Chapter Text
The first mistake was letting Jabber Wonger get close enough to smile.
Zanka knew better.
Every sensible part of him knew better.
He knew the rules of distance. He knew the width of a battlefield by instinct, the measure between bodies, the price of letting a weapon with teeth inside his guard. He knew what Mankira could do when Jabber’s hands opened too near flesh. He knew the difference between a feint meant to draw attention and a true strike meant to slice something important. He knew Jabber’s type of fighter: the kind who treated pain like praise, who laughed at blood, who stepped into danger with his whole chest bare as if daring the world to prove it could hurt him properly.
Zanka knew all of that.
And still, the bastard got close enough to smile.
The corridor they had fallen into was not really a corridor anymore. It might have been once, before the Pit swallowed it into its belly and renamed it garbage. Now it was a long, half-collapsed gullet of crushed sheet metal, wet insulation, snapped beams, and compacted trash packed so tightly into the walls that it looked almost architectural. A city’s worth of thrown-away things pressed inward from every side. Broken signage hung overhead in rusted strips. Frayed wires swung like dead vines. Water dripped from a pipe split open along its seam, each drop striking the floor with a small, patient sound that somehow cut through the distant roar of the larger fight above.
Somewhere overhead, Riyo was shouting.
Somewhere beyond the collapsed choke point, Rudo’s voice cracked through the smoke, furious and alive.
Somewhere behind all of it, Enjin had likely already noticed that Zanka was missing from the cleaner formation and was making that irritatingly calm face he made when something had gone wrong enough to be interesting.
Zanka did not have the luxury of answering any of them.
He had Jabber.
Jabber’s claws scraped along Lovely Assistaff hard enough to send sparks spitting between them.
The force rattled down Zanka’s arms.
He adjusted his grip, pivoted, and used the staff’s body to shove the strike away before the curved edges could catch his sleeve. The movement was clean. Controlled. Efficient. It should have made space.
Jabber followed it like hunger.
“C’mon,” Jabber crooned, stepping over a coil of wire as if it were nothing. His long wicks swung with the movement, the rings threaded through them clinking softly beneath the sharper sound of Mankira flexing over his fingers. His hot-pink eyes were too bright in the dim, wet light. “Don’t go backin’ up now. Ya were lookin’ so pretty a second ago.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Ooh.” Jabber’s grin widened. “There he is.”
Zanka struck for his ribs.
Jabber twisted into it.
Of course he did.
The end of Assistaff clipped him hard enough to fold most men sideways. Jabber gave ground, but only barely, boots skidding through oily water and powdered glass. A laugh punched out of him, thin and delighted. His patched clothing fluttered with the movement, indigo and cream and purple cloth stitched together like someone had made a person out of scraps and then decided the result was too dangerous to throw away.
He licked blood from the corner of his mouth.
Zanka’s jaw tightened.
“Again,” Jabber said.
Zanka swung.
Jabber met him.
The corridor rang.
Their weapons crashed together once, twice, three times, so close that Zanka could feel each impact in his teeth. Mankira’s transformed claws hooked and slid against Assistaff’s body. Every time Jabber’s hand glanced off the staff, it left thin gleams of poison-wet shine behind. Zanka did not let them touch him. He did not let them catch fabric. He did not let them turn his rhythm into panic.
That was what Jabber wanted.
That was always what Jabber wanted.
Not just victory. Not just pain. Reaction. Proof. The sharp little surrender of composure when someone realized he was too close, too fast, too eager to bleed for the privilege of making them flinch.
Zanka refused him.
He stepped back only when the structure demanded it. Shifted only where the footing required. Breathed through his nose. Kept his eyes on the shoulders, wrists, hips.
Not the grin.
Never the grin.
Jabber moved like a thing that had never learned the difference between attack and invitation.
He came low, left hand flashing toward Zanka’s thigh.
Zanka planted Assistaff and vaulted over the strike, his body turning cleanly in the cramped space. His boot hit the wall, found purchase on a jut of compacted scrap, and he drove downward with the staff aimed for Jabber’s shoulder.
Jabber looked up.
His eyes were wide.
Not afraid.
Never afraid.
Thrilled.
Mankira’s claws snapped up.
Metal screamed against metal.
For half a breath, they were locked above Jabber’s head, Zanka’s weight driving down through Assistaff, Jabber’s hand braced beneath it. The pressure should have forced Jabber to buckle.
Instead, he laughed.
“You really do like puttin’ me under ya.”
Zanka’s expression did not change.
His knee did.
It drove hard into Jabber’s sternum.
Jabber’s laugh broke into a cough, and the lock between their weapons shattered. He staggered back, one hand pressing briefly to his chest. Not guarding. Feeling. As if committing the ache to memory.
“You talk too much,” Zanka said.
“Ya listen too well.”
Zanka hated that his fingers tightened around Assistaff.
He hated more that Jabber noticed.
The Raider’s grin turned lazy and sharp, an ugly little crescent carved into his face. He tilted his head. The rings in his hair shifted with the motion, catching the weak light. “Touched a nerve?”
Zanka came at him before the sentence finished.
Assistaff cut through the air with a hard, clean whistle.
Jabber ducked under the first swing and let the second graze his shoulder, cloth parting beneath the strike. Blood darkened cream fabric. His breath hitched with something too close to pleasure. Then Mankira came up between them, claws spread.
Zanka threw his weight sideways.
One claw sliced through a lock of hair near his cheek.
