Location: Off-Grid Neighborhood — Safehouse 7 / Field Beyond
Time: Late Afternoon — The Demonstration
---
Ba stood with the mace resting against his shoulder, grinning like a man who had just discovered he was invincible.
"You were real smooth with that attitude," he said, nodding at Lucian. "Everything revolving around yourself, that club on your shoulder, the whole mysterious act. Didn't think your cockiness would actually give us something that could harm you."
Across the warehouse, Andreas went rigid.
His face drained of color. His hands began to twitch. His internal voice was a single, panicked prayer.
This big brainless fool is going to get us all killed. And he's going to take me down with him.
He stood up—slowly, carefully, like a man approaching a sleeping dragon. He raised both hands in a placating gesture. His voice came out as a whisper, pitched somewhere between a prayer and a plea.
"Sir—Sir, it's alright. Just—just go back to your seat. Please. Please, just go back to your seat."
Lucian didn't move.
He turned to Ba—slow, unhurried—and spread his empty hands.
"Come on, then," he said. "Attack me."
Ba's grin widened. He swung.
The mace came down in a blur—ferocity coiling around it, raw and hungry, the air itself seeming to bend toward the blow. The floorboards groaned in anticipation.
Lucian didn't block. He didn't dodge.
He toyed.
He stepped to the side—just enough. The mace missed by an inch and buried itself in the floor. Before Ba could lift it, Lucian's boot came down on the shaft. Not hard. Just there. Like a grown man pinning a toy under his shoe.
Ba pulled. The mace didn't move. He pulled again, both hands, teeth bared, arms straining. His boots scrabbled on the wood. The mace didn't move.
Lucian watched him for a moment. Then he reached down, picked the mace up with one hand—the way a man picks up a fork—and held it out to Ba.
Ba took it.
Lucian tapped his shoulder.
"See that?" he said. "That's the attitude I believe our leader wants from us." He let the words settle. "Whether you like it or not—all of you should be screaming tears of joy inside yourselves. For the gracious luck granted to all of you."
His eyes moved across the room.
"Because out there, you are nothing. In here, you get to live like savages. Against the system that made you nothing. That is luck. That is purpose. That is life."
He looked at them—really looked at them—and the look was worse than any threat. It was the look of a man who had decided, for each of them, exactly what they were for.
Hector, in the back, crossed himself slowly and murmured, "Santa María... please protect me."
Tyla leaned over toward Lucian. "Are you done messing with them?"
Lucian nodded once. He turned and walked to the back of the room, taking the mysterious-man act with him like a coat.
Tyla stepped forward.
"As my colleague was trying to say," she said, "these veinframes are the equipment you'll be given. They'll be essential in the assignments ahead of you."
She paused. Her voice wasn't cruel. It was worse. It was accurate.
"Most of you are homeless immigrants. Needy. Less privileged. Losers."
A few of them stiffened. Hector's hand stopped halfway to his forehead. Roman's jaw tightened. Alma looked away.
Tyla watched them for a moment, then continued.
"Most of you had no purpose. You were only existing. But you should be grateful—because now you do have something worth your while." She folded her arms. "And none of you can deny it. There is nothing more grand than shitting on the same institutions that shit on you first."
The room went quiet.
And then—slowly, one by one—some of them began to nod.
---
A quarter mile out, in the scrubland past the safehouse, three men sat on a concrete barrier watching the horizon.
Ageny was chewing on a toothpick. Trioren was scrolling his phone. Bigo was squinting at something in the distance.
"Hey," Bigo said. "What's that?"
Ba had wandered out into the field with the mace—alone, mostly, because he'd wanted space to try the thing out. He swung it experimentally. The impact cracked the dirt in a wide, spreading web, dust puffing up in a low ring.
Bigo's phone slipped out of his hand.
"What the—" Ageny stood up. "Is that Ba?"
"Looks like Ba," Trioren said.
"You see what that thing did to the ground?"
"I see it. I'm looking at it."
Bigo picked his phone up off the dirt, eyes still on the field. "Bro. What is that?"
Ba turned toward them, mace on his shoulder, chest out.
"What you looking at?" he said. "Want some of it?"
The three of them backed up in perfect, practiced unison.
"Ay—ay, we good. We good."
Ba laughed. "Now this is some sweet stuff." He hefted the mace. "Like way this thing talks to you, man. It's got a voice."
He tried to shift it to his other shoulder and almost dropped it. The mace jerked in his grip, a pulse of weave flaring along its length—violent, impatient—and Ba went stumbling sideways as it swung him around like a dog on a leash.
Bigo, Ageny, and Trioren scrambled behind the barrier.
"He trying to fry us or something?!" Bigo yelled.
"That thing ain't right!" Ageny shouted. "That thing ain't right!"
"Maybe it's some conductor—like a magnet thing—like from the mines—"
"Bro, does that look like a magnet to you?!"
Ba pulled the mace upright, forced it to behave, and tried to look like he'd meant all of it.
And then a figure walked past the barrier without slowing.
Nathan Drayke.
Long coat. Easy stride. The face was handsome in a borrowed way. He stopped beside Ba, looked down at the mace, and reached out with one finger.
He lifted it. Off the ground. With one finger.
The mace stayed hanging in the air at his fingertip like it weighed nothing at all.
Ageny's mouth fell open. "Yo."
Trioren's voice cracked. "What—what is he?"
Bigo's phone clattered to the dirt again. "That's a robot. That's gotta be a robot. Dog, that shit ain't looking right to me."
Ba stared.
And then—because Ba was Ba—his face twisted into pure offense.
"Hey—hey—" He grabbed Nathan by the collar. "Stop stealing my tough-guy thunder, man. I had that. I had that."
Nathan didn't resist. He just tilted his head slightly, as if amused.
Across the field, Mateo was walking with Valeria and Lucia when he saw them.
He stopped dead.
Then, at full volume: "BA! ¿Qué carajo haces?!"
Ba didn't even look. He kept shaking Nathan by the collar, ranting in rapid Spanish about respect and thunder and who was the tough guy here.
Nathan's hand moved.
It was one motion—shoulder, pivot, front shove—and Ba went down face-first into the dirt with a soft, final thud.
Nathan straightened his coat, looked down at him, and grinned.
"Now that's the hothead attitude I want. I like that."
---
Ageny, Trioren, and Bigo stood frozen behind the barrier, staring at the man with the borrowed face.
Ba lay in the dirt, groaning.
And somewhere in the warehouse, the cart of veinframes sat waiting.
Outside, the sun kept falling. The night kept coming.
And the Upheavler kept building his army.