… answer me,” he muttered, unsure whether the irritation was directed at Rudo or himself.

He turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees, passing a shattered concave pane of glass that must once have been one of the creature’s eyes. He doubled back. His distorted reflection mocked him, silent. Damn it. He kicked the glass until it shattered completely. Enjin rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighed, tired of this whole bad joke, and then…

He saw it out of the corner of his eye: a white, small, disheveled shape. Unmistakable.

For a moment, as he ran toward where Rudo lay unconscious, Enjin felt a sharp relief pierce his heart. A brief, absurd jolt, as if simply seeing him there, motionless but whole, were enough to convince his body that it was over, that the worst had already passed.

…that feeling didn’t last long.

The one lying unconscious at his feet was not a young man with a permanent scowl, bruised-black circles under his eyes, and that constant look of a cornered animal, always on the verge of going for someone’s throat.

No.

What Enjin saw was a small child.

Too small.

A slight body curled in on itself, protecting itself even in sleep, breathing with deceptive calm while resting peacefully against the dirty, cracked ground.

The child… no, Rudo. It had to be Rudo. He was still wearing the Cleaners’ uniform, but it hung off him, far too big, as if he’d stolen it or inherited it from someone much older. August would tear his skin off if he knew one of his creations no longer fit the person it had been made for. The sleeves nearly swallowed his arms, the collar of the jacket brushed his chin. The gloves, once snug around his hands, now dangled loose and misshapen, exposing the bandages beneath. They were a mess: stiff with dried blood, dark and rusted, as if they hadn’t been changed in days.

Enjin feels as though the rabid dog from before has torn his organs out, leaving him hollow. An inexorable emptiness pressing down on his soul.

And maybe, Enjin thinks in desperation, the situation wouldn’t be that bad… horrible, insane, impossible… hell, Rudo has just turned into a child… if it weren’t for the fact that he suddenly realizes something else. The realization comes with a wave of nausea climbing up his esophagus, burning his tongue.

Beneath the grime and dirt coating the exposed skin of his face and neck, there are marks. Not random stains or recent wounds. They’re irregular. Brutal. Cruel.

Injuries that have absolutely nothing to do with the fight from a few minutes ago. Enjin would give anything if they did, simple wounds caused by an irrational, instinct-driven monster protecting its pups.

Bruises on the forehead and temples, dark and diffuse. Thin cuts across the cheeks and the bridge of the nose, far too precise to be accidental. Scrapes along the chin. A split lower lip. And around the neck -Enjin swallows- clear finger marks, imprinted with a symmetry that churns his stomach even more. Everything is old. Two, maybe three days, judging by the purplish hues already turning yellow, by the uneven, neglected healing, no care, no rest.

Someone is burning trash inside Enjin’s lungs.

Air goes in and out, but every breath feels dirty, insufficient, as if the oxygen can’t quite reach him. He crouches carefully, slowly, making sure not to touch him yet. His shadow falls over half the small body, warping against the ground. He can hear his own heart pounding in his ears, a dull, constant thud, as if nails were being hammered into his eardrums from the inside.

“Rudo…” he repeats.

He reaches out clumsily, fingers stiff, and hesitates for an endless second before brushing aside the clumped strands of hair stuck to Rudo’s forehead with sweat. At the touch, the skin is cold. Damp. Fragile as abused paper, ready to tear under the slightest pressure. The contrast sends a violent shiver down Enjin’s spine, tensing his shoulders. And yet, Rudo’s face remains calm. Too calm. As if the body had decided to disconnect from everything it could no longer process.

Tomme’s footsteps cut sharply through Enjin’s spiraling thoughts. A dull thud, followed by a muffled curse. He doesn’t need to turn to know she’s tripped over one of the half-melted pipes scattered across the ground, he himself had nearly done the same on his way in. The steps stop a few meters away, and the rough sound of her breathing fills the air as she struggles to catch it.

“You run fast,” Tomme complains between gasps, in a tone meant to sound light, and failing. “I’m glad you found him… ugh. Is Rudo okay?”

She approaches slowly, carefully watching her footing, avoiding metal debris and the sticky filth coating the ground. Enjin remains silent, eyes never leaving the motionless child. A new, irrational fear blooms in the back of his mind: if he looks away, if he allows himself to focus on anything other than that small chest, the rise and fall will simply stop. Ridiculous, he tells himself. Still, he doesn’t move.

His jaw tightens before he answers, and when he does, his voice comes out low and rough, as if dragging rust along with it.

“He’s not dead, but…”

“But what?” Tomme presses, stopping beside him. “Oh.”

Yes. Oh.

Tomme crouches down as well.

Enjin immediately notices her hands trembling. A brief, involuntary gasp escapes her lips. Her expression changes within seconds: first it hardens, features tightening into a mask of professional rationality; then, almost imperceptibly, something softens behind her eyes.

Then she says, quietly, exactly what Enjin has been repeating to himself for several minutes now.

“This is really fucked up.”

The words hang in the air, dense, insufficient. Neither of them adds anything. The wind, Rudo’s uneven breathing, and the distant creak of cooling scrap metal are the only sounds.

“This is impossible… Beasts don’t… and he’s so small,” Tomme begins, bringing a hand toward Rudo’s neck, then stopping a few centimeters away, afraid of hurting him more. “Who could do this to a child so-?”

Her voice breaks irreparably, swallowing the rest of the sentence. Enjin brings his free hand to her shoulder, resting it there in a clumsy but sincere gesture. A long sigh escapes him, heavy, laden with exhaustion and rage.