Another scraped the metal tassel of his earring and sent it swinging.
For a second—one stupid, infuriating second—Jabber’s gaze caught there.
On the earring.
On the movement.
On the long blue tassel trembling against Zanka’s neck.
Jabber’s mouth parted.
Zanka slammed Assistaff into his stomach.
This time Jabber hit the wall.
Trash compressed behind him with a wet crunch. Old plastic burst. A rain of rotten paper and blackened grit came down over his shoulders. He coughed once, then looked up through the mess with something feverish in his face.
“Damn,” he breathed. “There ya go.”
Zanka stalked forward.
He should have called for the others. He should have disengaged. The mission had not been to isolate a Raider in the lower waste arteries; it had been to disrupt movement through the sector and recover the stolen container before the Raiders could disappear with it. This fight was already a deviation. A waste. A risk.
But Jabber was here.
And when Jabber was here, the world narrowed to the sound of blades against wood, the smell of poison and rust, and the unbearable insistence of that grin.
Zanka shifted his stance, Assistaff angled across his body.
“Move.”
Jabber blinked. “Huh?”
“You’re blocking the passage.”
“Aw.” Jabber peeled himself from the wall with slow, theatrical effort. “That all I am to ya? An inconvenience?”
“You are less than that.”
Jabber’s eyes flashed.
There.
For a fraction of a second, beneath the laughter, something sharpened.
Not hurt. Zanka doubted Jabber had any normal place to put hurt. But attention. A deeper kind. A focused kind. The kind that made the air feel suddenly thinner.
Then Jabber smiled again.
“Liar.”
Zanka struck for his head.
Jabber dropped flat, almost boneless, then rolled under the arc and came up inside Zanka’s reach.
Too close.
Zanka snapped Assistaff backward, but Jabber’s hand caught the staff just below the head, Mankira’s claws scraping for purchase. The transformed edges bit into the staff with a shrill sound that made something in Zanka’s chest flare hot and offended.
“Don’t touch her,” he snapped.
The words left him before restraint could catch them.
Jabber stilled.
Only for an instant.
Then delight spread across his face, slow and obscene.
“Oh?” he said. His fingers flexed around the staff, claws pressing harder. “She’s ‘her,’ huh?”
Zanka’s eyes narrowed.
“Let go.”
“Ya sweet with everybody’s babies, Zanka? Or just yours?”
Zanka twisted Assistaff violently.
The motion tore the staff free, but not without leaving shallow grooves where Mankira had caught. Not deep. Not damaging. Still, Zanka felt each mark as if it had been made under his skin.
His voice went colder.
“I said let go.”
Jabber stared at him.
The corridor seemed to shrink around them.
For once, Jabber did not immediately laugh. He looked at Assistaff, then at Zanka’s hand, then at Zanka’s face. His grin returned in pieces.
“Ya get mad when somebody grabs what’s yours,” he said softly.
Zanka did not answer.
He should not have needed to.
Jabber’s tongue dragged over his teeth.
“Good.”
He attacked.
The suddenness of it broke the rhythm they had been circling inside. Jabber drove forward with both hands, Mankira fully active, claws spread wide enough to fill the passage. Zanka blocked one strike, turned another, took the third along the reinforced sleeve of his uniform instead of flesh. The poison-slick edge hissed across fabric. Too close. He slammed the end of Assistaff into the ground and used the recoil to pivot, staff sweeping low for Jabber’s ankles.
Jabber jumped.
The movement was too fluid, too delighted, his body folding over the strike with long-limbed ease. One hand caught a hanging cable above them. He swung from it, kicked off the wall, and came down behind Zanka.
Zanka turned in time to meet him.
Barely.
Claws sparked inches from his throat.
Jabber’s face was right there behind them.
Too close again.
Always too close.
“Ya smell like soap,” Jabber said.
Zanka shoved him back hard enough to make his boots skid.
“You smell like something dead.”
Jabber laughed so loudly the corridor answered.
“There’s my fancy boy.”
Zanka’s lip curled.
“I’m not yours.”
The silence after that was immediate and wrong.
Even the dripping pipe seemed too loud.
Jabber’s expression changed.
Not softened.
Never that.
But deepened.
His grin stayed, but the thing behind it stopped playing.
“Not yet,” he said.
Zanka’s pulse kicked once.
He buried it under anger and moved.
The next exchange was vicious.
No more baiting around the edges. No more clean testing strikes. Zanka used Assistaff with the full force of his body, shoulders, hips, legs, every disciplined line of training brought down into brutal precision. Jabber met it with glee, claws flashing, arms loose, eyes bright. He let himself be hit when it bought him closeness. He twisted into pain to catch better angles. Twice, Zanka struck him hard enough that blood sprayed against the wall. Twice, Jabber came back smiling wider.
The third time, Zanka changed tactics.
Jabber lunged left.
Zanka let him.
Mankira’s claws came for his ribs in a curving slash.
Zanka stepped inward instead of away.
It was the wrong direction to anyone who did not understand distance. It was suicide to anyone who mistook range for safety. But Jabber fought like he wanted people to retreat. He wanted them stumbling back, wanted their balance wrong, wanted the ugly little breath they took when they realized his hands were inside their guard.
So Zanka went forward.
He cut the angle too tight for the slash to finish.
