Kamina pushed open the heavy door to the rooftop, the key Eisenhower had given him still warm in his palm. The stairwell behind them was dark and narrow, but the door opened onto a space that was unexpectedly vast. The rooftop of Asan's House of the Star stretched wide and flat beneath the sepia-toned sky, the clock tower rising to one side, its hands marking the steady passage of purchased time.
Imogen stepped out beside him and pulled her dress tighter against the wind. The air up here was colder than it had been at street level, carrying the faint metallic scent of steam and the distant hum of the Nest's machinery. She looked at Kamina, who was already scanning the rooftop with the amusement he brought to new environments.
"Shmuel told us to act normal in front of the kids," she said.
Kamina waved a hand dismissively. "Shmuel tells us a lot of things."
"He specifically told you. Multiple times. He said, and I quote, 'Kamina, please do not say anything that would make the children think we are insane.'"
"That's a lot of restrictions."
"It's one restriction. Act normal."
"Normal is relative." Kamina began walking toward the cluster of tents at the far end of the rooftop. "Besides, Shmuel's not even here. He's off getting his arm fixed. He can't complain about things he doesn't witness."
"He will absolutely complain about things he doesn't witness. He'll ask us what happened and then complain retroactively."
Kamina considered this. "Yeah, he does do that."
They crossed the rooftop together, their footsteps echoing on the dark stone. The tents ahead were not the makeshift shelters Imogen had expected. They were large, constructed from heavy canvas that had been treated with some kind of weatherproofing compound, their seams reinforced with brass fittings. Steam vents lined the base of each structure, releasing gentle plumes of white vapor. The Asan company had invested significantly in these children.
At the center of the cluster, visible even from a distance, was the telescope.
It was enormous. The barrel alone was longer than Kamina was tall, its surface a complex patchwork of brass and dark iron and something that might have been polished obsidian. Gears lined its base, each one connected to a system of pulleys and counterweights that allowed the massive instrument to pivot and angle with precision. Dials and gauges covered the control panel, their needles trembling faintly with whatever internal mechanisms kept the device calibrated. The brass caught the grey light and held it, gleaming with the particular sheen of metal that had been maintained by hands that cared.
Kamina stopped walking. He looked at the telescope for a long moment.
"That's a big scope," he said.
"That's an understatement," Imogen replied.
They approached the nearest tent. The canvas flap was tied back, revealing the interior, and Kamina ducked through the opening. Imogen followed.
And then she stopped.
The inside of the tent was not sepia-toned. It was not black and white. It was alive with color.
Red. Blue. Gold. Green. The hues saturated the space with a vibrancy that Imogen had not realized she had been missing until this exact moment. The cushions scattered across the floor were deep crimson. The charts pinned to the canvas walls were marked in inks of cobalt and emerald. A small lamp in the corner cast a warm, golden light that made the entire space feel like a pocket of another world.
"How," Imogen said.
Kamina was looking around with the same expression of wonder. "I have no idea. I wish Shmuel was here to explain it."
"He would know."
"He would absolutely know. He'd have some long explanation about this and we'd only understand half of it."
"Less than half."
"Way less than half."
A voice cut through their mutual confusion.
"You're the fixers!"
The girl who had spoken was already moving toward them. Dark red hair fell past her shoulders, the color vivid and unmistakable against the monochrome world beyond the tent. Her eyes were sharp and calculating, the eyes of someone who had learned to assess people quickly and act on those assessments. She was tall for her age, her posture confident, her smile carrying the particular charm of someone who knew exactly how to use it.
She looked, Imogen realized, to be around her own age.
"Opportunity," the girl said, extending a hand. Her grip was firm. "That's what they call me, anyway. The eldest. Which means I'm in charge when Mr. Eisenhower isn't around." She gestured behind her at the other three children, who had paused their respective activities to observe the newcomers. "That's Curiosity, the one who ate my pudding. He'll pay for that eventually." She pointed at the black-haired boy, who waved with the spoon still in his mouth. "That's Pioneer at the chessboard. She's been beating Voyager for the past hour, but he keeps asking for rematches." The white-haired girl looked up and nodded, solemn and composed. The blond boy beside her, the youngest, offered a small, shy wave. "And that's Voyager. He's ten. He's the only one of us who hasn't been converted yet."
Imogen looked at the blond boy. He was small and quiet, his eyes wide and curious, his limbs still flesh and bone. The other three had replaced parts of themselves with metal and gear, but Voyager remained whole.
"He wants to stay this way," Opportunity said, as though answering a question that had not been asked. Her voice was casual, but there was something protective underneath it. "He says human fragility is worth preserving. That it's brave to be breakable." She shrugged. "I think he's a little strange. But he's our strange."
