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The return to the Cleaners’ headquarters was a slow, agonizing crawl through the shadows of the Pit.
Enjin walked several paces ahead, his eyes darting between the horizon and the hulking, clanking nightmare following him. Every time Rudo took a step, his hydraulic joints hissed—a sound like a dying radiator—and the radio in his chest spat out a burst of white noise.
“Stay low, Rudo,” Enjin cautioned, though it was a useless request. You couldn’t hide a seven-foot-tall tower of scrap metal and resentment. “The others... they aren’t going to understand at first. You have to stay calm. No static, okay?”
Rudo didn’t respond with words. He couldn’t. His mind was a storm of jagged impulses. He followed Enjin because the man didn’t smell like the others; didn’t smell like the cold, clinical indifference of the sky-people. He smelled like tobacco, old leather, and a strange, flickering warmth.
But Rudo’s primary focus remained the weight against his chest. He had tightened the copper wiring, the metal biting into the cold, grey flesh of his own corpse. To Rudo, the body was the real him, and this metal cage he inhabited was merely a weapon to keep the real him safe.
The gates of the Cleaners’ hideout groaned open, and for a heartbeat, there was silence. Then, the world exploded into motion.
“BEAST!” Zanka’s voice tore through the air.
In a blur of speed, the young Cleaner was airborne, his weapon poised to strike. Behind him, Riyou’s eyes went wide, her hands already glowing with the activation of her Jinki.
“Wait! Stand down!” Enjin roared, swinging his umbrella out to block Zanka’s path.
The collision sent a shockwave through the courtyard. Zanka skidded back, his boots sparking against the concrete. “Enjin, what the hell are you doing?! It’s right behind you! It’s got a body!”
“I know what it looks like!” Enjin shouted, his voice cracking with a rare desperation. “But look at it! Really look at it!”
Rudo didn’t see comrades; he saw predators. His porcelain faceplate flared a blinding, rhythmic crimson. The radio in his chest began to scream—a high pitched, feedback-laden wail that made Riyou cover her ears.
“ST–AY... BA–CK...” the radio shrieked, the voice a distorted collage of a dozen different speakers.
Rudo crouched low, his gear-chain tail whipping behind him, shattering a stone pillar like it was made of glass. He tucked his jagged claws around the corpse on his chest, shielding it.
“It’s talking?” Riyou whispered, her eyes trembling. “Enjin... that thing has a radio in its throat.”
“It’s not just a thing,” Enjin said, stepping into the area between his team and the monster. He turned his back on the Cleaners, facing Rudo. He held up his hands, completely defenseless. “Rudo. It’s okay. These are... friends. My tribe.”
Rudo’s internal fans whirred at a deafening volume. He looked at Zanka, who was still trembling with the urge to strike. He looked at the sharp edges of their weapons.
“TRASH,” the radio growled. It was a word Rudo remembered. A word that tasted like copper and bile. “WASTE. THROWN... AWAY.”
They managed to corral him into a secluded warehouse section normally unsed for dismantling large-scale engine parts. Rudo refused to let anyone touch the soft thing. He sat in the corner, a mountain of rusted iron, his red eyes never dimming.
Enjin sat on a crate nearby, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands. The rest of the team stood by the heavy steel doors, watching through reinforced glass.
“You’re telling us,” Zanka said, his voice low and jagged, “that a kid who fell from the sky... is that? That pile of junk?”
“The Givers’ power manifests differently in everyone,” Enjin said, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “Rudo’s hatred was so intense it animated the world’s discarded remains, not just a tool. He’s a trash beast made of his own will.”
Inside the room, Rudo began to move. He reached into a pile of silk scraps Enjin had provided. With agonizing slowness, his massive, clumsy talons—capable of crushing skulls—began to wrap the silk around the corpse’s feet.
He was trying to make shoes.
“He’s obsessed with that body,” Riyou noted, her voice soft with pity. “He doesn’t realize the boy is dead. He thinks he’s the kid’s guardian.”
Suddenly, Rudo stopped. He tilted his head, his porcelain jaw unhinging slightly. He looked at the glass partition, spotting the other watching him.
The radio hummed a low, mournful tune; a snippet of an old funeral march it had caught from the airwaves.
Rudo walked to the glass. Each step vibrated in the teeth of the observers. He pressed his massive, white ceramic face against the pane. Up close, the could see the hairline cracks in his porcelain skin and the way the Anima swirled like smoke behind his eyes.
He raised a clawed finger and tapped the glass. Clink. Clink. Clink.
“Is... it... cold?” the radio asked.
It wasn’t clear if he was asking about the room, or the boy strapped to his chest, or the state of being dead.
As night fell over the pit, the chaos subsided into a heavy, suffocating tension. The Cleaners knew they had a monster in their house, even if that monster had the soul of a victim.
Enjin stayed with him. He watched as Rudo eventually curled into a ball around the body. The beast’s mechanical breathing was the only sound in the warehouse.
But as Rudo slept, the radio began to broadcast Rudo’s dreams.
It was the sound of screaming. The sound of a man falling through the clouds. The sound of a heart stopping and a machine starting.
Enjin leaned his head against the cold metal of Rudo’s leg, closing his eyes. He realized Rudo could never be fixed. He was a creature of the pit now, held together by the very trash that had been used to kill him.
“Sleep tight, kid,” Enjin whispered.
In his sleep, Rudo’s tail twitched, leaving a deep gouge in the concrete floor. The radio emitted one final, clear sound before slipping back into static: the sound of a child crying, perfectly preserved in digital amber.