He needs a cigarette. He needs one desperately, even though he knows it won’t help at all.

“We need to get Rudo back to headquarters as soon as possible so Eishia can examine him,” he finally says, forcing firmness into his voice. “Tell the others to finish up and get back to the car. The kid already looks fragile, and I don’t want to risk his condition getting worse.”

Tomme nods silently. Her face remains pale, tense, as if she still hasn’t fully processed what’s in front of her. She hums a brief sound of agreement, barely audible, and then, moving with the automatic efficiency of someone who needs something concrete to focus on in order not to fall apart, she stands.

She activates the communicator on her choker and, careful not to let anything slip into her voice, informs the rest of the team that Enjin, Rudo and she, will be waiting at the car; that Rudo is injured and, for that reason, they shouldn’t take long. Nothing more. No details. She ignores Gris’s questions. The idea of an injured teammate alone is worrying enough, but adding the absurd fact that he’s turned into a little child is something no one would believe at first glance.

The necessary explanations would come later.

Meanwhile, Enjin bends over the small, motionless body. He carefully slides his arms beneath Rudo’s back and knees and lifts him slowly. Another unpleasant surprise hits him immediately, followed by horror. Rudo had already been light as a teenager; being a child only made it worse. The uniform, though designed to withstand the harsh punishment of the job, was useless when worn so poorly fitted. It crumpled in Enjin’s hands like wet wool, offering no resistance at all. Maybe it was just his imagination playing tricks on him, but Enjin would have sworn he could feel small bones, too prominent, pressing against the fabric.

Rudo’s head lolls against his shoulder, and the child shifts faintly. A rag doll without joints, letting himself be moved and unmade. A soft whimper slips from his parted lips, so faint it nearly goes unnoticed. Enjin freezes for a second, his heart leaping in his chest.

“Shhh… it’s okay. You’re safe,” he whispers, not realizing he’s begun to rock him gently.

The sway of his arms is more reflex than conscious action. An instinctive movement, as if his body knows exactly what to do even when his mind can’t begin to understand what’s happening.

Enjin is grateful that Tomme walks a few steps ahead, carrying Umbreaker with both hands. He doesn’t think he could handle anyone else’s anguish right now, besides his own.

When they finally reach the car, she quickly opens the rear door. Her movement is efficient, automatic, though a shadow of discomfort crosses her face as she looks at them.

“I’m sorry, but I think it’d be best if you sit in the back with him,” she says quietly. “I doubt Rudo would want to be separated from you.”

Indeed, when Enjin, just to test it, tries to move him even a few centimeters away, the still-sleeping child lets out a hoarse, broken whine. A small, helpless sound that pierces both adults straight through the chest. Enjin stops instantly, as if struck.

He sighs, resigned, a weight of exhaustion settling into his shoulders. He sits in the back seat with Rudo in his lap, adjusting him carefully and wrapping him in his own coat, which Tomme helps him remove without saying a word. The garment covers him almost completely; only the white hair peeks out, faintly reflecting the dim glow of dusk. A grayish sky, sickly green, filters through the eternal clouds above.

Tomme sets Umbreaker against the seat to Enjin’s right and closes the door softly.

Enjin swallows.

He can’t, and doesn’t want to, think yet about the implications of all this. His mind, usually sharp and practical, feels dulled, incapable of forming a coherent explanation. Every thought is a stone sinking into mud before reaching anywhere. So he spares himself the headache by not thinking at all. Not yet.

He simply feels the faint warmth of the body in his arms. The minimal weight against his chest. The fragile, uneven heartbeat, confirming -again and again- that Rudo is alive.

Chapter Text

Enjin frowned. He hated sitting in the back. It wasn’t his place. From there, he had no control over the music, the speed, or the route; he was reduced to just another passenger, trapped in other people’s decisions. And leaving Gris behind the wheel was -both in his humble opinion and in practically everyone else’s- the equivalent of swallowing a fast-acting sleeping pill. Even now, though the man wasn’t driving with his usual maddening calm but at a terrifying speed, the effect was the same.

Whether it was the constant rattle of the engine, the absolute lack of stimulating conversation, or the heavy, dense air thick with sweat and rusted metal, Enjin was irritated. On edge. That lingering irritation that refused to fade, settling into his jaw, his shoulders, the way he clenched his teeth without realizing it.

The space felt too enclosed. Packed with warm bodies wrapped in uniforms stained with the remains of a job well done. The faint stench of garbage seeped into his pores, under his nails, down his throat, like a second, oily skin he couldn’t shake no matter how deeply he breathed. He tried to adjust his legs, shifting his knees just enough to avoid bumping anyone or triggering a chain reaction of complaints.

Zanka, to his right, glanced at him sidelong. He said nothing, but his lips were pressed into a pale line, a grimace Enjin easily interpreted as damn, that sucks. Yeah… he couldn’t blame him. He’d feel just as uncomfortable if their roles were reversed.

“I still can’t believe how cute Rudo was,” Riyo crooned from the trunk.

Her voice carried mockery, yes, but also a genuine tenderness, impossible to fake entirely. The sentence floated through the dense air of the vehicle, light and dangerous at the same time, like a rifle shot aimed at the sky. It touched something sensitive no one had dared to name out loud yet. The elephant in the room… or rather, in the car.

Enjin didn’t even bother scolding her. He let out a long, silent sigh that got stuck halfway between his chest and his throat. He preferred Riyo -and the rest of the team- filling the silence with clumsy, shallow, even irritating comments rather than facing the inevitable conversation. The one he and Tomme had postponed almost reflexively the moment Zanka, Riyo, and Gris returned after finishing off the two Garbage Beast pups.

