The punch landed before Elias even understood what he was seeing.
He had been three minutes late for the night shift at the docks, his breath steaming in the sodium glow. The alley that cut behind the old shipyard smelled of oil and old metal, the kind of place where the city's grit settled and never left. He was thinking of coffee—black, bitter—and how his landlord had raised the rent again, when the footsteps behind him turned sharp.
"Wallet. Now."
Two men. One tall, thin as a wire; the other thick through the shoulders, eyes like two bad coins. The tall one smiled as if the moon had given him permission. "Nice watch," he said, and pushed Elias against the brick.
Elias's hands fumbled. He should have run. He should have given them his wallet. Instead his fingers twisted on the zipper of his messenger bag, and a laugh—too loud, too hollow—left his throat.
The thick one stepped forward, fist cocked. Elias saw the arc of the movement, felt the whisper of air before it hit. He braced, ready for the blow to land on his ribs and knock the wind out of him.
Something else landed instead.
The air in front of him folded, not like wind but like iron crumpling under a press. For a heartbeat, Elias thought his mind had betrayed him: a shadow of a shape, then another, then a weight that had no business being there. It moved with the finality of falling masonry and slammed the thug's jaw with a sound like two anvils colliding.
The thug flew backward, a small spray of blood painting the dumpster lid. He hit the concrete with a soundless shrug and lay still. The alley settled into a shocked hush, every stray noise shrinking away.
Elias stumbled back as if a rope had exploded in his chest. His knees gave; the world tipped sideways. The thing—unfinished, heavy, a body that had been cut from steel and stitched into muscle—hovered where it had struck. It was less than a meter from him, broad-shouldered, two gigantic fists that still trembled from impact. There was no face, only a smooth plane where features might be, and the surface of its skin gleamed like brushed iron.
"Wh—what—" Elias rasped, but his voice was swallowed by the alley.
Pain bloomed in his left shoulder, sharp as a nail. He grabbed at it and felt warmth spread under his palm. A deep, echoing throb reached his teeth. The bruise would be purple by morning.
The thing moved its head—if it had a head—toward Elias, and the motion felt deliberate. It flexed its fingers. Elias's heart hammered so loud that he could hear the mechanical rhythm of someone pounding metal.
"Don't," he said, because his throat kept up the charade of reason. "Don't—"
He didn't finish. The heavy thing reached out not to strike but to press the back of its hand against Elias's shoulder. The pressure was solid, like a hand placed to steady a man on a cliff. Elias felt the pain shift, the heat pooling and then rolling away, as if someone had pulled his ache out and held it in their palm.
He should have been terrified. Instead a cold, animal relief crept through him. The alley, the night, the two thugs—everything recalibrated around that single fact: the thing had come from him.
"Gear," a voice breathed behind him.
Elias whipped his head. The thin man who had been with the thug was still on his feet, one knee scraped, jaw bleeding. His smile had dissolved into a look of raw, near-hopeful terror. "You spawned one," he said. "You spawned a Gear."
A thousand questions lit up Elias's mind and drowned each other. Spawned? Gear? Before he could latch onto anything that resembled a plan, a soft, metallic click echoed from the alley mouth.
A figure leaned against the shadowed doorway—coat collar up, cap pulled low. He watched with the casual interest of a man who'd seen the city's worst and found it less amusing than usual. When he spoke, his voice was a low thing wrapped in certainty. "Keep moving, kid. This alley's not for you."
Elias's feet remembered traffic and fear. He moved, knees weak, the heavy thing keeping pace at his shoulder as if it had been with him a lifetime. The tall man crawled away, rubbing his jaw, eyes glassy. The thin man watched Elias go like a man watching the last page of a book.
Elias didn't stop until he reached the river, where the city's lights broke into a line of trembling gold. He slid down a seawall and sat with his palms pressed to his shoulder. The alley's events replayed in his head like a burned film loop.
The Gear drifted lower beside him, a hulking silhouette made softer by the night. Up close, Elias could see the seams—lines along its arms where metal met muscle—and the faint, pale scar that ran from one shoulder to its chest like a manufacturer's seam. When it shifted, small plates along its forearm clicked.
He reached out with a trembling hand and touched its wrist. The surface was solid and warm.
"You came out of me," he whispered. The truth tasted like copper.
The Gear responded in the only way it could: it curled its fist and tapped the water once, and the river's surface rippled as if a pebble had been dropped. The sound was heavy, like a bell rung at the bottom of the sea.
From somewhere beyond the pier, a phone camera clicked. Elias glanced up. On the far edge of the dock, a woman in a delivery jacket held a phone steady, its screen angled to record. Her eyes were wide with the same mixture of fear and awe that had been on every face in the alley. She mouthed a single word: "Spawn."
Elias realized his hands were slick with something that wasn't just sweat. When he peeled his palm away, a dark streak smeared across his skin. He flinched—another bruise had bloomed along his ribs where the Gear's fist had apparently connected, a bruise he had not felt until a fraction of a second before. The more he looked, the more he understood the ugly trade: whatever the Gear did to the world, the world did back to him.
He stood. The Gear matched his movement, heavy and patient. A slow wind pushed across the river, carrying with it the metallic tang of the docks and the faint, far-off rumble of the city. Elias pulled his jacket tighter. If the camera on the pier had recorded anything, then the alley would fill with questions by morning.
Questions in this city were never harmless.
A figure detached from the dark along the quay and walked toward him. This one wore no coat, no hat—only a suit that had seen better decades. He carried himself like a man who didn't mind being noticed. Up close, the man had nothing remarkable about him except the neatness of his watch and the way his eyes took inventory.
"You did well," he said, and the words were not praise so much as proof. "Most Spawns panic. Most Spawns get dragged for weeks."
Elias's throat closed. "Who are you?"
The man smiled with one corner of his mouth. "Someone who keeps tabs," he said. "Name's Calder. You're not the first to birth a Gear, kid. But you're the first I've seen do it in the flesh on the east docks in twenty years."
Elias had a hundred reasons to run. He felt each one like a cold hand at his back. He also had a thousand reasons to ask questions. Instead, he found himself saying the only small, honest thing he could. "What—what does it want?"
Calder looked at the hulking shape beside Elias as if it were an odd animal. "It wants what Gears want," he said slowly. "To fight. To prove. And," he added, tipping his head toward the alley where the thug had not yet recovered, "to be noticed. That changes everything."
Elias stared at the river until the city's light blurred into a single band. The Gear at his side let out a sound—if it was a sound; it was more like a low, resonant clunk—and tapped Elias's shoulder. A bruise flared where its knuckles had touched.
He was not the same boy who had walked past the alley three minutes ago. The city was not the same city. Somewhere, beyond the dock's glow, people were already pointing, recording, deciding whether he was threat or miracle.
He did not know how to be either.
A siren wailed distant and thick, hungry for the night's soft things. Elias pulled his jacket closer, and the Gear fell into step beside him, heavy as the truth.