The prison looked like someone had poured concrete over a bad idea and waited four decades to paint the doors. Sodium lights roared in cages on the walls; everything they touched turned the color of old nicotine. STATE FACILITY — LOWER LEVELS: SECTOR 12 was stenciled over the gate, the letters already losing an argument with rust.
A guard walked Breuk through. They passed steel that had outlived its makers, chains that clicked just to prove they were awake, windows that had never once shown a view worth having. Breuk kept the collar of his coat up and his hands bare. The metal arm was too honest to hide and too heavy to forget.
Four years, the city said, the hum crowding out thought. And Jeremiah was still right where it all began.
He found Jeremiah at a cheap table that had hosted more confessions than meals. The man had aged the way good wood darkens: gray at the edges, lines set in, a roughness grown elegant. Stubble grayed his jaw. The eyes were the same—sharp, amused, exhaustive. He smiled without standing.
"Well, if it isn't my favorite catastrophe," Jeremiah said.
Breuk's mouth tipped. "You're not getting prettier with time."
They let the old laugh run for a moment. It smoothed the corners of the room. It made the guard look away because this wasn't the kind of place that could hold something like that without cracking.
Breuk gave him the headlines. He didn't do speeches. He talked in the short pieces men who've been chased learn—names, dates, what went right, what burned. Jobs that paid in favors and blood. The ballroom. The senator. The rope. The car. He left out the part where the world had felt briefly easy, because that kind of detail just makes harder things cruel.
Jeremiah leaned back in his metal chair until it creaked and didn't break. "Sounds like you're keeping the heart beating," he said.
"'Keeping' is generous." Breuk rubbed at the seam where flesh met machine. "More like poking it when it stops."
Silence worked between them for a breath and a half. The light buzzed like a fly against a window.
"Why me?" Breuk asked, eyes on the table's pitted top. "Back then. Why'd you pick me to wear the crown while you rot? Lig's got more brain, more control, more—"
Jeremiah folded his hands, elbows on the metal, the old preacher about to start the part of the sermon that makes people honest. "Because your heart points the right way," he said. "Lig's got the head. Heads build walls. Hearts build bridges."
Breuk's laugh was one exhale and no smile. "He's been busy with the walls lately. Between us too."
Jeremiah nodded like he'd expected that answer and saved his sadness for later. The lines beside his mouth deepened. "Lig's a strategist. He thinks in destinations, not passengers. And one day he's gonna have to choose which matters more."
Breuk rolled the steel ring that capped his radius with a thumb, metal on metal, old habit. "Since we came back up, something's off," he said. "Used to be I could talk to him. Now he talks and I just… listen."
Jeremiah watched his face the way you watch a horizon for weather. "Maybe you two are arguing about different worlds," he said after a while. "He wants to climb. You want to arrive."
Breuk stood. The chair made a sound that got the guard's attention and then released it. He slid into his coat like armor he'd agreed to wear. "And if he drags me up with him whether I like it or not?"
Jeremiah lay back in the shade the light couldn't be bothered to chase. Half his face went soft, half went hard. It made him look like a man caught between two truths and refusing to apologize to either. "Then make sure," he said, "that when you fall, you pick the direction."
Breuk almost smiled. Almost. He tapped the table with two knuckles—thank you, goodbye, that wasn't what I wanted to hear and it was exactly what I needed—and turned toward the door.
The guard coughed Breuk back into the corridor. Keys talked. Chains breathed. The city's hum found the hollow space behind his sternum and filled it like it had been waiting.
Outside, the night had put on fresh neon. He lit a cigarette he didn't want and let it die in his fingers without ever bringing it to his mouth. In the reflection on the glass, the scar on his jaw looked like writing he couldn't read. He flexed the metal hand until the servos complained and then went quiet.
On the walk back to the car, he counted his steps to drown out Jeremiah's last line. It didn't work.