Any remark about the child was better than those other questions. The ones everyone carried lodged at the base of their skull, pulsing insistently. The ones no one wanted to voice, not because the answers were complicated, but because there was absolutely nothing to be done with them.

How do you kill someone from the past?

How do you help someone who doesn’t exist in the present?

Is there any point in hating people you don’t know?

Is it worth worrying about the monsters under the bed?

They simply existed, heavy, useless, impossible to eradicate.

Rudo breathed in a slow, steady rhythm, slightly uneven, a clear sign of deep sleep. His body barely took up any space on Enjin’s lap, a near-weightless presence that somehow felt uncomfortable all the same.

Rudo’s white hair, tangled and dirty, tickled Enjin’s sternum with every movement of the vehicle. Suddenly, he worried about posture, about how long he could hold him like this without hurting him, about whether the child’s neck was bent the wrong way. He tried to adjust him just a little, with extreme care, doing his best not to wake him.

It was useless.

The child’s body reacted instantly, tensing just enough to block any adjustment.

Please. He had faced Garbage Beasts without anyone’s help. He’d fought in places where the air was so thick it felt cuttable, endured Semiu’s endless, drunken, incomprehensible rambling without losing his patience. But nothing, absolutely nothing, had prepared him for the impossible task of repositioning a sleeping child without waking them.

“You’re going to break him a bone if you keep moving like that,” Riyo said, unable to hide the smile creeping into her voice.

Enjin froze instantly, as if the mere suggestion might make it real.

“Don’t say that,” Tomme scolded from the passenger seat, calm but firm. “Don’t scare him, Enjin. Children’s bones are more flexible, it’s not that easy to fracture them.”

That didn’t help. Right, because on top of all the shit the kid was already carrying, he should also add a broken bone thanks to Enjin’s negligence. No. Absolutely not.

Enjin rolled his eyes, though the gesture was barely visible.

“Thanks. I feel much better now,” he muttered sarcastically.

In the rearview mirror, Gris shot him a meaningful look. It wasn’t mockery, it was a silent apology, a clumsy but honest way of saying I’m sorry, I know this is awful, but hang in there, we’re all worried. Enjin caught the message immediately and gave a small nod in return. He silently appreciated that Gris was driving so fast, and yet, that the vehicle’s rattling hadn’t woken Rudo. Every jolt tensed his muscles, waiting for a whimper that never came.

Oh, but if Enjin dared to move… damn , selective brat.

Rudo murmured something unintelligible and clutched the fabric of the jacket covering him with his gloved fingers. The grip was clumsy, uncoordinated, more reflex than conscious action. Enjin didn’t know whether to swat the hand away -an automatic, defensive reaction- or simply let it be. He chose the second option, even holding his breath.

Blame him for thinking this way. One thing was the post-battle panic, his mind running a thousand miles an hour, sick with worry over the Shperite brat who was still learning how things worked down here. Another very different thing was having the adrenaline drain from his blood, his body beginning to succumb to the drowsiness induced by Gris’s atrocious driving, and suddenly becoming painfully aware of something very simple and very disturbing:

This was the first time, in nearly two decades, that he was forced to interact with someone who hadn’t even started losing their baby teeth.

Dear Santa didn’t count. Enjin had met him with two front teeth already missing, past that awkward threshold between childhood and something that started to resemble a complete person. This was different.

Rudo murmured again. A barely articulated sound… maybe a name? Enjin frowned, trying to recall whether Rudo had ever mentioned someone called- Before he could think any further, something wet brushed his chest. Fresh tears dampened the child’s white lashes, sliding down without waking him. Silent.

Enjin clenched his jaw. In the end, he figured the least stressful option was to accept his fate: become a human pillow with no right to move, condemned to guaranteed back pain and a completely numb arm. He forced himself to relax, not to pull away, to hold him even as every fiber of his body begged him to change position or hand him off to someone else.

He lifted his free hand -the one not yet tingling with numbness- to Rudo’s head. He hesitated for just a second before gently scratching his scalp, slow and careful. The child sighed, a small, content sound that loosened something tight in Enjin’s chest.

At least one victory.

For the rest of the ride, Enjin spent the time trying to rehearse, over and over in his head, how the hell he was going to explain everything that had happened to Semiu.

Semiu, who was waiting for them seated at the reception of the headquarters, arms crossed and one leg folded over the other, rigid as a statue. Her presence filled the space even before Enjin crossed the doorway. The sharp gaze behind her glasses lingered on him for barely a second, just long enough to confirm he was still in one piece, before sliding immediately to Rudo. And there it stayed. Fixed. Focused. As if everything else had ceased to exist.

“So it’s true what Tomme reported.”

Enjin would have liked to mock the look of absolute panic that spread across Semiu’s face. Maybe he would later, when this whole mess had been resolved, when the world had recovered something resembling normalcy.

“Eishia is waiting for you in the infirmary,” she said, dismissing them with a lazy flick of her hand.

The moment Enjin stepped into the infirmary with Rudo in his arms, Eishia was already on them. She moved quickly and precisely, firing off questions without pause or preamble while helping lay Rudo down on one of the cots with an efficiency that left no room for distraction.

“How long has he been like this?”

“At least an hour and a half,” Enjin replied without thinking too much about it.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Gris, Riyo, and Zanka enter the room and stop near the doorway, keeping a prudent distance from the center of the chaos. Tomme chose to stay behind with Semiu at reception.

No one spoke. No one got in the way. Everyone watched with tense attention.

