Chapter 29: Not
The air in Bay 7 was different. It didn’t hum with potential energy or the sterile chill of the simulators. It tasted of grease, ozone, and old sweat. It smelled of work—real, grimy, punishing work. Flickering orange sodium lamps fought a losing battle against the deep shadows clinging to the high ceilings, where gantries skeletal with disuse. The bay was a graveyard for machines, a museum of failures. Hulking chassis of outdated Mark I and II exosuits stood propped against walls like dissected iron giants, their armor plates scarred with ghostly outlines of claws and energy burns.
Ren stood at the threshold, his father’s jacket feeling absurdly bright in the gloom. The shame from the simulator bay was a cold stone in his gut. This was where he belonged now. With the broken things.
He heard the clang before he saw the source. A rhythmic, metallic bang… bang… bang echoing from behind the simulator cradle he’d crippled. He approached, his boots sticking slightly on the oil-stained concrete.
A pair of legs in grease-monkey coveralls protruded from an access panel low on the Grunt’s ankle. The rest of the person was buried in machinery, illuminated by a dangling work light. A wrench clattered to the floor.
“Hand me the 10-mil hex, would you? The one with the chewed-up head.” The voice was muffled, slightly annoyed.
Ren blinked, looking at the scattered tools on a rolling cart. He found the wrench, its handle worn smooth. He knelt and placed it into a waiting, gloved hand.
“Thanks. This linkage is fused. Probably from the shock when wonder-boy here decided to punch a wall.” The mechanic wriggled out, sitting up and wiping his brow with the back of his wrist, leaving a black smear.
Ren stared. The spiky, unruly hair was darkened with grime, but the face underneath, now split into a wide, familiar grin, was unmistakable.
“Kai?”
“The one and only.” Kai Tanaka’s grin widened. “Heard they sentenced someone to hard labor. Didn’t think they’d send you down to the mines with me.”
“You… work here?” Ren asked, the surprise cutting through his self-pity.
“Engineer’s apprentice,” Kai said, heaving himself to his feet. He was taller than Ren, always had been, but here surrounded by giants, he seemed in his element. “Better than listening to my old man lecture about supply chain logistics for the hundredth time. Here, I get to hit things with bigger hammers.” He jerked a thumb at the damaged Grunt. “Speaking of. This your handiwork?”
Ren looked away, his cheeks burning. “Yeah.”
Kai let out a low whistle, not of reprimand, but of appreciation. “Clean hit. Bent the main hydraulic conduit. Sheared three bolts. Impressive, in a ‘horrifically expensive’ kind of way.” He picked up a data-slate, scrolling. “Says here ‘pilot distraction.’ So, what was it? A pretty butterfly on the monitor? A particularly interesting crack in the ceiling?”
Ren didn’t answer. He picked up a smaller wrench, turning it over in his hands. The metal was cold.
Kai’s teasing demeanor softened. He leaned against the Grunt’s leg. “Look, forget it. Everyone eats it in the sim eventually. Kenny Matthew once synced so hard he vomited inside his helmet. Legendary. The techs still talk about the smell.” He nudged Ren with his elbow. “Come on. You’re on my detail now. I’ll show you the ropes. First lesson: everything is heavier than it looks, and everything is out to spill toxic fluid on you.”
For the next few hours, Ren’s world shrank to the intricacies of failure. Kai was a patient, if sarcastic, teacher. He showed Ren how to isolate power conduits, how to drain hydraulic fluid into reclamation drums—a thick, amber liquid that smelled like chemicals and pennies—and how to use a sonic driver to resonate seized bolts loose. The work was methodical, physical. It demanded a different kind of focus. There was no neural link, only the strain in his fingers, the ache in his shoulders from holding a heavy plate steady.
“See this?” Kai said, pointing to a bundle of fiber-optic cables deep within the calf actuator. The cables were sheathed in a strange, opalescent material. “Neural feedback lines. They’re what let the suit feel what you feel, and vice versa. You jam your heel, you feel it. Amazing tech. Also insanely fragile.” He traced a line to a small, crystalline processor node. “This is the empathy core. The AI’s… well, not its brain, but its heart, I guess. If this gets fried, the suit’s just a dumb machine. No sync possible.”