His shoulder slammed into Jabber’s chest with enough force to drive the air out of him. Jabber’s laugh broke apart in his throat, half-choked, half-delighted. Zanka felt teeth flash too close to his cheek, felt the heat of Jabber’s breath, felt the scrape of Mankira’s active claws dragging along the side of Assistaff as he dropped the staff low and hooked it beneath Jabber’s wrist.
He did not think.
Not fully.
He moved.
Assistaff twisted under Jabber’s hand and drove the wrist sideways.
Jabber’s back struck a slanted beam of compacted metal.
The corridor answered with a hollow, rusted groan.
His activated fingers punched into the jagged gap between two fused plates.
And stuck.
Not cleanly.
Not completely.
Not helplessly.
But enough.
The claws of that hand had driven too far through the seam in the trash-metal wall, their curved edges wedged between rusted sheet, hardened plastic, and old compressed wire. Mankira’s transformed joints strained where the active shape had caught wrong, trapped by the very curve that made her dangerous. The rings beneath Jabber’s second knuckles pulled tight, the metal drawn into the pressure of the transformation, each one fitted close to the long bones of his fingers like something that had grown used to belonging there.
For one breath, Jabber only grinned.
Then his fingers flexed.
Mankira creaked.
The sound was small.
Too small.
Too sharp.
Jabber’s grin died.
Zanka saw the change happen across his face like a match being snuffed between wet fingers.
The performance did not vanish all at once. Jabber was too practiced for that. His mouth stayed open around the ghost of a laugh. His shoulders remained loose in the way of someone who wanted the world to believe nothing could reach him. His eyes still burned bright and wild beneath the dim corridor light.
But something underneath stopped moving.
His attention cut to his trapped hand.
His fingers shifted again, carefully this time.
Mankira’s caught claws scraped against the inner edge of the seam. One of the transformed joints dragged with a thin, metallic protest that made the air between them go tight.
Jabber went still.
Completely still.
It was the first time in the entire fight Zanka had seen him stop chasing motion.
Jabber Wonger, who threw his own body into strikes like bones were replaceable. Jabber, who laughed when Assistaff cracked against his ribs. Jabber, who bled with his mouth open and his eyes bright, as if pain were some private joke he had been waiting all day to hear.
That Jabber did not yank his hand free.
He did not twist harder.
He did not use brute force.
He did not risk her.
Zanka’s grip tightened around Assistaff.
There it was.
The truth beneath the madness.
Jabber could be careless with himself.
He could not be careless with Mankira.
His breathing changed first. Not fear, not exactly. Something lower than that. Something that pressed against his ribs from the inside and made his chest rise too slow, too controlled. A warning kind of breathing. A breathing that had anger tucked behind it, and beneath the anger, the first hard edge of panic.
Not full panic.
Not yet.
But the beginning of it.
The place where the body realized something precious had been caught in teeth.
Zanka’s eyes dropped to the trapped claws.
His mind narrowed.
Angle. Pressure. Depth of the seam. Integrity of the wall. Jabber’s free hand. The flex of Mankira’s active form. The pressure point where Assistaff held the wrist. The distance between Jabber’s trapped fingers and the second-knuckle rings settled beneath them. How much force would hold him. How much more would damage her.
The calculations came too quickly to be mercy.
Jabber’s gaze snapped back to him.
“Move the stick.”
Zanka did not.
Jabber’s voice had changed.
It was still rough. Still his. Still carrying that rotten, teasing shape around the edges because Jabber did not seem to know how to speak without trying to make every word touch. But something hard had cut through it. Something bare enough that it sounded almost wrong coming from him.
“Move it.”
“No.”
Jabber’s mouth twitched.
It tried to become a grin and failed.
“Zanka.”
His name came out low.
No sing-song mockery. No lazy bite. No dragged-out little taunt meant to make Zanka’s skin prickle.
Just his name.
Deep. Serious. Bound too tightly by restraint.
It went through the stale air between them with more force than the claws had.
Zanka’s jaw locked.
He did not move.
Jabber’s trapped hand twitched. The motion was small, instinctive, and immediately punished. Mankira’s caught edge scraped again, the sound thin enough to make Zanka’s shoulders stiffen before he could stop them.
Jabber saw.
Of course he saw.
Even with his hand trapped. Even with that rising animal tightness entering his face. Even with Mankira caught in the wall and the corridor shivering around them, he saw.
His eyes narrowed.
Bright.
Vicious.
Almost accusing.
“Ya care.”
Zanka’s mouth curled.
“I care about proper weapon handling.”
The reaction was instant.
“Vital Instrument,” Jabber snapped.
The words cracked through the corridor.
Not loud.
Worse than loud.
Real.
Zanka’s eyes lifted.
For half a breath, the fight thinned around them.
The ruined corridor remained. The wet metal. The compacted trash. The distant violence shuddering through the upper levels. The stink of rust, old water, blood, poison, and rot. Jabber’s body still pinned too close. Assistaff still braced in Zanka’s hands. Mankira still caught in the seam.
But the cheapness of calling her a weapon fell away.
And something more honest stood between them.
Zanka did not like Jabber.
He did not respect the way Jabber fought. He did not respect his filthy mouth, his lunging closeness, his refusal to treat pain with the seriousness it deserved. He did not respect the way Jabber took clean violence and made it feel like a hand closing around the throat. He did not respect the way every exchange with him became something messier than combat.
But Mankira was not a toy.
She was not a set of blades.
She was not decoration beneath Jabber’s second knuckles.
She was not a disposable thing attached to a madman’s hands.
She was a Vital Instrument.