“Injured, as a child, or asleep?” Eishia continued, already carefully palpating the small neck and torso, attentive to every reaction.

“All three,” Enjin answered, only then realizing how absurd it sounded. “One of the Beasts released some kind of smoke when it died. When I got to him… he was already like this.”

Eishia nodded once, as if the information fit into a mental framework only she possessed. Enjin watched her move with confidence, with that sharpened calm that only those accustomed to working under pressure had. A healer through and through. Not a trace of her usual trembling or hesitant mannerisms.

She pulled a cart positioned beside the cot closer without making a sound. It held clean gauze, antiseptic fluids, several neatly arranged needles, surgical sutures, and a pair of sharp scissors that gleamed under the white infirmary lights. The soft clink of metal was, for some reason, more unsettling than any alarm.

Enjin felt the urge to smoke rise again. The impulse ran through him like a conditioned reflex: restless fingers, a tight jaw, the absurd need to fill his lungs with anything other than the sterilized air scraping at his throat. He held himself back.

“Fever?” Eishia asked, scissors already in hand as she began cutting through the black compression shirt of Rudo’s uniform. The sound of fabric giving way was dry and final.

“His skin felt cold, but he was sweating,” Enjin replied, stepping aside to let her work without obstruction. He didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t force himself to look away either.

“Spasms?”

“No. He only whimpers when you try to wake him.”

“Good,” Eishia sighed.

But nothing was good.

Because the moment Eishia exposed enough of Rudo’s torso to work, Enjin felt something clamp shut in his chest. A blind, unexpected pressure. Pity, sorrow, and anguish blended into a formless mass that felt nothing like guilt, or fear, or anger -emotions he knew how to handle, how to name- but something far more desolate, and therefore clumsier. A thick sensation that drowned him, as if he had been submerged in a bathtub full of oil, filling his lungs, leaving him wordless, motionless.

He didn’t know why it surprised him so much. It had been foolish to think the visible injuries on Rudo’s face would be the limit. The newly exposed skin was only a continuation, an unsettling expansion, of the same story. Black bruises layered over one another; poorly healed tears traced irregular lines across flesh; furious red burns marked uneven edges, as if someone had pressed fire down without haste. Everything stood out with brutal clarity against the sickly pallor of a clearly malnourished body.

Enjin looked away for a second. Just one.

Eishia, for her part, showed none of how the sight affected her. If the image of a child -a baby- brutalized by someone, by several someones, by a faceless and nameless unknown, by people now unreachable in the distance of time (the past) and space (the Sphere), stirred anything in her, she buried it beneath layers of professionalism. Her hands moved with precision, firm but careful, measuring every pressure so as not to hurt Rudo any further.

The child remained asleep. Miraculously asleep. Unaware of the white light bathing him, of the unfamiliar hands moving over his body, of the hushed murmurs of the people around him.

“Four broken ribs,” Eishia said to herself.

Her voice was low, measured, strictly professional, as if listing the damage out loud were a way to order it, to keep it contained. As if naming the injuries allowed her to compartmentalize them, to keep them from becoming something worse.

Her fingers carefully followed the line of bruising around the sternum, pressing just enough to assess without causing pain.

“And this… this seems to have been caused by a single blunt impact,” she continued, moving toward the irregular cuts near the collarbones. She paused a second longer than necessary. “Too clean for a knife. Maybe a metal bar… or something similar.”

Her hands moved up to the neck and then down the arm, stopping at the left bicep, where several purplish marks marred the skin in the unmistakable shape of fingers. Large fingers. Gripping without restraint.

“Tch…” she clicked her tongue, a brief grimace crossing her face. “An adult.” She bit her lip before adding, “And this last part…”

Her fingers moved down toward the waistband, where several burns clustered near the edge of the fabric, red, irregular, overlapping.

“First and second-degree.”

A collective gasp broke the silence, brief and strangled.

Enjin sensed movement out of the corner of his eye; someone took a step back, another turned on their heel and left the room, unable to endure the sight. Enjin didn’t judge them. He couldn’t find anything within himself that would allow him to care. His entire world had narrowed to the cot, to the body that barely rose and fell with each breath.

Tomme’s voice, telling him that children’s bones are flexible and difficult to break, replayed in his mind like a cruel, distorted echo.

Four broken ribs.

“Could someone please tell my brother to come here?”

Eishia’s voice pulled him out of that mental pit. She didn’t lift her eyes from Rudo for a second. Her hands kept working, cleaning, assessing, deciding with precision.

“I hope I’m wrong,” she added after a pause. “But I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

With an automatic, almost mechanical motion, she pulled a power cable from the front pocket of her dress. She plugged it into the nearest outlet, then into the back of her cap, adjusting it carefully, making sure it was secure, making sure nothing would fail when it was needed.

Then she looked up.

“Enjin, I need you to let go,” she said, watching him closely. Her beautiful pink eyes weren’t harsh, but they were firm. There was no reproach in them, only a clear, unmistakable request.

Enjin didn’t understand at first what she meant. The words took a moment to cut through the thick fog that had settled in his head. Only then did he look down and realize he was gripping one of Rudo’s gloved hands tightly between his own.

Enjin swallowed. An uncomfortable heat crept up his neck.

“Right… sorry,” he murmured.

He stepped back, then another, searching for somewhere to put his hands, somewhere to set down the invisible weight that had suddenly fallen on him. He ended up moving closer to Riyo and Gris, who had remained standing there the entire time, silent.

What followed was a routine procedure. At least, that was what his mind kept trying to tell him.