Tev idled at the curb, one arm hooked over the wheel. Limar had turned the radio to a station that only played static and smart remarks. Tara sat with her head against the glass and her eyes open, counting problems. Lig was a shadow that had taught itself to look like a man at rest.
"Everything good?" Tev said, like men ask when they already know.
"Nothing's good," Breuk said, sliding in, "but it's ours."
The door shut on the rest. The city rolled its shoulders and made a new road for them out of old mistakes.
The helmet hung from the handlebar. He grabbed it with the left hand, though it would've been easier with the metal one. The weight steadied him. He set it on the seat, then swung his leg over and settled in, feet on cold concrete, hands on familiar grips.
Jeremiah's voice didn't wait. It slid in and sat behind his ears like it had paid rent.Heads build walls. Hearts build bridges.Make sure when you fall, you pick the direction.
He exhaled through his teeth, slow. "You and your sermons," he said, and the empty garage took the line like it was used to being talked at.
The key went in with a small, satisfying click. He turned it. The console woke—old analog dials Limar had insisted were more honest than digital readouts. A single green light blinked alive. The fuel gauge lifted its eyelid and squinted at him.
He hit the starter. For a moment there was only the high whine of the motor turning over. Then the engine caught with a cough and a low animal growl that settled into a steady thrum. The vibration climbed through the frame into his bones. The smell came next: fuel, hot metal, ancient oil baked into everything.
He eased the clutch in, rolled the throttle. The back tire nudged forward like it was testing the night.
He pulled the helmet on. The world narrowed to foam against his skull, the faint plastic taste of the mic, and a slice of city framed by the visor. His scar tugged against the padding in the same way it always did, an old argument between bone and history.
He kicked the stand up with his heel and let the bike roll, out of shadow, past the saints, through the open bay door and onto the service lane. The city's noise hit him all at once—fans, voices, the distant rumble of something heavy moving on a higher level, the thin metallic rain of runoff.
Jeremiah again:Lig thinks in destinations, not passengers.Maybe you're arguing about different worlds. He wants to climb. You want to arrive.
Breuk shifted up a gear just to give his hands something to do. The bike responded, eager, as if it had been offended by the gentle pace.
"Arrive where?" he muttered. "There's nowhere to arrive." The visor bounced his breath back at him, warm and stale.
He thought of Lig in the car, a shadow pretending to rest. Thought of the way Lig's mouth went thin when plans collided with people. Heads build walls. Lig was good at putting doors in those walls, at least. For some people. The right ones. The paying ones.
He dropped a gear and took a turn too tight for anyone with more self-preservation. The rear stepped out, kissed the slick and came back. The bike wobbled once, then held. His heart didn't bother speeding up; it had long ago accepted that his hands would do stupid things when his head got loud.
He remembered Jeremiah across the table, half in light, half in shade.If he drags me up with him whether I like it or not?Then make sure that when you fall, you pick the direction.
Breuk rolled that line around in his head like a bad coin. Pick the direction. As if falling were something you could schedule between jobs. As if gravity cared who started the argument.
He had fallen once already, in a way. The night Sef died, the day Jeremiah took the blame and disappeared into S-12. That had been a fall. He hadn't picked any direction then. He'd just watched the ground come up and then learned to walk with the impact still in his bones.
The bike hit a stretch of patched plating, each weld a different color, a different hand. The vibration changed, higher, more nervous. He rolled the throttle open, felt the front lighten just enough to make the world sharpen.
"When I fall," he said into the helmet, surprising himself with the words, "I'll pick the direction. Sure."
He rolled his shoulders under the jacket. The scar on his jaw pulled. The bike hummed like it believed him.
"But not tonight."
He opened the throttle just enough to feel the front wheel go light again, then eased it back before the road ran out of forgiveness. Ahead, the turnoff to the hideout loomed—just another dark mouth in a wall of metal. He leaned toward it, toward the crew, toward the mess that belonged to him.
Behind him, the city stretched on, full of unpicked directions and falls waiting for names.