And no matter who held her, no matter how ugly the hands, no matter how viciously she was used, that meant something.
Jabber’s free hand flexed.
Zanka saw the movement and shifted Assistaff harder across the trapped wrist, angling the staff as if he meant to wrench the joint sideways.
Jabber hissed.
Not from the pain.
From the threat.
The staff’s head pressed close to the base of his fingers, where the rings sat under the second knuckles, snug and gleaming between tendon and bone. Zanka made the motion ugly on purpose. Brutal-looking. A threat to Jabber’s wrist, to his hand, to the structure of his grip. Anyone watching would have thought he meant to hurt him.
Maybe part of him did.
Maybe that made it easier.
“Don’t,” Zanka said.
Jabber bared his teeth.
“You’re the one pushin’.”
“You’re the one stuck.”
Something flashed across Jabber’s face.
Anger first.
Then insult.
Then that rising thing again, sharper now, digging up from under the anger because Mankira scraped when he breathed too hard. Zanka could see him fighting it. Could see him swallowing down the instinct to tear himself free. Could see the muscles in his forearm jump with the need to move, strike, grab, punish.
But he did not pull.
He did not risk her.
That restraint made the whole corridor feel suddenly more dangerous than his laughter ever had.
“Move,” Jabber said again.
Zanka did not.
Above them, the structure groaned.
Dust sifted loose from the ceiling in a thin, dirty veil. Somewhere in the upper passage, something heavy crashed down, the sound traveling through the compacted walls like thunder inside a coffin. The slanted beam behind Jabber shifted by a fraction.
Mankira’s caught form strained.
Jabber heard it.
Zanka knew he did because his face changed again.
The anger did not leave.
It gathered.
His eyes dropped to his trapped hand, and for the first time, his mouth closed completely. No grin. No teeth. No teasing curl. Just a hard, flat line that made him look less wild and more dangerous.
The panic was not loud.
That was what made it worse.
It sat behind his eyes like an animal in a cage, throwing itself once against the bars and then going still enough to wait for a door.
His fingers loosened.
Not surrender.
Control.
The transformation on that hand began to withdraw.
Mankira folded back into herself in a sharp, practiced contraction, the blade-like claws retracting from the jagged seam and settling into the rings beneath Jabber’s second knuckles. The active pressure released all at once. The wall stopped groaning around her. The trapped hand came free from the seam.
But Zanka did not release him.
Assistaff moved first.
Fast.
Sideways.
Violent enough to look like an attack.
The staff jammed across Jabber’s wrist and drove the hand back against the slanted beam. Not with the precision of a clean pin this time, but with the rough force of someone punishing an opening. The impact knocked Jabber’s fingers wide. The lower edge of Assistaff scraped across the row of rings beneath his second knuckles.
Metal bit against metal.
One ring caught.
Only for an instant.
A tiny, ugly hitch.
So small Jabber’s attention stayed on Zanka’s face, on the staff crushing his wrist, on the threat of bone and pressure and being pinned again before Mankira could fully answer.
The ring shifted.
Zanka felt it through Assistaff before he understood it.
A give.
A slip.
A wrongness in the line of metal beneath the staff.
The caught ring had been loosened by the forced deactivation, by the strain of the trap, by the pressure of Assistaff scraping sideways across Jabber’s hand. It slid half out of place, dragged past the swell beneath the second knuckle, no longer seated where it belonged.
Jabber snarled and lunged forward with his free hand.
Zanka drove his shoulder into him again, harder this time, making the movement look like nothing more than a fight for leverage. Their bodies collided. Jabber’s back struck the beam. Assistaff ground sideways between them.
The ring came free.
It did not fall loudly.
It did not flash dramatically in the air.
It slipped.
A small, terrible thing knocked loose in the crush of motion.
For half a second, it was trapped between Assistaff’s side and Zanka’s palm.
Warm.
Slick.
Alive with the heat of Jabber’s hand.
Zanka knew.
Jabber did not.
Not yet.
Jabber was still fighting the pin, still snarling at the insult of being held, still staring at Zanka with fury bright enough to burn through the dim corridor. His attention was on Mankira as a whole, on the danger to her active form, on the hand that had just been trapped and threatened and released.
Not on one ring.
Not on the single piece that had slipped from beneath the second knuckle of his left ring finger.
Zanka’s fingers closed.
The motion was small.
Hidden by Assistaff.
Hidden by the angle of their bodies.
Hidden by the violence he had made on purpose.
He snatched the ring into his palm before thought had time to become morality.
Only then did his mind catch up.
Mankira.
A piece of her.
In his hand.
The realization struck so hard he almost lost pressure on the pin.
Jabber felt the change.
His eyes sharpened.
“What?”
Zanka drove Assistaff forward again, harsher, uglier, forcing Jabber’s shoulder back against the beam to bury the moment beneath pain.
Jabber laughed once.
It came out wrong.
Too rough.
Too angry.
“There ya are,” he breathed, mistaking Zanka’s violence for the answer. “Knew ya had teeth somewhere.”
Zanka said nothing.
He could not.
The ring was in his fist.
Pressed against his palm.
Small enough to hide.
Too large to ignore.
The corridor chose that moment to scream.
The beam behind Jabber shifted.
The ceiling buckled.
A crack split through the compacted trash overhead with a sound like something enormous opening its mouth.
Both of them looked up.
Dust and rust rained down.