He had seen Eishia’s jinki come to life countless times since joining the Cleaners. He had been a patient himself more than once, lying on that same cot with his body wrecked by very well-paid jobs. He knew how it began: the electrical current activating the core, the faint hum in the air, the almost imperceptible change in atmospheric pressure.

But seeing it applied to a body that small was different.

When the light faded, the violence was almost entirely gone. Only small, delicate pink scars remained, along with yellowing bruises.

“That should do it,” Eishia said at last, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her forearm.

The exhaustion was visible now, settling into her shoulders, into the slightly slower rhythm of her movements.

“Do you know if my brother is on his way yet?” she asked as she disconnected the cable and slipped it back into her pocket. Then she took a clean piece of gauze and began gently removing the worst of the sweat and grime from Rudo’s exposed skin. “It’s fortunate that I have sanitary pajamas in his size… but I’m afraid they won’t be enough.”

At that last sentence, something clicked in Enjin’s mind.

“Not enough?” he repeated, moving back toward the cot before he even realized he was walking. Gris and Riyo followed closely. “So you know how long he’ll be like this.”

Eishia didn’t look up from Rudo’s hands, which she was now wrapping in clean bandages, carefully covering the battered fingers, making sure not to tighten them too much. She hurried to slip the gloves back on as soon as the bandages were secured.

“Not exactly,” she replied at last. Her tone was honest, direct, free of the false reassurance meant to calm. “I read something similar in one of my grandmother’s old books. Incomplete cases. Half-formed theories. Notes scribbled in the margins.” She paused briefly. “You mentioned a Trash Beast was involved… and smoke.”

Enjin nodded, feeling the weight of the memory settle in his stomach once more.

“Yes.”

Eishia looked up for a second.

“Red, right?”

Enjin nodded again.

Eishia retrieved a small white sanitary pajama from the metal cart, folded with almost surgical neatness. She held it as she spoke, as if the object helped her organize her thoughts.

“It’s believed to be a post-mortem reflex in certain species,” she explained. “A delayed reaction of the Beast’s core at the moment of death.” She shrugged slightly, as if listing yet another anomaly in an already endless catalog. “Is it rare? Yes. Impossible? No.”

She set the pajamas aside on the cot, ready for when they would be needed.

For the first time since all this madness had begun, Enjin was able to breathe.

It wasn’t relief, not even close to peace, but the knot lodged in his chest loosened just enough to allow a proper breath. Rudo no longer looked as though a pack of dogs had torn him apart and spat him out without care. The visible wounds were gone, color had returned to his skin, and though he was still a child -a sight that still felt unreal- at least now Enjin knew it wasn’t permanent. Temporary. The word anchored itself in his mind.

“Will he know who we are?” Riyo asked suddenly.

At some point she had moved up to the head of the cot and was now helping Eishia gently clean the remaining traces of grime from Rudo’s body. Her voice had lost its usual teasing edge; it was soft, almost afraid.

“I don’t know,” Eishia replied with a small shrug as she switched gauze. “The books didn’t mention anything about the subject’s mental development. It didn’t say whether memory is preserved, regresses along with the body, or if it… simply stays where it is.”

Gris draped an arm over Enjin’s shoulders. It wasn’t a grand gesture, just firm, quiet contact, but the weight was enough to keep him grounded, to remind him he wasn’t carrying that fear alone.

“The worst is over,” Gris said quietly. It didn’t sound triumphant; it sounded like a promise made with care. “We’ll help Rudo in every way we can.”

Enjin nodded, letting out a long breath. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers, closing his eyes for a second to steady himself. When he opened them, the cot was still there. The child was still there.

“I’ll stay and watch over him,” he said at last. His voice was rough, tired, but firm. “The worst-case scenario would be him waking up alone and panicking.”

He sat down on the edge of the adjoining cot, watching as the girls took care of everything.

Eishia nodded, satisfied. She picked up the top of the sanitary pajamas and motioned for Riyo to carefully maneuver Rudo’s arms to help dress him. Their movements were slow, coordinated.

“That will be fine,” Eishia said as she adjusted the fabric. “Though I don’t think he’ll wake up until tomorrow morning.” She straightened one sleeve, then the other. “I’ll keep him hooked up to a few IVs. It’s important that he rests properly and-”

“Did you call me Eishey-Weishey?!”

August’s voice burst into the infirmary like a slammed door. He announced his arrival before his face even came into view, rushing in and narrowly dodging the roll of used gauze that Riyo hurled at him in immediate response.

Chapter Text

Rudo is certain, despite having lived only an insignificant number of years in this world, that this is, and will forever be, the stupidest mistake of his miserable life. Instead of taking the shortcut that would have led him to a perfect fork in the road to lose the adults chasing him, panic and absolute terror crushed his chest and clouded his vision as he ran, because he knows he truly screwed up this time, caught rummaging through the trash of the wrong person. He took the wrong street and ended up completely cornered in a dead-end alley.

The first thing he feels, once the weight of his blunder settles like a knotted stone in his gut, is a large hand, heavy, cruel. Fingers tangle in his hair and yank hard, tearing a whimper from him that gets stuck in his throat. Pain explodes across his scalp, sharp and immediate. A body too close. Hot breath against his ear, reeking of alcohol, rage, and something worse. The voice that whispers promises of suffering mixed with insults does not sound hurried.

Then… nothing.

A void.

A black hollow Rudo refuses to touch, not even with a stick, afraid that if he stirs it, new images will crawl out to feed his nightmares. Sensations without shape, disjointed fragments: pressure, lack of air, the world spinning. The last thing he remembers clearly is the thick taste of his own saliva filling his mouth, his throat closing in on itself, and the sound. An internal, deep sound, as if something inside him were breaking into pieces too small to ever fit together again.