Kamina and Imogen exchanged a glance. The tent was warm and colorful and filled with the particular energy of children who had been left unsupervised for slightly too long. Opportunity stood before them with her arms crossed and her smile practiced.
"Yeah, so," Opportunity said, "you guys want the tour, or do you want to jump straight to the big questions? I'm fine either way."
Kamina looked around the tent. At the pudding container still clutched in Curiosity's hand. At the chessboard where Voyager was studying his pieces with the solemn intensity of a general surveying a battlefield. At Pioneer, who had not moved from her seat but whose pale eyes tracked every movement in the room.
"Big questions," Kamina said. "What's your end goal here? What's all this for?"
Opportunity opened her mouth to answer. But the voice that spoke came from behind her.
"So that someday," Voyager said, "someone might reach the untouchable."
The youngest child had looked up from the chessboard. His voice was soft, the words carrying a particular clarity that children sometimes possessed before the world taught them to complicate things.
Kamina looked at the small blond boy. "The untouchable," he repeated.
"The stars," Voyager said simply. "And whatever lies beyond them. We wish to see it properly. Not as a distant light, but as something that might be... reached. Someday." He paused, his small hands resting on the edge of the chessboard. "That's the point of the telescope, really. It's not merely for looking. It's for understanding. And once you understand a thing, it isn't untouchable anymore."
Kamina was amused. The corner of his mouth twitched upward. "That's a pretty big dream."
"We're a rather ambitious lot," Curiosity said, finally setting down the pudding container and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He spoke with a different rhythm than Opportunity, his words carrying a particular lilt. "Always have been. Mr. Eisenhower says it's our defining trait. That and the fact that we're all completely barmy." He grinned. "He means it affectionately, I'm fairly certain."
Imogen tilted her head. "Why did you hire fixers for this? It's a research project. You're looking at stars. What do you need protection from?"
The children exchanged glances.
"Mr. Eisenhower suggested it," Pioneer said. "Through Alexy's recommendation. He said employing a fixer office for our project would grant us the most favorable result." She paused, her white hair catching the lamplight. "We don't claim to understand precisely what he meant by that."
"He explained it to us, mind you," Curiosity added, leaning back on his cushion. "Several times, in fact. Went on about variables and risk distribution and something called operational flexibility. Made a proper hash of explaining it, if I'm honest. The man's brilliant, absolutely cracking, but he does go on a bit when he's excited." He shrugged. "Still, the man knows his business, so we went along with it."
Opportunity cut in, "What they're trying to say is that we asked for help because Eisenhower told us we should, and Alexy agreed, and honestly?" She spread her hands. "We don't fully get it either. But we've learned that when Mister Eisenhower agrees on something, it's usually worth listening to."
Imogen's brow furrowed slightly. She was still processing the answer, her fingers absently tapping against her teacup. "So you don't know why you need fixers."
"Not a clue," Curiosity said cheerfully. "Rather exciting, innit?"
Kamina, who had been watching the exchange with growing interest, turned his gaze back to the black-haired boy. "What's your group called? You said you were a research group."
Curiosity straightened. There was a certain quiet pride in the way he answered.
"We call ourselves The Far Beyond."
Kamina jerked a thumb toward Imogen. "You know, Opportunity's better behaved than you."
Imogen's fist connected with his arm.
"Take that back," she said.
"She greeted us properly. She introduced everyone. She didn't complain much."
Imogen hit him again. "My dress is grey. I have a right to complain."
She struck his arm a third time. Then a fourth, with increasing futility. By the fifth punch, she had given up on doing any damage and instead nudged him sharply with her elbow.
"We haven't introduced ourselves yet," she said, turning back to the children with the composed dignity of someone who had definitely not just been punching her colleague repeatedly. "I'm Imogen. This is Kamina. We're from the Great…"
"You can skip it, if you like," Curiosity said, waving a hand airily. "We've already read your files. Proper thorough, they were."
Imogen blinked. "You have files on us?"
"Alexy sent them along with the commission details," Pioneer explained. She had not moved from her seat at the chessboard, but her pale eyes were attentive. "Your office's combat record. Grade assessments. Specializations. It was all included in the briefing materials."
"Rather impressive reading," Curiosity added. He tilted his head. "Speaking of which…where's the one with the prosthetic arms?"
"Shmuel," Imogen said. "He's getting his arm fixed. It took some damage in our last fight. There's an Asan company-sponsored prosthetic shop nearby. He should be back within the hours."
Curiosity nodded, apparently satisfied. "Lovely. We'll meet him later, then."
The prosthetic shop was not the kind of establishment one found in the Backstreets.
