CHAPTER 2 – The Quiet Boy
The metal stair dug into his back, but Balik barely felt it.
Alloy Street lay around him in crooked lines of rust and shadow, the moon hanging too bright and too far away. The night was still wrong—too quiet, too empty—and the silence outside only made the noise inside louder.
Two voices still circled in his skull.
One cold.One breaking.
You did what you had to, the cold one said. Balik's voice, sharp and flat.You destroyed what you shouldn't have, the other whispered. Softer. Old. Tejas.
His fingers curled over the edge of the step until his knuckles went white. His breath rasped in and out, too fast, too shallow. For a moment, he didn't know if he was going to be sick or scream.
"Stop," he muttered, as if he could order his mind the way Varun ordered people. "Enough."
The street didn't answer him.
The lamp a few paces away flickered, throwing his shadow long across the cracked ground. For a heartbeat, it split in two. Two outlines. Two heads. Two sets of shoulders. Then the light steadied, and it was one again. He swallowed hard and shut his eyes.
The guilt wouldn't let him rest. It clawed up his throat every time he tried to force his thoughts still. Faces flashed behind his eyelids—people he'd hurt, people he'd used, the family he'd… no. He didn't let that thought finish. It hurt too much.
His head throbbed.
The pressure behind his eyes swelled, sharp and blinding, and the world around him… wavered. The cold stairs under his spine, the rough air, the rusty stink of metal—everything stretched and blurred like a drawing smeared by careless hands.
His stomach lurched, and he grabbed his temples, fingers digging into his scalp.
The moon vanished.
The shadows swallowed him whole.
The first sound he remembered was crying.
Not his. The other children.
They wailed and shrieked and coughed in the cramped stone room, their voices bouncing off the bare walls and low ceiling, mixing with the scrape of wooden bowls and the sharp, bitter snaps of the caretaker's voice.
But he didn't cry.
A small boy sat on a thin mat pressed up against the corner, knees drawn to his chest, hands folded loosely over his shins. He watched.
He watched the others fight over food, scrap over a cracked toy, yank each other's hair. He watched the caretaker stomp across the room with a permanent frown, watched the way her shoulders sagged when she thought no one was looking.
He watched her glance at him sometimes, uncertain, as if he bothered her simply by existing quietly.
He was three.
The caretaker had a name, but in his head she was just Her. The room had been his whole world since he could remember—gray walls, gray blankets, a single high window that only showed a slice of sky when the clouds were kind.
He learned early that loud children got hit more often.
So he stayed quiet.
"Why doesn't that one cry?" Her voice, one day, floated above him. He didn't lift his head. He studied the cracks in the floor, counting them, tracing their paths with his eyes.
"He's odd," another muttered. "The quiet one. Watches too much."
He listened without moving. It was easier to be invisible.
One afternoon, the door scraped open heavier than usual. Instead of the caretaker shoving in a pot or a bucket, footsteps entered—slow, measured, accompanied by the soft rustle of better fabric.
Balik—though he didn't know that name yet—lifted his head.
A tall man stepped into the room.
He didn't look like the others. His coat was clean, his boots polished. His hair was pulled back neatly, and a faint scar sat like a pale line on his left cheek. His eyes slid across the room, skimming the crying children, the mess, the caretaker's strained smile.
Then those eyes stopped.
On him.
The boy held his gaze, unblinking.
The man's lips curled, not quite into a smile. More into a shape that said interesting.
"This the one you mentioned?" the man asked.
The caretaker wiped her hands on her apron. "Yes, sir. Doesn't cry. Doesn't laugh. Just… watches."
The man walked forward.
The boy didn't move. His heart beat a little faster, but his face stayed still.
The man crouched in front of him, the coat pulling at his shoulders. Up close, the boy could see faint lines around his eyes, not from laughter—those were from squinting, from staring, from thinking too much.
"What's your name?" the man asked.
The boy opened his mouth. Then closed it. He tried to remember if anyone had told him a name just for him. Sometimes they called him "you." Sometimes "quiet one." Sometimes "boy." None of them felt like names.
He shrugged, just barely.
"Doesn't talk much either," the caretaker said, half-apologetic, half-relieved this one didn't scream like the others.
The man's gaze didn't leave the boy's face. Suddenly, he raised a hand and snapped his fingers sharply right beside the boy's ear.