Crack,

crack,

crack,

crack…

Everything hurts… it hurts so much, and he is very sleepy.

“When the flesh dies, the soul looks for its place…” sings a low, calm voice above Rudo’s face.

A simple dream, or a dull nightmare.

The dreamscape before him: memories from the long past of just a few yesterdays (when he was still a creature unaware of the world around him) awakens a longing so impossible it feels both shameful and childish.

It is that winter day again: the sun, white and distant, bathes him without burning, frozen high in a pristine blue sky. The air smells of clean cold, of freshly bloomed forget-me-nots. Soft, warm cradle-clothes wrap him in a gentle cocoon, shielding him from all harshness. Sitting on his father’s lap, his flushed cheek pressed to his chest, he listens to the steady, constant beat of his heart. The man rocks him slowly, with a calm, almost ritual rhythm, like a silent prayer repeated again and again, forever.

For an instant, everything feels right. There are no blows, no hunger, no insults. No monsters hiding in the stretched shadows of beautiful star-filled nights.

There is only the here.

For an instant, Rudo feels like a loved child again.

“…inside a poppy, or inside a little bird,” the song continues.

Oh… a different kind of pain -one that is comforting, a tingling beneath the skin and sweetness in the gums- crushes his heart until it bleeds a dark, dense liquid that is not blood.

How could he have forced himself to stop thinking about something so precious? He has missed -so, so deeply- the idea, the concept, the memory of a loving father.

This winter day is the first and last time his father ever sang this song. There is a subtle tremor in it, imperceptible to anyone who wasn’t this close, this attentive. Rudo feels it in the stranger's chest against his cheek, in the breath that barely breaks between verses. The vibration of the melody runs through his body and lodges itself between his lungs, as if it refuses to leave.

Rudo pulls back a little, not much, just enough to see his father’s lips curve into a small smile that never quite reaches his eyes: a tired smile, weary, sad.

“When the flesh dies, the soul is left in the dark.”

Is that why his father’s hands -large, rough, yet gentle and warm when they caress his face and toy with the unruly strands of his hair- are covered in ugly scars? Is he a man dead while still alive, whose broken soul has become visible to the rest of the world?

Rudo’s own hand stretches out. Chubby, pale fingers, clumsy but determined, reach for the other’s face, wanting to cup it, to hold it with all the strength his tiny body can muster and never let go. He wants to bury himself in his father’s throat, in the hollow where neck meets shoulder, and stay there, where the voice is born and nothing that isn’t his father can touch him. Rudo wants to hear him say his name carefully, reverently, the way only a father who deeply loves his child can.

He wants to hear him say I love you.

He wants… wants… wants him to explain why they accused him of being a murderer.

And he wants him to explain why, after the Apostles threw him into the Pit, the members of the tribe and the city’s inhabitants insist that Rudo must be punished too.

Bodies pile up in the Surebrec backyard, and Rudo’s soul has been tainted with cadaverous stench. Dried flowers and rotting flesh.

Rudo has wondered many times whether people truly are or merely pretend to be stupid. Don’t they know how to tell progenitor from progeny? Don’t they understand that tragedy is not something inherited through blood? These are questions he would never dare speak aloud. It’s not as if anyone would listen anyway.

To the entire world, things are very simple: sin is transmitted the same way facial features, height, personality -or worse, a disease- are. Guilt clings to the skin like grime that can never be washed away. Rudo learns far too early that he will never be his own person, that he will always be seen as an extension of someone else.

Now his father -whom he can no longer call father out loud, because people have infected that word- is only Alto.

And Rudo is the revolting bastard of a demon, with eyes red as crushed cinnabar and hair white as freshly fallen snow. An aberration. A remnant that should have been erased along with its nauseating origin.

When Alto was thrown into the Pit, Rudo was left alone.

A child dead while still alive.

Like father, like son.

The light of innocence no longer shines.

Alpha Lupi is no longer the brightest star in the constellation Lupus.

A simple dream, a dull nightmare, or a memory from his earliest days of being alive. An intangible instant of irreparable decisions, as eternal and fleeting as a blink… There is no other place Rudo would rather be.

Even knowing he cannot stay forever, choosing between this gentle past and the devastating present is easy.

Here, he is flooded with the pleasant warmth of selfless affection.

In the end, Rudo’s hand stops halfway, suspended in the cold air of an ordinary winter day.

“I’m sorry… Rudo. I didn’t know how to do better.”

Trapped in borrowed stillness, the words slide into him like a sharpened blade against his small chest. The taste of his name, paired with the complete absence of physical violence, fills his eyes with tears.

Then the scene shatters into a thousand shards of glass.

A horrible shadow with five claws rakes across his skull, dragging him back to the alley where a nest of rats has formed inside his ribs, shattered by the precise blow of a hammer, or maybe a fist, or a kick. Does it really matter? Sprawled on damp earth, where the warm contents of burst blisters spill out, Rudo cries until he has no tears left, until his throat burns from begging forgiveness for being alive, for being the living image of the man everyone hates but no one dares name out loud.

Whether they are members of the tribe or inhabitants of the city, to Rudo they are all the same. Blind, unrestrained rage has turned them into amorphous beings: poorly sketched figures in charcoal, scribbled with crooked, knotted black lines against white backgrounds. They are anomalous corruptions, inhuman, faceless and nameless shapes with enormous hollow eyes. They feed on Rudo’s fear and will never be satisfied.

His mouth tastes like metal.

He thinks… therefore he exists.

It is the absence of pain that finally wakes him.