It occupied the ground floor of a building in one of the Nest's more affluent commercial districts, its facade a composition of polished brass and dark wood and large, gleaming windows through which the warm light of the interior spilled out onto the sepia-toned street. A brass plaque beside the door bore the shop's name in elegant, engraved script, and a second, smaller plaque indicated its affiliation with the Asan Company. The door itself was attended by a mechanical bell that chimed with a soft, resonant tone whenever a customer entered.
Inside, the floors were dark hardwood, buffed to a mirror sheen. The walls were lined with glass cases displaying prosthetic components in various stages of assembly. Fingers. Hands. Entire arms. Each piece was mounted on velvet cushions, lit by individual brass lamps that cast a warm, golden glow. The air smelled of machine oil and polished metal and something faintly antiseptic, the particular scent of a place where precision was valued above all else. A grandfather clock in the corner marked the passage of time.
Shmuel lay on a lounge chair near the back of the shop. It was upholstered in dark brown leather, a chair designed for wealthy clients who expected comfort while their augmentations were serviced. His left arm was propped up on a brass stand beside him, the plating removed, the internal mechanisms exposed to the warm light. The damage was extensive. The servo housing was cracked. Two of the primary joint actuators had been jarred out of alignment. The plating along the forearm was dented in three places, one of them deep enough to have compromised the structural integrity of the limb.
The worker attending to his arm was a woman in a crisp white uniform, her hair pinned back beneath a small cap. She worked with the quiet, methodical precision of someone who had been doing this for years, her tools moving through the damaged mechanism with the confidence of familiarity. She had introduced herself when Shmuel arrived, but her name had slipped from his mind almost immediately, crowded out by the steady ache in his arm and the lingering exhaustion of the fight.
"This arm," she said, not looking up from her work, "is in an awful state. What on earth did you fight to get it like this?"
"A Proxy of the Index," Shmuel said.
Her hands paused. Only for a fraction of a second. Then they resumed their work, the tool in her fingers moving with the same steady rhythm as before, but something in her posture had shifted. "You're having me on."
"No."
"You fought a Proxy of the Index." She said it flatly, as though testing the words for plausibility. "You. A Grade 6 fixer from a Grade 7 office. Fought a Proxy. One of the Five Fingers' ranking officers. And you're here getting your arm repaired instead of being in a morgue."
"I had help," Shmuel said.
"Help or not, that's..." She trailed off, shaking her head. A small, incredulous sound escaped her throat. "No offense meant, but you don't look cut for fighting people of that caliber."
Shmuel looked up at the ceiling. The grandfather clock ticked steadily in the corner. The warm light of the brass lamps fell across his face, and he thought about the bus. About the greatsword sweeping through the aisle. About the force of Rowbotham's swing throwing him through the back of the vehicle like debris.
"I'm not," he said quietly. "Cut for it, I mean. I know I'm not."
The worker looked at him. There was something in her expression that was not quite pity and not quite curiosity. Something in between.
"Then why do it?" she asked. "Why take a fight you know you're not cut for?"
Shmuel was silent for a moment. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, the mechanical joints responding smoothly, undamaged. He thought about Kamina, standing between the bus passengers and the Proxy with his katana drawn. He thought about Imogen, her eyes bleeding red, firing shot after shot at an enemy who had shrugged off everything they threw at him. He thought about the word Kamina had called him. *Bro.* And the distance between what that word meant and what he currently was.
"A fixer's life," he said finally. "That's part of it. You take the jobs that come. You fight the fights you're given. You don't always get to choose what's in front of you."
"That's not an answer," the worker said. "That's a job description."
Shmuel turned his head to look at her. She was younger than he had first thought. The cap and the uniform had added years, but her face was unlined, her eyes sharp and assessing.
"It's getting more personal than it used to be," he said. "The fighting. The work. It started as just... survival. A way to pay the bills. Keep the office running. But somewhere along the way it stopped being just that."
"What changed?"
He thought about Bruno. About the Titanic. About a broken glass heart and a voice that had offered him peace and a man who had eaten the worst food he had ever eaten and kept going anyway.
"Everything," he said.
The worker held his gaze for a moment longer. Then she nodded, once, and returned her attention to his arm.
"Well," she said, "whatever you're fighting for, you'll need both arms working properly to keep doing it. This one's going to take a bit more work. The actuator alignment is completely off." She reached for a different tool, smaller, more precise. "Try not to get thrown through any more buses in the meantime."
"I'll do my best," Shmuel said.
The grandfather clock ticked. The brass lamps glowed. And Shmuel lay on the leather lounge chair, staring at the ceiling, thinking about what it meant to keep going when the fights kept getting bigger and the damage kept accumulating and the personal stakes kept rising.
He didn't have an answer.
But he had an arm to fix. And when it was fixed, he had a job to do.
