Kenji's investigation had stalled. To understand the Spiders, he needed to understand their world, and that world was built and maintained by the riggers.
The riggers' workshop was a quiet, cavernous space at the base of the main top, a cathedral of coiled ropes, gleaming carabiners, and the faint, clean smell of metal polish and chalk. It was here that Kenji first truly noticed Ricco. He had seen the young man before, a quiet, dark-haired figure moving silently through the camp, but in the workshop, Ricco was different. He moved with a slow, deliberate grace, his hands, covered in a fine layer of chalk dust, testing knots with an absolute focus. There was a profound sadness in his posture, the weary slump of a man much older than his twenty-something years would suggest.
Kenji's pretext for being there was to sweep the workshop floor. As he pushed the wide broom across the dusty concrete, he watched Ricco test a safety harness, checking every stitch with an almost obsessive slowness.
"You used to fly, didn't you?" Kenji asked, his voice quiet. Ricco's movements weren't those of a man who worked on the ground. They were the movements of a performer, an acrobat, just… slower. Grounded.
Ricco's face tightened. He looked away, coiling a length of rope with fierce, unnecessary precision. "A long time ago," he muttered. "In another life."
Kenji waited, knowing that with men who live inside their own heads, silence is the most effective key.
"I was the best," Ricco said finally, his voice a low, bitter whisper. "Fearless. They called me 'The Sparrow.' I grew up in the air. The wire, the trapeze... that was my home." He paused. "And I had a partner. A mentor. He was a legend."
The world of the workshop seemed to fade away, replaced by the cool, sharp air of a city at night.
The boy—he couldn't have been more than fifteen—was a blur of motion, a shadow flowing over the rain-slicked tiles of a skyscraper roof. He moved with a joyous, weightless grace, his laughter a sharp, bright sound in the night. Below him, the city was a river of light, a beautiful, distant abstraction.
"Come, Sparrow," a voice, low and sharp as shattered glass, called from the darkness. The mentor was a silhouette against the moon, a figure of absolute, terrifying control. His name was Nocturne. "Admiration is a weakness. The city is not a painting. It is a board. And we are the players."
Ricco landed in a perfect, silent crouch beside him. "The target is on the move. Penthouse, Kestrel Tower."
"The path is not on the street," Nocturne said, his gaze fixed on the adjacent skyscraper, a hundred feet of pure, vertical death away. "The path is in the air. Remember the lesson, boy."
"Fear is rust," Ricco recited, his voice filled with a fierce, youthful pride. "It eats the steel from your bones. A perfect tool feels no fear."
"Good," Nocturne had said, a rare, thin smile touching his lips. "Now fly."
The memory dissolved, leaving the dusty, quiet workshop in its place. Ricco's hands had stilled on the rope.
"He was a creature of the night," Ricco said, his voice now filled with a kind of fierce, broken pride. "A shadow. Took me in when I was just a kid. Taught me everything. Not just the acrobatics. The other stuff. The rooftops. The stealth. The... the mission."
"I thought it would last forever," he whispered. "I thought I was his partner." He let out a short, sharp, mirthless laugh. "But I wasn't his partner. I was just a tool he was sharpening."
Ricco dropped the rope he was holding and walked over to a window, staring out at the distant, colorful chaos of the main camp. "It all ended on a wire," he said, his voice now a dead, hollow thing. "A high-wire, stretched between two skyscrapers, a hundred stories up. It was a mission. A real one. Retrieving something from a man who thought he was above the law. Nocturne… he had this rule. No nets. The fear, he said, was part of the discipline. It kept you sharp."
Kenji could see the memory playing out in the boy's haunted eyes.
The rain was a cold, driving sheet, plastering his black uniform to his skin. The wind, a hundred stories up, was a living thing, a restless, invisible river that tore at him, trying to peel him from the rooftop. The wire, a single, half-inch steel thread, stretched out into the black, empty space between the towers, disappearing into the swirling mist.
"The wire is slick," Ricco had said, his voice tight, shouting to be heard over the roar of the wind. "The crosswinds are unpredictable. This is a bad run, Nocturne."
His mentor had just stood there, a shadow at the edge of the abyss, his face unreadable. "Risk is the point, Sparrow," he'd said, his voice a calm, cutting whisper. "It is the crucible in which perfection is forged. You go first. You are lighter, faster. Secure the anchor point."