He is alive.

He doesn’t know whether to cry in relief or disappointment.

His body, accustomed to registering the world through bruises, burns, cuts, fractures, and a long list of wounds whose names he is still learning how to pronounce properly, does not know how to react when nothing burns, throbs, or bleeds raw.

Slowly, Rudo opens his eyes, afraid the spell might break, that this is a trick meant to make him believe he’s safe so he’ll let his guard down. A ceiling greets him: smooth, without visible cracks, its long LED fixtures turned off. The room is lit only by the faint night light filtering through thick, closed curtains. 

The boy blinks once, then again, trying to understand where he is.

Nothing makes sense.

There are no screams. Everything is submerged in an unsettling, heavy silence that feels almost obscene. The smell of the place reaches him slowly, settles in his nose: not pleasant, but not unbearable either. It smells chemical, clean, like something he can’t quite identify, but definitely not like dirt or fresh fear.

He sits up slowly, with the unpleasant sensation of hundreds of imaginary spiders crawling up and down his back, between his shoulder blades.

He wants to scream or laugh.

He does neither.

Staring down at his lap, he notices something strange on his left arm. On the inside of his elbow, a piece of plastic protrudes from his skin, a fixed needle, held in place by porous tape, connected to a thin tube that runs up to a transparent bag hanging from a metal pole. The opaque liquid inside drips with insulting calm. Rudo bites the inside of his cheek hard, trying to prove he can still feel something, anything.

The brief, familiar pain anchors him.

He raises a hand… hand… hands… He looks at both of his hands, confusion washing over him. It is strange not to feel the terrible assault of crushed glass stabbing into his palms, his knuckles, under his nails with every movement, that constant sting that had become part of his daily life. His hands are hidden inside a pair of enormous gray gloves, far too big for him. White bandages peek out beneath them, wrapping his skin and reaching a little past his wrists.

Oh…

Right. His arm.

With a sharp tug, he rips the strange plastic thing from the crook of his elbow. The small flexible needle gives easily, and milky liquid begins to spill from the long tube in small drops, hitting the floor with a dull sound. Almost at the same time, a slow, dark thread of blood wells up from the wound on the inside of his arm, sliding down his skin before disappearing into the sheet. Rudo watches it for barely a second, with distant attention that quickly becomes easy to ignore.

What is not easy to ignore is the clothes he is wearing.

Some kind of short-sleeved white shirt and elastic-waist shorts have replaced the ragged fabrics he used to wear, the ones he found weeks ago at an unattended makeshift stall on the south side of the slums. Yes, over the days they had torn and picked up disgusting stains, impossible to remove no matter how hard Rudo scrubbed them with rainwater. Still, those stains had never bothered him. The clothes had become a second skin, a dirty but familiar armor. Seeing them gone fills him with deep discomfort, a sense of being stripped bare that he does not have the words to name.

The idea of someone -a stranger, an adult- touching him, cleaning him, tending his wounds, or worse, undressing him to put him in something else, makes his skin crawl. In his experience, there are no kind hands, only monsters wearing human skin, fingers that don’t ask permission, innocent intentions that always hide something vile. Concern is never altruistic, only a different kind of threat. A slower one, perhaps, but just as dangerous… except for-

A sudden spike of terror hits him when he hears someone yawn. Rudo looks up and realizes he is not alone.

The air in the room changes, turns liquid.

Despite the low light, the shadows give Rudo all the information he needs. A man stands a few meters away, stretching his arms as he lets out another yawn and a groan. He is sitting on a metal chair to the right of the bed. He is big -too big- and wearing a kind of clothing that confuses Rudo, because he can tell what is missing: there is no padded white fabric. No thick textiles designed to protect the skin from the worst effects of the sun’s radiation. No golden ornaments with meanings long forgotten by everyone.

The man rubs the bridge of his nose, and his eyes finally meet Rudo’s.

Yellow against red.

The man opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, as if searching for the right words, until he finally speaks.

“You’re awake.”

Something moves at the back of the room, and Rudo hears a sharp little cry, like the pitiful squeal of a rat whose tail has been caught in a trap. The sound makes him even more nervous, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t take his eyes off the man, who has raised his hands in front of him, palms open, conciliatory.

The lights snap on, and the world becomes too white, too bright, as if someone has torn the darkness out by the roots. The change hits him violently. Rudo is forced to blink again and again until his eyes adjust; it feels like an ice pick is being driven in behind them, making tears spill without permission. Not to mention the hum of the LED tubes overhead, which sets his teeth on edge.

Another movement in the back makes him look away from the man for just an instant. There, slightly hunched in on herself, stands a young woman by the light switch. She wears clothes just as strange as the man’s, maybe even stranger: clean fabrics, gray tones. She doesn’t look at him directly. She seems nervous, unsure of what to do with her hands.

“Do you remember anything about what happened?” the man asks, pulling Rudo’s attention back to him. “Do you know who I am?”

His hands -large and covered in tattoos- remain raised, still. Rudo doesn’t fully understand the intention behind the gesture. Or maybe he does, and that’s exactly why he refuses to accept what it implies. The man stands up slowly, carefully, but the movement alone is enough to set off every alarm. Rudo reacts without thinking: he shoves himself back against the headboard, retreating until his back slams into the wall. The impact is sharp. His heart hammers wildly in his chest, instinctively searching for an escape.

“Whoa, easy…” the man says immediately, stopping halfway. “Looks like the answer is no.”

“Enjin… do you want me to call someone?” the girl squeaks, wringing her hands.

“No,” he answers without looking at her. “I think I can handle this.”