Shmuel placed his right arm on the chair's armrest, the mechanical fingers curling loosely against the leather. The worker shifted her position, her tools now moving between both limbs, checking the bullet chambers built into each palm.
"These chambers," she said, tapping the housing with a small screwdriver. "The acceleration mechanism. It's solidwork." She adjusted a calibration screw and glanced at him. "The Thumb uses something similar. Not identical. They've got their own proprietary version, of course. You're in interesting company."
Shmuel said nothing. His eyes were on his hands, watching the worker's tools move through the mechanisms, but his attention had drifted inward. The Thumb was a thought for another time.
His mind settled on a problem that had been turning over in his thoughts since the fight with Rowbotham. The desire for strength. It was a simple desire, but the path to it was not. Augmentation could only carry a person so far. A stronger arm could lift a heavier blade, but it could not teach the wrist the proper angle to swing it. Faster reflexes could shave fractions of a second from a response, but reflexes without training were just twitching. The body was a vessel. The skill that filled it came from practice, experience and the slow accumulation of hard-won lessons that no amount of money could purchase. He could replace every limb and still be the same fighter underneath.
The worker continued her adjustments. Shmuel continued his thinking. And the chambers, when she finished, would hold bullets again. But the strength to use them well would have to come from somewhere.
The bell above the door chimed.
Another worker emerged from the back of the shop, smoothing the front of her uniform as she approached the entrance. Her voice carried the practiced courtesy of someone accustomed to dealing with the Nest's upper clientele. "Good afternoon. How may we assist you today?"
"I need my spine checked," the customer said. "It took some damage."
Shmuel's right hand twitched. He knew it before his mind had finished processing the words.
Rowbotham stepped into view.
He was still wearing the black formal attire, though it had been cleaned and pressed since their fight. The white cloak was new, the gold trim unblemished. He moved with the same unhurried precision as before, his posture straight, his expression unreadable. If he was surprised to see Shmuel, he did not show it.
Shmuel's left arm was still open on the brass stand, the internal mechanisms exposed, the plating removed. His right arm was on the chair's armrest, the bullet chamber partially disassembled. Neither limb was in a state to fight. His body tensed anyway.
"Save that for when you are available to do it."
The worker who had been attending to Shmuel glanced between them, her expression carefully neutral. The second worker, oblivious to the tension, had already led Rowbotham to a padded table near the window. The Proxy lay down on his stomach, his head resting on his folded arms, exposing the length of his back. The white shirt was untucked and lifted, revealing the metal segments of a prosthetic spinal column, each vertebra a polished cylinder of dark steel.
Shmuel did not relax. "What do you want?"
"The Prescript," Rowbotham said. His voice was slightly muffled by the table. "I executed it as written. As the will of the city guides me. It told me to warn those who challenged my view." He paused. The worker attending to his spine began her examination, her tools clicking softly against the metal segments.
"So you're not here to finish what you started."
"No."
Shmuel watched him across the room. The grandfather clock ticked. The brass lamps cast their warm glow over both of them, two fixers from opposing sides of a fight that had ended inconclusively, now sharing the same quiet space.
"I have been thinking," Rowbotham said, "about the Prescript's meaning. The warning it asked me to deliver.Though not fully understand it. But I wonder." His fingers drummed once against the table. "I think it was trying to protect something. Or someone. The one who burns the brightest among you. I think the warning was meant for him. Through me. A warning about what he will see."
Shmuel was very still. His mind was already moving, connecting fragments. The telescope. The engineer whose mind had shattered. The children who wanted to look at the sky. Kamina, who would stand between them and whatever they found.
Kamina, who burned brighter than anyone Shmuel had ever known.
"The Prescript did not tell me to interfere," Rowbotham continued. "Nor did it tell me to stay away. So I will stand at the sideline. I want to know what the man who challenged my view will do against what the Prescript warned of." His voice was quiet, almost thoughtful. "The next time we meet, I may have an answer for him. A response to his perspective. Through violence or through words, it's all the same"
He paused. The worker's tools clicked against his spine.
"But I will not change my view," he said. "No matter what he shows me. Nothing he says or does will alter that."
An hour passed in the prosthetic shop. The grandfather clock marked the minutes with its tick. Shmuel's arms were reassembled, the bullet chambers calibrated, the plating sealed. Rowbotham's spine was inspected and found intact.
They walked outside together.
As they parted ways, something moved beneath Rowbotham's sleeve. A black sphere, no larger than a grain of rice, detached from the fabric. It crossed the narrow gap between them in silence and settled against the back of Shmuel's neck, just below the collar. He did not feel it. The sphere shifted, finding the groove of his spine, and then slid downward, vanishing beneath his coat.