The boy didn't even flinch.
He just looked at the man's hand, then back up at his face.
The man's eyes lit up in a dangerous way.
"There it is," he murmured. "Reflex control. Fear control. At three." He straightened and reached into his coat, pulling out a small leather pouch. The clink of coins inside made the caretaker's eyes widen.
"Train him," the man said, tossing the pouch into her hands. "Not like the others. No coddling. No indulging. Make him quiet. Make him obedient. Make him… useful."
The caretaker's fingers shook slightly as she closed around the money. "Useful how, sir?"
"Teach him to move without sound," the man replied. "To listen more than he speaks. To remember what he sees. If he survives… I'll come back for him."
"Why not take him now?" she asked.
The man's gaze sharpened. "You don't sharpen a blade before you're sure it won't break in your hand."
Then he turned and left.
The boy listened to the fading footsteps. He watched the door close. For some reason, his small fingers clenched at his sides.
That was the day his training began.
No one explained it to him. There were no lessons spoken, no kind words of encouragement. The caretaker only changed the way she looked at him.
He became a project.
At night, when the others finally fell asleep, she shook his shoulder and pulled him up.
"On your feet," she hissed.
She led him to the narrow hallway that ran behind the dormitory. Candlelight threw trembling shadows along the walls.
"Walk," she said.
He walked.
"No." A slap on the back of his head. "Too heavy. Again."
He walked lighter. Toes first, careful on the balls of his feet.
"Again."
He walked until his legs trembled. They did not stop until his steps made no sound even over the creaking boards.
The next night, she made him balance on a narrow beam of wood laid across a pair of split crates. "Don't fall," she said. When he did, she put him back up. Again. Again. Again, until his arms ached from catching himself and his ankles burned.
Some nights, she made him stand in the corner, eyes closed, listening.
"What do you hear?" she demanded.
He described it, haltingly at first. The drip of water from the cracked ceiling. The shuffle of a rat under the cabinet. The deep, heavy snore of the oldest boy. The muttered curses of one of the older girls, awake and angry. The wind outside, sneaking through the gaps in the boards.
The more he listened, the more detail he found.
"Good," she said. "Remember it. A good information gatherer hears what he shouldn't."
He grew thinner. Stronger. Colder.
He learned to keep his face calm when punished. He learned to take blame silently when a younger child messed up. They hit him because he didn't cry, because he was easiest to aim frustration at. Eventually, the caretaker stopped beating him for mistakes and started beating him to see if anything could crack that composure.
He did not break.
Not where she could see.
She wasn't the only one who noticed him.
"Why do you always sit there?"
The voice
cut through one gray afternoon like a bright thread through dull cloth.
He looked up.
A girl, maybe a year younger than him, crouched beside his corner. Her hair was messy, curling around her ears. Her eyes were big, too big for her thin face, and full of a restless energy that didn't belong in these walls. She hugged her knees, watching him like he was some strange animal that had wandered into her world.
He blinked.
"Because I can see the door," he said at last.
It was the first full sentence he'd spoken to someone his age in… he didn't know how long.
She grinned. "So you're weird and smart."
He frowned a bit at that, but she just shuffled closer, like his silence was an invitation instead of a warning.
"My bed sucks," she complained cheerfully. "Yours sucks too?"
He shrugged.
"I stole bread," she whispered suddenly, eyes bright with mischief. "Want some?"
He opened his mouth to say no. Saying yes meant owing her something. Owing meant risk.
His stomach growled.
She laughed and pressed a small, slightly stale piece of bread into his hand. "Too late. You touched it. Now it's yours."
He stared at it, then at her. "Why?" he asked.
"Because you look like you forgot how to eat," she said simply.
He didn't answer, but he ate.
She came back the next day. And the next. And the next.
She talked about everything. The way the rain sounded on the roof when she couldn't sleep. The shape of the clouds through the tiny window when she stood on the tallest crate. The names she made up for the other kids. The dreams she had about leaving this place and finding somewhere that didn't smell like damp wood and despair.
He listened more than he spoke, but sometimes, when she asked a question and waited, he answered. She teased him for his short replies. Called him "quiet boy" with a lopsided smile.
Once, she asked, "What do you want to be?"
He stared at her, genuinely confused. "What I am told to be."
