Across the lower district, Darnell moved through the alleys with his hands buried deep in his jacket pockets.
His wrist still ached from the way Jup had twisted it, but pain wasn’t what stayed with him.
The kid’s face did.
Steady.
Under that memory, a phantom pressure lingered where Jup’s fingers had locked around bone.
Low.
Restless.
Refusing to settle like the aftermath of a normal fight.
Darnell passed shuttered businesses and turned down a narrower stretch where the city lights thinned.
A broken surveillance camera hung over the alley mouth, the Cognis logo scratched halfway off its casing.
The sidewalks here were worse, cracks spreading through the concrete like old fractures nobody had bothered to mend.
Graffiti layered the walls in faded colors: symbols painted over symbols, warnings most people walked past without ever learning how to read.
The auto shop sat between two half-burned buildings, its front bay chained shut.
Only the side entrance showed light.
Two men stood near the alley mouth.
One leaned against the brick.
The other kept scanning the street while pretending he wasn’t.
Darnell slowed as he approached.
“I need Reggie.” One of the men looked him over, then tapped his comm twice.
They waited.
A few seconds later, the side door cracked open.
“You’re clear.”
Inside, the air smelled like oil, smoke, and old metal.
The main bay had been stripped down and repurposed with folding tables, crates for chairs, and a scarred workbench where three people spoke in low voices while checking comms and cleaning gear.
Nobody looked surprised to see him.
Big Reggie stood near the back office, wiping grease from his hands with a ragged shop towel.
He wasn’t the top of anything that mattered outside this section of the district, but inside it, people listened when he spoke.
“You don’t usually come in person,” Reggie said without looking up from his hands.
“Didn’t want this traveling,” Darnell replied.
Reggie tossed the towel onto a crate.
“Talk.” Darnell stayed standing.
“One of our new guys got into it with a kid at school. It got messy.”
Reggie’s expression stayed flat.
“School problems don’t come to me.”
“They usually don’t.”
“Then why’s this one here?”
Darnell’s jaw tightened.
“Because the kid didn’t fold.” That bought him a pause.
Reggie leaned back against the doorframe and crossed his arms.
“Go on.”
“He took hits and kept moving,” Darnell said.
Reggie tilted his head slightly.
“So you’re worried about noise.”
“I’m worried about the block thinking we’re getting soft. A kid walks away after taking our hit, people start getting ideas. Bad for the tax.”
The shop held on that for a beat, heavy with cold iron and old oil.
“What are you asking for?” Reggie said.
“Support. Next time we handle it, I want enough weight behind it that nobody tries to copy him.”
Reggie let that sit.
“No school grounds.”
“Of course.”
“No crowds.”
“Understood.”
“And nothing that leads back here.”
“It won’t.”
Reggie straightened.
“I’ll spare a couple people. You handle it right.”
Darnell inclined his head.
“I will.” Reggie’s gaze sharpened.
“And remember whose ground you’re moving on.” Darnell met his eyes.
“I know.” That was enough.
Darnell turned and headed back out, the murmur of voices fading behind him as the alley swallowed him again.
He walked slower this time.
The city moved around him: traffic, distant laughter, drones overhead, somebody shouting from an upper window two blocks over.
Normal sounds.
Normal night.
Near the alley exit, a cracked wall panel sat half-open, casing loose, wires exposed.
Copper caught the light before the dark took it back.
Darnell barely registered it.
The phantom pressure in his wrist had not faded, and it wouldn’t fade until the problem was handled.
Six blocks away, Jup was trying to convince himself he had chosen something simple.
The repair marker pulsed against his wrist as he moved with his hood up and his hands tucked low in his pockets.
Night turned the streets into a different machine.
People moved through alleys instead of sidewalks.
Drones passed overhead slow enough to be heard.
Jup kept his eyes forward.
JOB #01 — START WINDOW ACTIVE
LOCATION: EAST BLOCK SERVICE ROW
REQUEST: RESIDENTIAL POWER FAILURE
STATUS: SOLO DISPATCH AVAILABLE
Residential power failure.
A bad relay.
A tripped breaker.
A burned connector.
Problems like that made sense.
They had screws, wires, contacts, load, and resistance.
They didn’t stare from corners, vanish from ranking boards, or make people look scared after touching him.
“This decision remains poorly timed,” Triōhnah said.
It’s a repair job, Jup thought.
“You left your residence after a suspected perceptual anomaly, two physical altercations, a database irregularity, and a family warning about consequences.” So yes.
Poorly timed.
“I was attempting diplomacy.”
That was diplomacy?
“I omitted several stronger conclusions.”
Jup breathed out through his nose and kept walking.
The marker led him deeper into East Block Service Row, past shuttered businesses, dead signage, and alley mouths that looked darker than the streets around them.
Near one of those alleys, Jup passed the same cracked wall panel Darnell had ignored minutes earlier, its casing loose and wires exposed.
Jup slowed.
Bad patch.
Worse finish.
Someone else’s problem.
Then the exposed copper caught the light, and the panel opened itself to him.
The panel didn’t physically change, at least not enough for anyone else to notice.
To Jup, the failure separated into layers: weak contact, warped casing, heat residue burned into the connector, and one more surge waiting to become somebody else’s emergency.
The pressure behind his eyes tightened, and Triōhnah’s voice came a beat later.
“Matter pathway response,” she said.
“Unstable recognition. Your body understands the failure, but the skill has not formed cleanly enough to use.”
Jup studied the panel.
So I’m not guessing.
“No. You are reading structure before you know how to control what you read.”
His hand shifted toward his kit before he caught himself.
“Do not touch random street wiring while half the district is already looking for reasons to notice you.”
He pulled his hand back into his pocket.
I wasn’t going to.
“That was almost true.”
He forced himself to walk away.
The address led him to a narrow apartment building wedged between a laundromat and a shuttered clinic.
Between them, the entrance looked like it had been added as an afterthought: thin metal door, cracked intercom plate, buzzer with half the buttons dead.
The building looked harmless, which made Jup trust it less.
The buzzer didn’t work.
Jup knocked.