For one suspended second, Jabber’s trapped hand, now ringed by only four instead of five rings, braced against the beam. His fingers flexed. Mankira remained deactivated on that side, rings seated beneath the second knuckles.
Almost all of them.
Zanka’s fist tightened.
Jabber did not look down.
He did not know.
The ceiling came apart.
Zanka shoved back by instinct, Assistaff snapping up to shield his head. Jabber lunged forward at the same time, either to strike him, grab him, or simply refuse to let the fight end on anyone’s terms but his own.
The world collapsed between them.
Trash, rusted sheet metal, shattered concrete, and wet black dust crashed down in a roaring wall. The force threw Zanka sideways. Something struck his shoulder hard enough to drive him to one knee. The impact tore a grunt from his throat and sent pain bursting white behind his eyes.
His fist stayed closed.
The stolen ring bit into his palm.
He should have opened his hand.
He should have dropped her.
He should have let the collapse swallow the evidence before it became a choice.
He did not.
He curled his fingers tighter around the small, warm circle of Mankira, and when the dust rose thick enough to hide him from the world, Zanka did the first truly unforgivable thing.
He kept her.
For several seconds, there was only noise.
The collapse roared until it became a wall of pressure in his skull. Then it faded into the smaller sounds of destruction settling into itself: trash sliding, metal ticking, water splashing harder now from some newly split pipe. Dust crawled down Zanka’s throat. It coated his tongue. It made every breath taste like rust and old paper.
He stayed on one knee.
Assistaff was still in his right hand.
Good.
First check: Assistaff.
Always Assistaff.
His shoulder burned where the debris had struck him. Something warm slid down his upper arm beneath his sleeve. His cheek stung. One of his earrings had caught against his neck at a wrong angle, the tassel damp with sweat and grime.
His left hand remained closed.
Too tightly.
That was the second check.
And the one he did not want to make.
Zanka did not open his fist.
He did not look.
Looking would turn the mistake into evidence.
Feeling it was already bad enough.
The ring sat against his palm like a pulse that did not belong to him. It had been warm when he caught it, warmed by Jabber’s skin, by the heat of battle, by the strange living proximity all Vital Instruments carried when they had just been in use. Now his own hand was closing around that warmth, trapping it before it could fade.
Something about that made his stomach twist.
He did not examine the thought.
A voice crackled from the communicator near his wrist.
“Zanka! Zanka, answer!”
Riyo.
Sharp. Angry. Too close to worried.
Zanka coughed once, swallowed dust, and forced his voice into shape.
“I’m alive.”
A pause.
Then, “That wasn’t the question.”
“It was the relevant answer.”
“Your signal dropped.”
“The passage collapsed.”
“No kidding.”
Another voice cut in, looser, rougher around the edges. Enjin. “You alone?”
Zanka looked at the wall of debris where Jabber had been.
Dust continued to leak between gaps in the collapse. Somewhere beyond it, metal shifted. Not close enough to be immediate. Not quiet enough to mean dead.
Jabber was alive.
Zanka knew it without proof.
A man like that would not disappear beneath trash quietly.
“For now,” Zanka said.
Enjin hummed. “That mean yes, or that mean you don’t wanna say who was with you?”
Zanka’s mouth flattened.
“I encountered Jabber.”
Riyo swore.
Enjin did not.
That was worse.
“You injured?”
“No.”
The lie came too quickly.
His shoulder pulsed.
Blood slid warm beneath his sleeve.
The ring pressed deeper into his palm.
“Zanka,” Enjin said.
“I can move.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I said I can move.”
Silence.
Then Enjin sighed like he had expected nothing else. “Course you did. Regroup at the east cut. Rudo’s makin’ noise loud enough for both sides, so use that.”
“I know how to exit a collapsed sector.”
“Yeah, yeah. Try not to pick a private fight with another Raider on the way out.”
Zanka’s eye twitched.
“I didn’t pick anything.”
Riyo’s voice returned, dry and unimpressed. “Sure.”
The line cut.
Zanka stood in the settling dust.
He should have put the ring away.
He should have done it immediately. His palm was sweating around it. The metal was slick, trapped between skin and blood from the cuts his own grip had made. Any practical person would secure confiscated enemy material at once.
But his body resisted opening his hand.
That was absurd.
He was not a child clutching stolen candy.
He was not some filthy-handed scavenger afraid a prize would be taken from him.
He was a Cleaner.
He was Zanka Nijiku.
And this was enemy Vital Instrument material.
Enemy.
Vital Instrument.
Material.
Each word should have stabilized the situation.
None of them did.
Behind the collapse, something shifted again.
A hollow scrape.
A drag of metal.
Then a cough.
Then laughter.
Soft at first.
Low.
Muffled by the wall between them.
Zanka went still.
The laugh came again, rougher this time, stained by dust and blood. It curled through the cracks in the debris like smoke looking for a throat.
“Zaaanka.”
The name came sing-song, strained by distance and rubble.
Zanka did not answer.
A chuckle followed. Then another cough.
“Ya runnin’ already?”
Zanka looked down at his closed fist.
Not enough to see what was inside.
Only enough to see the shape of his own fingers locked too hard around something he should not have taken.
His hand looked guilty.
The thought irritated him.
“Smart,” Jabber called from behind the collapsed wall. Something scraped. He was moving. Of course he was moving. “Real smart, fancy boy. I get outta here, I’m gonna make ya regret leavin’ first.”
Zanka exhaled slowly through his nose.
