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Gris Rubion is eighteen when he meets Enjin for the first time.
He’s flat on his back under an old utility jeep in the HQ garage, trying to persuade a seized suspension bolt to stop being a stubborn piece of shit.
To be fair, the jeep had every right to put up a fuss after enduring a ten-foot drop during a retrieval job. That it landed in one piece and still managed to make it home is a miracle.
The leaf spring is cracked, shackle twisted sideways, track rod bent badly enough that the front wheels are pointing in opposite directions. Boss considers it a write-off, and Gris is pleasantly surprised when he’s allowed to disagree. The old girl got four Cleaners home alive and Gris isn’t about to send her to the scrap heap just yet.
It’ll take weeks to get her running properly again. He’ll need to rebuild half the steering assembly once he gets in there and discovers everything else that’s been knocked out of alignment. There’s welding to do, parts to scavenge, and at least three bolts appear to have fused to the chassis.
But it’s cool. It’s not like Gris is being deployed every day. Right now, he has the time. That’ll probably change soon, though.
Arkha Corvus has been recruiting Cleaners with the determination of a man trying to build an army before anyone realises there’s a war coming. He rarely returns to HQ empty-handed. Lately, he’ll have at least one or two, half-starved, hollow-eyed teenagers in tow. They’re usually strung so tight that a sharp noise sends them skittering like cockroaches when the lights are turned on.
No one volunteers to become a Cleaner because their life is going particularly well. Most have fallen off some kind of wagon. Some have been thrown.
Food, clean water and safe shelter are in short supply across much of the Ground, but somehow, people still find a way to make more people. There’s no shortage of children haunting the settlements and too many of them are unwanted. Some of the recruits the Boss brings back are so filthy that Gris can’t even tell what they look like until someone hoses them down.
Once a week, Alice Stilza comes by to deal with the injuries she can see. It used to be more often but the old doctor has her own troubles to deal with. Gris doesn’t know the details, but he knows she’s got grandkids to look after. Sometimes, she brings them with her.
The little girl, Eishia, is only five but Alice already reckons she has a knack for healing. She’s a silent and watchful little thing, the complete opposite of her big brother, August, who has a set of lungs that can burst eardrums.
It’s always lively when the Stilzas visit. Gris appreciates that Alice’s hundred and twenty-decibel bedside manner doesn’t discriminate. She yells at everyone, rank and seniority be damned. Alice unfailingly tends to the ailments she can see and diagnose.
It’s the invisible hurts that are harder to treat. These end up being the reason why the kids don’t stay.
Some of them can’t sleep indoors, while others sleep just fine but they’ll wake up swinging. Some hide food until it rots because they can’t quite believe there’ll be more tomorrow. A few will disappear before dawn without touching the tray left beside their bed.
If a recruit doesn’t make the cut, Corvus sends them off with a full stomach, a haircut, clean clothes and the name of someone looking for workers in one of the safer settlements. Sometimes they come back months later to say hello. Sometimes they don’t.
That’s the Ground. You learn pretty quickly not to get too attached.
Gris has just finished scraping the worst of the rust from the suspension mount when a faint scuffing sound comes from the garage entrance.
He ignores it until it happens two more times.
From where he’s lying, he can only make out a pair of pale, narrow ankles in battered high-tops, with one sole beginning to peel away at the toe.
He sprays another dose of oil around the shackle bolt and gives the metal a few sharp taps with a hammer. The newcomer remains at the doorway, weight shifting from foot to foot, radiating indecision.
After about five minutes of this, Gris has had enough.
“You need somethin’?”
The feet go still.
“Boss said I should look around.”
The voice is young, rough and defensive. It sounds a lot like Gris, only about an octave higher.
“Sure. Garage counts as around, I guess,” Gris says, realising that the newbie was trying to get permission earlier. This already tells him quite a bit about the kid. “Uh, you can come in,” he adds.
Only then do the shoes cross the threshold.
Gris hooks his heels into the concrete and slides himself out from under the jeep. The kid’s bright golden eyes widen as Gris emerges into the washed-out, late afternoon light, filtered through grimy windows.
They’re around the same age, though the kid can’t be much older than sixteen, Gris estimates. He’s lean and lanky, all sharpness and Permascowl. His hair is shaved down to a pale blond fuzz that looks painfully new, if the way he keeps self-consciously rubbing at the back of his head is any indication.
He’s sporting a recent black eye and a split lip. There are older bruises – yellow marks along one cheek and more disappearing beneath the gaping collar of a threadbare black hoodie and that would be huge even on Gris. His shorts end below his knees and they’re an eye-watering, acid green. A charitable acquisition since arriving at HQ, no doubt.
But it’s the umbrella the kid clutches under one arm that’s the most significant detail.
Gris acknowledges, with resignation, that this newbie is no mechanic or Supporter. He won’t be spending his Cleaner career fetching equipment and changing tyres. If he passes muster, sooner or later this skinny little shit will technically be calling the shots when they’re out in the field.
