The sun was still fighting to break through the cold morning mist when the smell of strong coffee and cement dust already dominated Alexandre's small kitchen. It was a scent he knew better than any perfume, the daily prelude to a symphony of hard work, sweat, and steel. He drank the bitter liquid straight from a bruised metal mug, his eyes scanning the blueprints and schedules spread across the table, not with an engineer's distance, but with the intimacy of a sculptor who knew every inch of his work.
His body was a map of his profession. Broad shoulders and a strong torso, built not in a gym, but by hauling rebar and maneuvering heavy equipment. His hands were thick and calloused, with a network of small scars that told stories of wire cables and metal edges. Yet, his movements were surprisingly precise, the economy of a man who understood physics in a visceral, instinctive way.
At the construction site's gate, the familiar noise of his crew greeted him. Laughter, jokes about last night's football match, the sound of heavy boots on gravel. They were a dozen men, each with his own worries and skills, but here, under the growing skeleton of concrete and steel that scratched at the sky, they were a unit. Alexandre's team.
"Morning, boss," said an older man, Ricardo, with a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
Alexandre nodded, a subtle smile on his own lips. "The boss is the guy in the tie sitting in the AC, Ricardo. I just keep us from falling off this thing."
The laugh that followed was genuine. He didn't have an official leadership title over all of them, but his authority was unquestionable. It came from competence, from calmness under pressure, and from a fierce loyalty that was always mutual.
His eyes landed on one of the newest members, Léo. A good kid, a hard worker, but whose hands still trembled slightly before clipping the carabiner of his safety harness. Alexandre walked over, placing a firm hand on the young man's shoulder.
"Everything alright, Léo? Your head up here with us, or with your girlfriend?"
Léo blushed slightly. "It's here, Alex. It's just... it's damn high today."
They were starting work on the fortieth floor. To many, it was just a number. To those up there, it was a different world, with its own wind, its own silence broken only by the howl of the air and the echo of the city far below.
"It's just another floor," Alexandre said, his voice calm and steady. "The view is better. Remember your training. Trust the equipment, and trust me. One step at a time. Let's go up."
The ride up the freight elevator was a ritual, the transition from the terrestrial world to their aerial domain. Up there, the city stretched out like a living map. Alexandre took a deep breath. He loved it. The feeling of being on top, not out of power, but out of creation. He wasn't conquering the sky; he was filling it with something solid, something that would last for generations.
The workday flowed as it should, a dangerous and precise dance over a hundred meters in the air. The team moved with a synergy that Alexandre had cultivated for years. He was the axis. His mind, an organic computer, processed dozens of variables simultaneously: the wind speed, the tension on the crane cables, the position of each man, the fatigue in Ricardo's eyes, the newly overcome hesitation in Léo's.
In the middle of the afternoon, a gust of wind stronger than usual sent a loose steel plate swinging dangerously. A chill ran through the crew. Before panic could set in, Alexandre's voice cut through the air, firm and clear.
"Léo, Ricardo, back to the central beam! Marco, secure the safety line on the side! Now!"
His orders weren't shouts; they were instructions. Beacons in a storm. In seconds, the situation was under control, the plate secured, and hearts, still racing, returned to their normal rhythm, anchored by the trust they had in him. He didn't just give orders; he absorbed their fear and turned it into coordinated action.
The end of the shift approached, bringing with it the fatigue and the subtle lapse in attention that Alexandre feared most. It was the most dangerous time. The last operation of the day was the most complex: positioning one of the main support girders for the next floor. A multi-ton piece, hoisted by a crane, that had to be slotted into place with millimeter precision.
Alexandre was supervising personally, his eyes darting from the crane operator far below, to the suspended girder, and to the team waiting for it. Léo was among them, looking more confident now, proud of the day's work.
"Easy... another two meters... one meter..." Alexandre spoke into the radio, his voice a thread of calm in the crackling tension. "Get ready to guide it..."
That's when it happened. A sound that didn't belong in the symphony of construction. Not the groan of metal under stress, but a sharp, dry crack, like a bone snapping. One of the four steel cables securing the girder to the crane had broken.
Time, for Alexandre, fragmented. The world moved in slow motion. The steel girder, freed from one of its anchor points, whipped through the air with unimaginable violence, spinning on its axis in a deadly trajectory.
His eyes didn't blink. They analyzed.
The trajectory. The moment of inertia. The impact zone.
And right in the center of that zone, eyes wide with terror, paralyzed, was Léo.
There was no decision process. There was no conscious thought of "should I save him?". Alexandre's mind, the leader who protected his team, and Alexandre's body, the man of action, became one. The question of if didn't exist. Only how.
In an instant that seemed to last an eternity, he calculated the vector. The push. The necessary force.
He launched himself forward. Two explosive steps across the metal platform. The shouts of his colleagues were a distant sound, from another world. His hand slammed into Léo's chest with the force of a battering ram. The young man flew backward, landing awkwardly but safely, far from the danger zone.
Alexandre felt the air displaced by the approaching mass of steel. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the blue sky, the white clouds, and Ricardo's horrified face.
Then, the structure he had spent his life building came to claim him. The impact wasn't pain. It was annihilation. An overwhelming crash of metal and bone, and then, only silence.
As his consciousness faded into a dark blur, his final thought was not of fear or regret. It was a final check, the last item on his mental to-do list.
The team... they're safe.
And then, the architect of steel and concrete plunged into darkness.