His fingers tightened.
The ring bit deeper.
He could still drop it.
The crack in the debris near his boot was wide enough. He could let it fall. Let it disappear into the dark and muck under the collapsed trash. Let Jabber find it later if he was so devoted. Let Mankira return to the filth where Jabber could dig for her himself.
But dropping her felt wrong.
That thought was worse than the theft.
Zanka’s jaw clenched.
He forced his left hand open only enough to slide the ring into the inner pocket of his uniform without looking at it. The movement was fast, controlled, and almost violent. Cloth swallowed metal. The small weight settled against his side.
Hidden.
Not gone.
His palm throbbed.
Behind the wall, Jabber laughed again.
“Quiet now?” he called. “That ain’t like ya.”
Zanka picked up Assistaff and turned away.
“You don’t know what I’m like.”
The answer slipped out before he could stop it.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then Jabber’s voice came lower.
“Oh, I’m learnin’.”
Zanka walked.
The corridor ahead narrowed into darkness. Water dripped from the broken pipe. Assistaff’s end scraped lightly against the floor, steadying his balance as he moved through the wreckage. His injured shoulder burned. His cheek stung where a claw had passed too close. His earring brushed his neck with every step.
The ring stayed hidden in his pocket.
Not examined.
Not acknowledged.
Not even named.
But every step made him aware of it.
It was too small to have weight.
It had weight anyway.
By the time he reached the east cut, the battle above had shifted from coordinated clash to scattered violence. The Raiders were withdrawing through two broken lines. Cleaners held the larger passage, though not cleanly. Nothing in the Pit ever ended cleanly. Smoke hung low over the trash heaps. A burning strip of rubber sent black fumes curling into the upper chamber. Broken crates lay spilled open across the ground, their contents crushed underfoot: old machine parts, sealed containers, cloth bundles, fragments of something that had once been polished and cherished before the world threw it away.
Rudo was arguing with someone near the center of the passage, covered in grime and looking ready to bite through a wall.
Riyo stood on an overturned sign, scanning the upper levels, her expression sharp enough to cut through the smoke.
Enjin saw Zanka first.
Of course he did.
His posture shifted almost imperceptibly. A lazy turn of the head. A slight drop in his shoulders. That easy, loose way he had of making observation look like boredom.
Zanka hated it.
He hated being seen by people who knew how to look.
Enjin’s gaze moved over him once.
Hair. Face. Shoulder. Sleeve. Hands.
Zanka’s left hand was already empty.
It had taken him three turns through the lower corridor to force it open properly. Three turns and one stop against a wall where he had pretended to check his shoulder while really wiping the sweat and blood from his palm against the inside of his coat. The ring was in his inner pocket now, wrapped only in fabric and consequence.
Still, his fingers remembered.
They curled once before he could stop them.
Enjin’s brow lifted.
Zanka hated him more.
“You look like hell,” Enjin said.
“You look observant.”
“Means I’m doin’ my job.”
“Then do it elsewhere.”
Enjin smiled.
It was mild. Almost kind. Deeply annoying.
“Jabber?”
“Blocked by the collapse.”
“Dead?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
Zanka glanced back toward the lower passage.
From somewhere far beneath them, something metallic crashed.
Then, faintly, a laugh echoed through the understructure.
Rudo whipped around. “What the hell was that?”
Riyo’s face tightened. “Trouble.”
Zanka said nothing.
Enjin looked at him for a moment too long.
Then he turned toward the others. “We’re done here. Move before the sector starts droppin’ more pieces on us.”
Rudo bristled. “We’re just leaving him down there?”
“Jabber?” Enjin asked.
“Yeah!”
“He’ll crawl out.”
“You sound way too sure about that.”
“I’m sure enough not to waste time feelin’ sorry for him.”
Zanka adjusted Assistaff against his shoulder and started walking.
The stolen ring felt heavier in his pocket than it should have.
Every step made it shift faintly against the inside seam. Not enough for anyone else to hear. Barely enough for him to feel.
He felt it anyway.
He felt it as they moved through the broken sector.
He felt it while Riyo reported the recovered cargo count.
He felt it while Rudo complained about letting Raiders escape.
He felt it when Enjin lit a cigarette he absolutely should not have been smoking near leaking fuel and gave Zanka a sideways look through the haze.
He felt it when the adrenaline began to leave him, and the pain in his shoulder became a steady, ugly pulse.
The ring sat against him like a secret with teeth.
By the time they returned to headquarters, Zanka had constructed six separate explanations.
Evidence.
Leverage.
Study material.
Security risk.
Temporary confiscation.
Enemy asset.
Each phrase was clean. Useful. Reasonable.
Each one failed to explain why he had not told anyone.
The medical room was too bright.
Zanka hated that, too.
After the dim rot of the Pit, the hard overhead lights made every injury feel more vulgar. Blood looked redder. Bruises looked more honest. Dirt turned from camouflage into filth. The whole room smelled of disinfectant, cloth, and the faint metallic tang of old wounds.
The medic clicked their tongue at his shoulder.
Zanka stared at the wall.
“Not deep,” they said.
“I know.”
“Then why are you bleeding through your sleeve?”
“Because it is bleeding.”
The medic gave him a look.
He ignored it.
Assistaff rested across his lap. His uninjured hand remained on her body, thumb following the familiar grain with controlled, quiet pressure. The staff had been cleaned first. Always first. Dirt wiped away. Poison residue checked. Scrapes examined. The grooves Mankira had left made something cold and irritable curl in his stomach.
