{First three chapters are iffy, but please give it a chance past that! Also please tell me if you see any problems anywhere!}
The sun hung low over the city, casting long orange streaks through the maze of rusted metal and forgotten machines piled high across the sprawling junkyard. The smell of oil mixed with dirt and the faint hum of distant traffic filled the air. Griffin Tobias Walker crouched beside a battered motorcycle, fingers deftly probing its tangled innards. A faint glow pulsed in his fingertips as he wove subtle threads of power into the cold steel, coaxing it toward life.
A faint sputter. Then the engine caught, growling a low, ragged purr. Griffin cracked a wry grin beneath the grease smudging his cheek. "Not bad for an old heap," he muttered to himself.
He sat back on his heels, wiping his hands on a faded rag as the motor settled into an uneven idle. Around him, the junkyard stretched like a monument to things the world had given up on — dented car doors leaning like crooked tombstones, twisted rebar forming rusted skeletons, and forgotten tech blinking weakly in the shade of shattered satellite dishes.
This place — his kingdom of broken things — was the only home he'd known. Here, surrounded by rust and ruin, he could disappear. Fix things. Hide.
A breeze stirred the heavy summer air, carrying with it the distant shouts of city life. Sirens wailed blocks away, swallowed quickly by the evening swell. Griffin barely noticed. His focus was on the machine in front of him, and the way it had just come back from the dead.
His power — whatever it was — didn't have a name. He didn't even fully understand it. But he knew how it felt. Like a second mind humming behind his thoughts, whispering the shape of things. Showing him how a part might bend, or reconfigure, or merge. As if everything manmade had a hidden potential, just waiting for the right nudge.
He kept it quiet. Always had.
From the front gate, the creak of old hinges broke his concentration. He looked up to see Mrs. Delgado, wrapped in a shawl despite the heat, shuffling toward him with a lumpy object in her arms.
"You're the boy who fixes everything, aren't you?" she said, breath short but voice steady.
Griffin stood and smiled, dusting off his palms. "That's me. What have you got?"
She held out the object — an old tabletop radio with chipped dials and a cracked speaker grille. "It stopped working after the last storm. My grandson, Tommy, likes to listen to the jazz station before bed."
Griffin took the radio gently, as if it might fall apart in his hands. He could already feel the flow of it — the misaligned coil, the fried capacitor, the aged speaker cone. "I'll have it humming again by tomorrow," he said.
Mrs. Delgado smiled with a quiet kind of relief. "You're a good boy, Griffin. Always helping."
She shuffled off just as slowly as she'd come, and Griffin returned to his shed — a crooked metal lean-to made from scrap shipping containers and wood paneling. Inside, the workbench buzzed with half-built gadgets, wires trailing across the floor like roots. A small battery bank powered a fan overhead that squeaked with each rotation.
He set the radio down and popped open the back, more out of habit than necessity. The moment he saw the guts of the device, his power flared to life — not in light, but in understanding. He could see what it needed. Not just how to fix it, but how to make it better.
Still, he hesitated. Best not to overdo it. People noticed when things got too perfect.
He replaced the bad parts with bits from a busted stereo, soldered the joints, and adjusted the internal antenna. Thirty minutes later, the radio was playing a slow saxophone solo that drifted out across the junkyard like a lullaby.
"Good enough," he said, and turned to his next job.
As night crept in, the yard took on a dreamlike quality — metal glinting under streetlight glow, shadows stretching like ghosts. Griffin leaned against the hood of a wrecked truck, sipping a lukewarm soda, when he caught the sound of voices nearby.
Not customers. Not neighbors.
Whispers.
He turned off the radio and crouched behind a stack of tires, heart thudding. Across the yard, near the side gate, two men stood in partial shadow. One was tall and wiry, the other shorter, with a coat too big for his frame.
"I'm telling you, man, it's gotta be him," the short one said. "Kid can fix anything. No way that's just talent."
"Maybe. But if it's real, he could be useful," the taller man replied. "Real useful."
Griffin's mouth went dry. He stayed perfectly still until they walked off into the alley, muttering plans too faint to catch.
He exhaled slowly. They weren't the first people to notice him. Just the first to sound like they cared more about how he did what he did than what he fixed.
He tried not to think about it. Just a fluke, he told himself. Nobody knew anything for sure.
And if they did, he'd find a way to disappear again. He always had.
But fate wasn't about to let that happen.
It was past ten when the gate creaked open once more. A figure stepped through — young, maybe mid-twenties, with close-cut hair and an easy confidence. His jacket was too clean for this part of town.
"You open?" he asked.
Griffin nodded from his perch on the truck hood. "If you've got cash and something broken, yeah."
The man approached, carrying something long and wrapped in an oily cloth. He set it gently on the workbench, then peeled back the fabric to reveal a bizarre device — a hybrid of circuitry and alloy Griffin had never seen. It looked almost military, but nothing he recognized.
"You fix this, I'll make it worth your while," the man said.
Griffin didn't ask questions. That was the rule. He'd learned it early, working odd jobs to keep the power on and the fridge full. Don't ask. Don't guess. Just fix.
Still, he studied the object longer than usual. It was... strange. Complex. Like it was made by someone who understood machines the way he did. Someone with the same whisper in their head.
"I'll take a look," he said finally. "No promises."
"Didn't ask for promises," the man replied, already walking away. "Just results."
As the gate closed behind him, Griffin stared down at the device, fingers twitching to explore its secrets. But something in his gut tightened. This wasn't a radio. This wasn't a motorcycle.
This was something else.
He stayed up past midnight, dissecting the machine, cataloging its pieces, and fighting the urge to remake it completely. His power itched for it — to reshape, reforge, transform. But he held back.
That night, as he lay on the old mattress in the corner of the shed, Griffin stared at the flickering bulb overhead and wondered — not for the first time — if it was only a matter of time before someone dragged him out into the world he'd been hiding from.
Because eventually, someone would realize the truth:
He didn't fix things the way other people did.He changed them.And once you change something...you can't always change it back.