She kicked lightly at his foot. "No, stupid. Not what they want. What you want."
He had no answer.
Her face softened. "Then remember this," she said. "If you ever get out before me… you better run until your feet fall off. Don't stop because someone tells you you can't."
He looked at her for a long time.
"…Okay," he said.
It was a promise he didn't know how to keep.
When the caretaker caught her sharing food one night, the woman's hand surged forward in anger. Before he could think, the boy stepped between them and took the slap for her.
The sting bloomed across his cheek.
The girl's eyes widened.
"Idiot," she hissed later, dabbing the bruise with a damp cloth she'd stolen. "Why did you do that?"
He thought of the man with the scar. Of her warnings. Of the quiet way her laughter made the room feel less like a cage.
"Because you talk too much," he said. "If they hurt you, you might stop."
She laughed, just a little, and for the first time, his chest warmed instead of tightening.
And then one day, she was gone.
No warning. No goodbye. Her bed was empty. Her blanket folded, strangely neat. The caretaker did not speak about it. The others assumed she'd been relocated, taken, forgotten.
He sat in his corner that night, staring at the space where she used to sleep. His hands lay useless in his lap. The air felt heavier.
She had been the only color in the gray.
He felt something tear inside his chest—small and quiet, but real.
He didn't cry. He didn't know how. But in the dark, a faint voice he didn't recognize whispered from somewhere deep and distant.
You've lost someone before, that voice said. Haven't you?
He pressed his forehead to his knees and stayed like that until morning.
The years blurred.
Training hardened. The drills got longer. The punishments got harsher. His balance improved, his hearing sharpened, his steps grew so light he could cross the dormitory without waking a single child. The caretaker used him to spy on visiting donors, on new staff, on older kids planning to run.
He obeyed.
Because obedience meant survival.
Because somewhere behind the quiet boy they were shaping, something old and broken was sleeping, and waking it felt worse than anything the caretaker could do.
On the day he turned eight, the man with the scar came back.
The orphanage had not changed much. The same cracked walls. The same smell. The same tired caretaker, now a little more hunched, a little more lined.
He stood in the doorway, coat sharp, boots still clean, eyes still taut and measuring.
"Where is he?" he asked.
The caretaker knew who he meant.
She pointed.
Balik stood straighter as the man approached. His body moved without commands now; back straight, hands at his sides, face blank.
The man circled him once like a craftsman inspecting a blade.
"Quiet," he said.
The boy nodded.
"Can you move without sound?"
The boy stepped, turned, crossed the space between them. The boards did not complain.
"Can you listen?"
The boy tilted his head, then recited the sounds he heard outside the room—the clatter of a dropped pan, the murmur of two voices arguing near the kitchen door, the faint squeak of a cart wheel.
The man smiled.
"Good," he said. "You'll come with me now."
There was no question in it.
The caretaker looked at the boy as if she wanted to say something. Apology, maybe. Or warning. But the coins she'd accepted years ago sat between them like invisible chains.
Balik didn't look back as he walked toward the door.
But somewhere inside him, something did.
A memory of a girl with messy hair and too-bright eyes. A half-joking threat that he better run if he got out first. A feeling he didn't have words for.
His feet stepped over the threshold.
The orphanage fell behind him.
The night on Alloy Street seemed to rush back in, and suddenly he was on the stair again, staring up at the moon.
His heart pounded in his ribs.
He sucked in a sharp breath, as if he had been underwater for a long time and only now found the surface.
"I was made for this," Balik whispered into the empty street. His voice shook despite him. "Long before the knives. Long before the missions."
Tejas's voice trembled inside him.
You were a child.
Balik closed his eyes. The two versions of himself pressed against each other like mismatched pieces of broken glass.
"I was broken," he corrected softly. "Before I ever touched blood."
The wind slid down Alloy Street, shivering past him, tugging at his hair.
He didn't move.
He wasn't sure if he could.
Somewhere ahead, there would be more memories waiting—of Mira, of Ishan, of the first missions, of the first time the word kill stopped being something from stories and became something written on his hands.
But for now, as the moon watched and the street stayed silent, he lay back on the cold stair and let the truth settle over him:
His hell hadn't started with the organization.
It had started the day a man with a scar saw a quiet boy in the corner and decided that silence was useful.