Not severe.
Not structural.
Still there.
Someone had put claws on her.
His fingers tightened.
The medic glanced down. “Your hand.”
Zanka’s eyes lifted.
“What?”
“Your hand,” they repeated. “You’re bleeding.”
He looked.
For one disorienting second, he expected to see the claw graze on his cheek or the bruising at his shoulder. Instead, he saw his own palm.
Four crescent marks cut into the skin where his fist had closed too hard around the stolen ring.
He curled his fingers before the medic could look closer.
“It’s nothing.”
“Everything is nothing with you people.”
“It is shallow.”
“So is your attitude, but I’m still forced to deal with it.”
From the doorway, Riyo snorted.
Zanka closed his eyes.
“Leave.”
“Me?” Riyo asked.
“Yes.”
“I just got here.”
“Correct it.”
She leaned against the doorframe instead, arms folded. Her gaze moved over him, pausing at the bandage being wrapped around his shoulder. “Enjin said Jabber got you separated.”
“Enjin talks too much.”
“He said you’d say that, too.”
“I hate all of you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I can begin.”
Riyo’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Not at the insult.
At him.
Zanka kept his face still.
She was too perceptive in a way that felt different from Enjin. Enjin noticed by letting the world talk itself into confession around him. Riyo noticed like a blade found seams.
“You’re twitchy,” she said.
“I’m injured.”
“You’re always injured.”
“I’m surrounded by stupidity.”
“You’re always surrounded by stupidity.”
The medic secured the bandage tighter than necessary.
Zanka’s jaw flexed.
Riyo’s gaze dropped.
Not obviously.
Not to the ring.
She had no reason to know there was a ring.
But her eyes flicked once toward the inner line of his uniform, where the fabric sat slightly heavier than it should. Where Zanka’s body kept making itself aware of one hidden point of weight.
His hand moved before he could stop it.
Not to the pocket.
Away from it.
Which was worse.
Riyo’s expression changed.
Barely.
Zanka stood.
The medic made a noise of protest. “I’m not done.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You still need—”
“I can do the rest.”
“That is not how medical care works.”
“It is today.”
Riyo did not move from the doorway.
Zanka picked up Assistaff and walked toward her.
For a second, she stayed in his path.
Their eyes met.
Hers were flat, unimpressed, and much too knowing.
Then she stepped aside.
“Whatever you’re doing,” she said quietly, “make sure it doesn’t bite the rest of us.”
Zanka did not answer.
Because if he opened his mouth, he might say something too sharp.
Or worse.
Something true.
He left the medical room with Assistaff in one hand and Mankira in his pocket.
The thought made him stop halfway down the hall.
Mankira.
Not Jabber’s ring.
Mankira.
He adjusted his grip on Assistaff and continued walking.
The headquarters corridors were calmer than the sector, but never quiet. Cleaners moved in different states of exhaustion around him: some laughing too loudly after surviving something stupid, some limping, some arguing, some silent in the way people got when the fight followed them back under their skin. Boots struck concrete. Doors opened. Distant voices overlapped. Somewhere, someone cursed because a container had leaked on their shoes.
Zanka took the long way to his room.
He told himself it was to avoid Rudo.
Then he told himself it was to avoid Enjin.
Then he stopped telling himself anything.
A Cleaner passed him in the hall and nodded.
Zanka nodded back.
Normal.
A group of younger members dragged a broken piece of equipment toward storage, arguing over whether it could be repaired or whether it had finally become trash like everything else below.
Normal.
Someone laughed from the far end of the corridor.
Someone else shouted for bandages.
Someone complained about dinner.
All normal.
Zanka moved through all of it with a piece of a Raider’s Vital Instrument tucked inside his uniform.
The wrongness of that should have been loud.
Instead, it was quiet.
That made it worse.
Quiet things were easier to keep.
His room was exactly as he had left it.
Orderly.
Controlled.
The bed made. Spare cloth folded. Maintenance supplies arranged with care. Nothing left where it did not belong. Nothing permitted to become clutter. Nothing allowed to look like neglect.
Zanka shut the door behind him.
Locked it.
Stood there.
Assistaff went first.
He set her carefully on the table, checked the grooves again, and began cleaning them with a damp cloth. Slow movements. Proper pressure. No wasted force. The marks left by Mankira did not vanish, but the residue did. He wiped until the cloth came away clean.
Only then did his hand drift toward his pocket.
He stopped himself.
The room seemed to stop with him.
His fingers hovered just above the inner seam of his uniform.
He could still report it.
He could leave the room now, walk directly to Enjin, place the ring on the table between them, and say exactly what had happened.
Jabber’s hand was trapped.
Mankira was at risk.
He deactivated her.
Assistaff caught one ring.
It came loose.
I secured it.
That version was almost true.
Almost.
The theft had not begun until his fingers closed.
Everything before that could be called accident. Force. Combat. Reaction. But the moment the ring slipped, the moment Zanka felt the small circle of Mankira against his palm, the moment he understood what it was and chose to hide it beneath the violence instead of letting it fall—
That was not accident.
That was choice.
A knock struck the door.
Zanka’s entire body went rigid.
“Oi,” Enjin called from the hall. “You dead?”
Zanka closed his eyes.
“Unfortunately not.”
“Good. Hate doin’ paperwork.”
“Then leave.”
“Can’t. Got questions.”
“I have no answers.”