The man -Enjin- smiles then, and that smile is the worst part. It isn’t cruel. It isn’t mocking. It’s gentle. Far too gentle. He smiles at Rudo the way one might smile at a dog, or rather, at one of those vermin they call puppies right after they’re born: all whimpers, eyes still shut, a small body slick with placenta.

Pity.

This son of a bitch is looking at him with pity.

The recognition of that feeling lashes through his guts like a whip of thorns snapping shut. It churns his stomach, burns him from the inside out.

Then something gleams in the corner of his left eye.

A metal cart rests against the wall, loaded with strange items: bottles, gauze, sealed wrappers he doesn’t recognize. And among it all, a pair of scissors stands out clearly. They’re not the same ones, but they’re far too similar to the ones that group of older kids tried to stab him with a couple of months ago, in the middle of a stupid game that’s become popular among kids his age. He remembers the laughter, the tightening circle, the blade flashing under the orange afternoon light.

“Everything will be okay,” Enjin says, taking another step forward. “We can help you. But you just need to calm down and let me explain.”

And even though Rudo admits -though he will never say it out loud- that Enjin’s tone sounds as sincere as Mr. Regto’s, he can’t process the words.

The comparison and the sadness tied to it rise on their own, inevitable.

Regto: the man who stopped being a loud scribble in the margin of a page and became a human being in his own right. The man with blue eyes and black hair whom Rudo bites, scratches, kicks, and insults whenever he manages to find him, no matter how well he hides… the man who has never raised a hand to him, nor his voice. Who doesn’t approach when Rudo screams that he wants to be left alone. Who is the only person who, unlike everyone else, simply sits nearby, tries to talk for a while, and leaves him something to eat before offering him a better place to stay.

An offer Rudo always refuses.

Rudo shakes his head, trying to push those useless thoughts away.

Enjin’s words blur into an unintelligible murmur, muffled by the cotton filling his head and the persistent, electric hum of the LEDs on the ceiling. They seep into his already tangled thoughts, ruining them even further.

A click sounds near where the girl is still standing. She jumps, startled, clutching her chest. The door Rudo had ignored -convinced it must be locked, which had even made him consider jumping out the window- opens with a long groan from old hinges.

“Sorry, I was heading to the kitchen and saw the light on and-”

The new guy's sentence -a young man, he notices- is cut short when Rudo decides he's had enough.

Before he can weigh the consequences of his actions, before he’s even fully aware that he’s moving, Rudo shoots his arm out and grabs the scissors. The solid weight of the metal fits perfectly in his gloved hand. Enjin must have seen it coming, because he reacts immediately, lunging toward him as he shouts.

“Rudo!”

His vision narrows into a dark tunnel. Everything else dissolves into static and shadow. He doesn’t even register that this stranger, Enjin, knows his name. He barely manages to jump off the bed before a hand closes around his arm with a force he hates -HATES- being used to. The contact ignites a powder keg in his bones.

He’s had enough.

Enough of adults grabbing him, moving him, restraining him, treating him like a broken doll that needs to be forcibly fixed.

Son of a murderer.

Son of a demon.

Rudo twists just enough. He bares his teeth like a cornered animal.

“Let go of me!” he snarls, his voice breaking, closer to a sob than a shout, a plea twisted by the fear crushing his chest until he can barely breathe.

He doesn’t think.

He can’t.

What comes next is a desperate motion, pure survival reflex. Not malicious, but with the conscious intent to hurt. The blind urgency to escape, to get those adult hands off him, hands that make his skin crawl. Rudo drives the scissors as deep as his arm strength and angle allow into the back of Enjin’s hand. For a split second he feels the initial resistance -skin, tendons- and then the wet give of flesh yielding under the metal. The sensation sends a nauseating shiver up his spine. He hears the man’s strangled gasp, short and disbelieving.

It works.

Enjin lets go, instinctively recoiling, and Rudo doesn’t stop to check anything. He runs. He runs as if the floor were hot tar trying to swallow him whole. His heart slams violently against his ribs, his legs move on their own -clumsy but fast- driven by an old, deep-rooted terror cultivated in his battered soul ever since the old songs stopped being sung for him.

Everything, as always, is too much.

“Shit! Zanka!” Enjin shouts behind him, his voice torn by urgency.

The name means nothing to Rudo. It’s just another sound added to the chaos. He barely has time to register that someone else is moving before a shadow blocks his path. The same guy who opened the door steps in front of him, using his body as a barrier, arms spread in a clumsy attempt at intimidation that ends up looking like poorly concealed desperation.

“Please, dumb- Rudo,” he corrects himself halfway through, tension tightening his jaw. He crouches slightly to be at eye level, as if that alone could lessen the threat. His light-blue eyes search Rudo with a care that turns his stomach. He offers a hand slowly, leaving it suspended between them, vulnerable. “Come on. Don’t make this harder.”

God, Rudo can absolutely make this harder.

The growl rises from deep in his chest, scraping his throat raw on the way out. It tastes like iron and swallowed tears. He spits straight at the older boy’s cheek, a thick mix of saliva and rage that hits like an unexpected slap. Horror flashes across the man’s disgusted face for just a second, but that second is enough.

Rudo lunges forward and bites the offered hand hard. He only needs it to hurt. To make him pull away.

The older boy lets out a muffled cry and recoils on instinct. Rudo slips through the opening, kicking, shoving, and runs again. All nerves and desperation, a small body propelled by adrenaline, with the brutal certainty that if he stops for even one more second, if he lets them surround him again. something inside him, something fragile and already cracked, will finally break for real.