Ren looked at the delicate core, glowing with a soft, internal blue light. This was what he had failed to connect with.
“You know a lot about it,” Ren said, wiping grease on his borrowed coveralls.
Kai shrugged. “I like machines. They’re simpler than people. Input, output. Fix the broken part, it works again.” He gave Ren a sidelong glance. “People… not so much.”
They worked in companionable silence for a while, the only sounds the buzz of the lights, the distant clang from other bays, and the rhythmic click of their tools.
“So,” Kai said eventually, his voice casual. “Heard the distraction had a name.”
Ren’s hand stilled on the bolt he was tightening.
“Luna Owari,” Kai continued, not looking up from the circuit board he was inspecting. “The transfer. Tall. Quiet. Looks like she’s thinking of equations to solve your personal failures.”
“You know her?”
“Know of her. Everyone does. She’s in our cohort, but she doesn’t hang around the dorms. Keeps to herself. Top of every theory class. Aced the preliminary physicals.” Kai finally looked over, his expression uncharacteristically serious. “And she’s the only one in our year, Ren. The only one who qualified for pilot track on her own merit. No legacy. No special pardon. Just walked in and synced with a Mark III trainer at 58% on her first try.”
The wrench felt suddenly dead in Ren’s hand. The number hung in the oily air: 58%. He’d barely scratched 41% before falling apart. His claim to the cockpit was built on his father’s ghost and a government deal. Hers was built on… what?
“Why was she there?” Ren asked, his voice quiet.
“Watching you?” Kai shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe she was curious about the guy wearing Hiro Ikawi’s jacket. Maybe she was scouting the competition. Or maybe she just got lost.” He smirked. “Probably the last one. This place is a maze.”
But Ren knew it wasn’t that. The way she had looked at him—not at the spectacle, not at the machine, but directly at him in the cavity—had been deliberate. It was study, not curiosity.
Kai clapped him on the back, leaving a greasy print on the white fabric. “Don’t let it get to you. So she’s a natural. So what? My old man says naturals burn out fastest. They don’t know how to be careful.” He gestured around the bay. “We’re the careful ones. We learn from the broken stuff. Makes us harder to break later.”
Ren nodded, but the words felt hollow. He looked at his hands, black with grime and hydraulic fluid. This was his reality now. Bolts and broken lines. While Luna Owari was probably in a pristine simulator, her sync percentage climbing, her path clean and deserved.
The shift-end klaxon blared, a harsh, mechanical sound that echoed through the bay.
“That’s us,” Kai said, stretching with a groan. “Same time tomorrow. We gotta get the new conduit installed.” He started cleaning his tools, meticulously wiping each one before placing it in a molded case.
Ren slowly took off the coveralls, folding them onto a bench. He pulled his father’s jacket back on. The red stripe seemed to scream in the dim light.
As they walked out of Bay 7, the cleaner, brighter corridors of the main academy felt alien. Kai chatted about an engine modification he was theorizing, but Ren’s mind was elsewhere.
He saw a group of cadets rounding a corner ahead, their laughter bright and easy. Among them, a head taller than the rest, was a flash of dirty blonde hair. Luna. She was listening to someone speak, nodding slightly, her expression that same serene, unreadable mask.
She didn’t look his way.
Ren stopped walking, letting the distance grow between him and Kai, between him and the group ahead.
He stood there in the sterile hallway, a spot of grease-stained white in a world of drab uniforms, the phantom scent of oil and failure clinging to him. The memory of her observation was no longer a mystery to be solved. It was a benchmark he couldn’t reach, a silent judgment in a corridor that now felt a thousand miles long. The careful work with Kai had grounded him, but it had also carved the hierarchy in stone. He was below, with the broken things. She was above, with the working ones.
He turned and walked the other way, towards the barracks, the weight in his gut no longer just shame, but a cold, hardening resolve.
(remember ren is in the engineer sector as punishment for messing up a training routine with one of the android. REN has inherited the mark 1 from his father)