“You always got answers. They’re just usually rude.”
Zanka looked at the pocket.
Then at the door.
Then at Assistaff.
He crossed the room and opened the door only wide enough to glare through it.
Enjin stood in the hall with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a folded report sheet he had absolutely no intention of using yet. His hat sat low, his posture loose, cigarette unlit at the corner of his mouth like even he knew better than to smoke indoors where someone important might yell at him.
His eyes dropped to Zanka’s bandaged shoulder.
Then to his face.
Then past him, into the room.
Zanka shifted enough to block the view.
Enjin’s mouth twitched.
“Private?”
“Yes.”
“That was fast.”
“Ask your questions.”
Enjin leaned one shoulder against the doorframe.
“How’d you get separated?”
“Collapse.”
“Before that.”
“Combat movement.”
“With Jabber.”
“Yes.”
“Alone.”
“Are you repeating words because you enjoy wasting my time?”
“Sometimes.” Enjin’s gaze sharpened beneath the lazy expression. “He follow you down there, or you follow him?”
Zanka’s answer came too slow.
Enjin noticed.
Zanka hated him.
“He blocked the lower passage,” Zanka said.
“And you engaged.”
“He engaged me.”
“Mm.”
“That sound is not a response.”
“It’s a real good one when I don’t believe somebody.”
Zanka’s fingers tightened on the door.
Enjin let the silence sit.
That was one of his more irritating habits: letting quiet become a tool. He did not press immediately. Did not accuse. Did not make it easy to respond with anger. He simply watched until people filled the space themselves.
Zanka refused.
Finally, Enjin sighed.
“Jabber sounded pretty lively after the collapse.”
“He usually does.”
“You do somethin’ to piss him off?”
Zanka did not move.
Not even a blink.
Enjin’s eyes narrowed.
There it was again.
That almost-invisible shift.
The moment a question became a hook.
“Define piss him off,” Zanka said.
Enjin smiled without humor. “The kind where he digs outta a collapsed tunnel screamin’ your name like you stole his favorite toy.”
Zanka’s blood cooled.
From somewhere distant in headquarters, someone laughed.
The sound was normal.
Wrongly normal.
Zanka held Enjin’s gaze.
“Jabber does not need reasons.”
“No,” Enjin said. “But he likes havin’ ’em.”
Zanka said nothing.
Enjin studied him for another long second.
Then he pushed off the doorframe.
“Get some rest.”
“That was all?”
“For now.”
“How generous.”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
“I make no promises.”
Enjin turned to leave, then stopped.
Without looking back, he said, “Whatever happened down there, don’t let it crawl into bed with you.”
Zanka’s hand tightened around the edge of the door.
Enjin walked away before he could answer.
Zanka shut the door.
Locked it again.
The room was silent.
His hand went to the pocket at last.
Not to take the ring out.
Only to feel that it was still there.
That was all.
A practical check.
Temporary containment.
He pressed two fingers against the fabric.
The shape beneath was small.
Hard.
Real.
His throat went tight for no reason he cared to name.
He did not remove it.
He would not look at it tonight.
Looking would be an indulgence.
Looking would be the beginning of some other failure, something worse and quieter than theft. Looking would let the object become separate from the act. It would let him see detail, condition, shape. It would invite care. Curiosity. Reverence. All the things that had no place around stolen enemy property.
So he did not look.
He took a strip of plain cloth from the drawer.
Not one of Assistaff’s maintenance cloths.
Not anything good.
He reached into his pocket, closed his hand around the ring without glancing down, and wrapped it by touch alone. Metal kissed briefly against his palm before the cloth covered it. He could still feel the warmth lingering there, though whether it belonged to Jabber or to his own body now, he did not know.
He hated that he wondered.
The cloth folded once.
Twice.
Tied tight.
He placed the bundle inside the wooden box where he kept spare, unimportant things.
Not with Assistaff’s tools.
Not near anything sacred.
Not somewhere personal.
Just a box.
Just storage.
Just until morning.
He shut the lid.
The small sound of wood closing over cloth struck the room with more finality than it deserved.
Zanka stood over the box for a long time.
Outside, the headquarters continued around him.
Voices in the hall.
Footsteps.
A distant laugh.
A door shutting.
Life resuming its usual shape after violence.
Inside the room, Zanka’s palm throbbed.
The crescent cuts had reopened.
He looked down at them.
Four red marks curved across his skin where he had held too tightly to what he should have let go.
His life had many rules.
Most of them existed because people without rules became sloppy. Weak. Wasteful. They mistook impulse for instinct and attachment for strength. They grabbed things with dirty hands and called it wanting. They broke what should have been maintained. They failed to understand that care was not sentimentality. Care was discipline. Care was respect. Care was knowing the weight, the texture, the condition of what belonged in your hands.
He had rules.
He had always had rules.
Do not lose control.
Do not show softness where it can be used.
Do not let someone like Jabber Wonger close enough to matter.
Do not steal what you are not prepared to keep.
Zanka’s gaze remained fixed on the wooden box.
Inside it, wrapped in plain cloth, one ring of Mankira sat separated from the other nine.
A Vital Instrument divided.
Taken.
Hidden.
Not examined.
Not yet.
Zanka told himself that distinction mattered.
He told himself it was not the same as keeping her.
He told himself he would report it tomorrow.
Then he turned away from the box, sat on the edge of his bed fully dressed, and listened to the quiet weight of the lie breathing in the room with him.