Unfortunately, some of this resentment must show on Gris face.
“You got a name or should I just call you Ratchet?” the kid asks warily, eyes trained on the tool in Gris’ hand.
Gris doesn’t even recall picking it up. He swaps the ratchet to his left hand, and then wipes his right one on the front of his trousers before offering it to the kid.
“It’s Gris.”
There’s a pause, and then the kid says, “Endoareilychima Illastsalli Machiada Leotrago Sphidi Pharjin.”
Gris drops his arm. “Shit, is that actually your name or did you just cast a spell on me?”
Face glowing bright red, the kid turns to leave.
Wait, Gris almost calls out. He realises he’s messed up, so he does the first thing that comes to mind, and repeats the ridiculous name. All twenty-seven syllables.
The kid stops so abruptly his shoes squeaks against the concrete. A startled, garbled sound escapes him.
“How the fuck…”
Before he can crack a smile, Gris turns on his heel and walks back to the jeep. “I got a good memory.”
"That's not just good, yo. That's a condition."
What a rude little moldsniffer. "I think the word you're lookin' for is 'gift'."
Gris drops onto the creeper and rolls back under. For a couple of minutes, he hears nothing and assumes the kid has left after all, but then he spots the shoes in his periphery again.
Most new recruits fall into one of two groups – they either talk too much or not at all.
The talkers pour out their whole life story because they’re desperate to explain themselves before anyone can misunderstand them. The silent ones figure every scrap of information is a weapon someone might use against them later.
Newbie seems to be deciding which kind he wants to be.
Gris fits the ratchet onto the corroded shackle bolt and gives it an experimental pull. It doesn’t budge. He tries again, putting more shoulder into it. The ratchet flexes enough to make him stop before he breaks something he actually wants to keep.
“If you’re gonna stand there,” Gris says through gritted teeth, “you might as well make yourself useful.”
He points blindly towards the rear of the garage. “See the workbench behind you? I need a half-inch breaker bar. Nineteen-millimetre six-point socket.”
There’s another pause followed by the quiet clink of metal. A moment later, the correct breaker bar appears beside the jeep with the socket already fitted.
Gris slides out far enough to take it, noticing that the kid is holding it by the handle rather than the greasy head.
“Huh,” he says.
“What?”
“Nothin’.” Gris rolls under the jeep again.
Newbie sticks around to watch. He’s crouched near the front wheel with his umbrella resting across his bright green knees.
“You a Giver?” he asks, as Gris works the socket onto the bolt head.
“Nope.”
“But the Boss lets you stay?”
It’s an odd enough question that Gris turns his head to look at the kid through the gap beneath the chassis. His bruised face is deliberately blank, but Gris can tell he isn’t asking out of simple curiosity. He’s asking what a person has to do in order for Corvus to let them stay.
Gris turns his attention back to the bolt. “Well, I keep the vehicles running. Haul equipment. Help on patrols.” He braces one boot against the floor and pulls on the breaker bar. The bolt groans. “Support work,” he adds. “I’m hard to knock over, basically.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
The words come out with such sincere peevishness that Gris snorts. “Eat all your vegetables. Maybe you’ll catch up someday.”
“Fuck off,” Newbie huffs. “I haven’t seen a vegetable grown in the East Ward that doesn’t glow in the dark.”
“Good thing we grow some of our own food here, then,” Gris says. “Got a guy who’s good with plants. Proper green thumb and not the glowing kind.”
He fits the breaker bar back into position, takes a breath and leans his weight into it. For half a second, nothing happens, but then there’s a violent metallic crack and the bar drops. Gris’s knuckles slam into the underside of the chassis.
“Son of a bitch,” he says, wincing.
The kid jerks forward. He’s on his hands and knees now, peering under the jeep. “You aw’right?”
“I’m good.” Gris waits for the kid to move away before sliding out from under the jeep.
There’s not much he can do about his red face as he rubs at his knuckles, but the good news is that the kid hasn’t been able to look him in the eye yet, so Gris’ embarrassment has probably gone unnoticed.
“Three squares?”
Gris blinks. “What?”
“Um. You said you grow food here.”
“Some of it, yeah.”
“So there’s three meals a day?”
Gris feels something in his chest go unpleasantly tight. His voice is gentle when he replies. “Pretty much.”
The kid nods. His fingers move back and forth over the umbrella’s handle. The same little strip of painted plastic beneath his thumb has been worn almost smooth from this repetitive motion.
“Havin’ three square meals every day sounds nice.”
Gris doesn’t know what to say to that. Anything resembling pity will probably send the boy straight through the door. He ransacks his brain for a new topic, eventually tipping his chin towards the umbrella.
“That your Jinki?”
“Yeah. This here is Umbreaker.” The reply is half proclamation, half challenge.
“Cool,” says Gris, and he means it.
The umbrella is in remarkably good condition compared to its owner. The pale canopy is spotless. Ribs straight. Handle intact. No visible chips or cracks. Even the ferrule at the tip has been polished clean. Whatever else this kid neglects, it isn’t the umbrella.