Ricco's hands began to tremble, a fine, almost invisible tremor. "He sent me out first," he whispered to Kenji, his gaze fixed on the nightmare only he could see. "I was halfway across… and then the wind hit. A cross-breeze, a freak gust. It wasn't on the forecast. A variable he hadn't accounted for."
He felt the wire tremble beneath his feet, a living thing trying to throw him. He felt his leather-soled shoe, designed for grip, slip on the rain-slicked steel. And for the first time in his life… he was afraid. It was a cold, paralyzing shock, a complete system failure. He looked back at Nocturne, his mentor, his partner, his entire world, a silhouette on the edge of the roof. He thought he would see a sign, a command, a hand reaching out. He saw nothing. Nocturne just stood there. Watching.
He lost his balance.
The world dissolved into a stomach-lurching, vertical scream. The city lights below were a smear of beautiful, terrifying color, rushing up to meet him.
"I didn't hit the ground," he continued, his voice a dead, hollow thing. "He was a master of contingencies. Always. A magnetic grapple, fired from the roof. It caught the harness, just as he'd planned in case of an 'asset malfunction.' The stop was... brutal." He unconsciously rubbed his shoulder, a ghost of an ancient pain. "Tore every muscle from my neck to my ribs. Left me dangling there, a hundred stories up, spinning in the wind and the rain like a broken puppet."
He fell silent, the memory clearly replaying in his mind. "He reeled me in," Ricco whispered. "And when he pulled me onto the roof, he didn't ask if I was okay. He didn't help me up. He just looked down at me, his face a mask of cold, hard disappointment in the flickering light of the city. And he said, 'You were compromised. Your fear compromised the mission.' That was all. Not 'Are you hurt?' Not 'That was a close one.' Just... 'You failed.'"
The raw, unprocessed pain in the young man's voice was a tangible thing. Kenji felt a familiar, bitter ache in his own chest.
"I tried to explain. The wind, the rain... He wasn't listening," Ricco said, his voice cracking. "He told me the fear was a flaw in my character. A weakness that couldn't be trained out. He said the legacy was too important to be entrusted to a flawed vessel. He told me he was... decommissioning me." He said the word as if it were a clinical, technical term for a piece of broken equipment.
"And then he told me the worst part. He had already found my replacement. A new kid. Younger, faster, with more 'raw potential.' He said the boy was a blank slate, unspoiled by the kind of emotional attachments that had made me weak. He tossed me aside like an old toy for a newer, shinier model. I was left with nothing."
"So I came back here," he finished, his gaze now fixed on the high wire, a silver thread against the darkening sky. "The only home I'd ever really known. Silas took pity on me. But I couldn't fly anymore. Every time I set foot on a wire, I feel the wind, I feel the slip... and I freeze. I can't move. The Sparrow is dead."
He gestured around the quiet, ordered workshop. "So now, I'm a rigger. I spend my days making sure the wires are safe for other people to fly on. It's my penance. For being afraid." He finally looked at Kenji, his eyes empty of all their earlier defenses, showing only a vast, weary sadness.
Kenji didn't offer empty platitudes. He didn't say, 'It wasn't your fault'. He was an agent. He recognized the cold, pragmatic cruelty of a handler discarding a compromised asset. He offered the only thing he had: a simple, honest truth.
"It wasn't a flaw in your character, Ricco," Kenji said, his voice quiet but steady. "It was a flaw in his. He wasn't a mentor. He was a user. And you weren't his partner. You were his tool. And when a tool is no longer useful, it gets thrown away. That's not a reflection on the tool. It's a reflection on the man who can't be bothered to fix it."
Ricco stared at him, a flicker of something new—surprise, confusion, maybe even a glimmer of understanding—dawning in his haunted eyes. No one had ever spoken of his mentor in that way. He had spent years blaming himself, and this quiet, middle-aged janitor had, in a few simple sentences, shifted the entire weight of that blame.
Before either of them could say another word, the sharp, authoritative clap of Silas the ringmaster echoed from the entrance. "Alright, you two, break's over. We've got a show to put on."
Ricco flinched, the ghost of his past receding, replaced by the weary resignation of the present. He gave Kenji a single, quick, unreadable look, then turned back to his work, his hands once again moving with their slow, sad, and perfect precision. The door to his soul had been opened, just for a moment, and then quietly, firmly, closed again.