“What’s it do?”
Asking a Giver what their Vital Instrument does can be perceived as an incredibly intimate question.
It’s only a step below asking someone what they’d do if they could do anything. It’s the opposite of small talk. Hell, no one even knows what the Boss’ Jinki is or does, not even the people who’ve known the man for decades.
But Gris is banking on the fact Newbie hasn’t quite learned the intricacies of Giver etiquette yet.
“It’s not working right,” the kid grumbles, with a cute pout that Gris hopes will survive into adulthood.
His answer is indirect, but at least he doesn't seem to have taken any offence to the asking.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Tch. Nothing’s wrong with it. I’m the one...” He stops, mouth pressing into a hard line.
Up close, Gris realises the face under the bruising is surprisingly delicate. Elegant, even. Sharp cheekbones. A strong, straight nose that hasn’t been irreparably broken. Long, dark lashes framing bright golden eyes.
Pretty, honestly. Prettier than most girls Gris knows. Not that he’s stupid enough to say that aloud.
This doesn’t stop him from saying other stupid shit unfortunately
“Does it open?” he asks, and then wants to slap himself.
Newbie’s glare could strip paint. “Obviously it fucking opens.”
Gris has to bite his lip to keep from smiling. He can’t fathom how this angry boy has survived for so long while being this easy to tease. Then Gris sees the bruises again and immediately decides the answer probably isn’t funny.
“It responds,” Newbie says with a sigh. “Just not…how I want, y’know?”
Welp, if the kid’s looking for advice, he’s barking up the wrong Cleaner. Gris has never held a Vital Instrument in his hands, let alone felt one activate.
He understands the basic idea because everyone on the Ground does. A person forms a bond with an object through time and care. Enough Anima builds up, and, under the right circumstances, a Giver can pull something extraordinary out of something ordinary.
There’s probably a complicated explanation involving science and numbers. In a better world, people might have time to sit around figuring out exactly why one person can turn an umbrella into a weapon while another can love the same umbrella for fifty years and never get so much as a spark out of it.
But what he does know is that there isn’t a better place on the Ground for a Giver to reach their full potential.
“You’ll work it out if you stick around,” Gris says, and hopes the kid will do just that.
“Yeah, well.” More shoe scuffing. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“How you liking it so far?”
“I dunno,” Newbie says with a shrug. “Everyone here is fucking weird, man.”
That finally wrestles an audible laugh out of Gris. Weird is an understatement.
“Then you’ll fit right in.”
Rain begins pattering down against the corrugated garage roof. The storm clouds hanging over the East Ward have been spitting corrosive muck on and off for most of the week, the kind that leaves pale marks on exposed metal and makes old wounds itch.
Even the Trash Beasts seem to hate it. Half of them rust if they stay out in it long enough.
Most folks dread the rain, but the kid actually looks happy about it. He walks to the garage entrance and with a deft flick, opens Umbreaker and delicately balances the long handle over one shoulder.
The canopy begins to twirl, black markings blending into a hypnotic swirl with occasional gold sparks shooting outwards.
Gris is captivated. The kid might think Umbreaker doesn’t respond to him properly, but the ease with which he handles his Instrument tells a different story.
“So,” the boy says, staring at Gris from under his umbrella. No apparent issues with eye contact now. “My friends call me Enjin.”
“Good,” Gris manages to say, his throat feels like it’s closing up. “Because you’re not gonna rescue anyone in time if they gotta yell out that long-ass name.”
Enjin snorts. “Ha-fucking-ha.”
Gris points towards Umbreaker. “You’ll have to show me how that works sometime.”
Then it happens. Enjin smiles. It’s fucking catastrophic. It’s big and wide and a little goofy, stretching across his bruised face.
For a second, it’s almost too much information for Gris to handle.
He catches a glimpse of the little boy Enjin must have been before the here and now. Grubby, hungry and too sensitive for his own good, but cocky and competent enough to compensate.
And then something else settles over the image.
Gris sees the foundations of the man Enjin might become. There’s something solid buried underneath the flinty, sharp edges. Something stubborn enough to have survived whoever put those bruises on him, and whatever taught him to ask whether three meals a day was a possibility.
Gris sees what will happen if Corvus manages to sand down those edges without eroding all the interesting parts along the way. He sees a future where Enjin wields Umbreaker like it’s an extension of himself.
Givers get noticed. Supporters keep them alive long enough to enjoy it. Maybe Enjin will be the kind of Giver Supporters don’t mind standing behind because they know he’ll remember why they’re there.
The rain is now a storm. It’s a dark grey torrent that blankets the air in ozone and saturated smog. Everything beyond Umbreaker looks colourless.
But apparently HQ doesn’t get the memo because the Sun is standing right there in the garage.
Enjin’s dimples are twin nails in Gris’ coffin.
He has the sudden, inexplicable and deeply unreasonable certainty that, one way or another, Enjin is going to be the death of him.