Context: Fray is in hiding, going by the name “Ash.”
Ash says get inside in a voice so raw and ugly that it takes Baj a moment to realize he’s spoken. They tear their eyes from the approaching mass of soldiers and their hulking beast, something that might have been a bear, once, and turn them onto their vagrant companion.
Ash is already pale. Now, despite reddened cheeks from the wind that bites and tugs at his long hair, he looks like a corpse. His eyes are wide, obvious fear, and it sets Baj’s heart racing in tight circles around their ribs. Ash fights. Ash is a fighter. If he’s scared …
“What are you going to do?” Baj asks, trying and failing to disguise their mounting panic. “You can’t—you can’t fight them all!”
The band draws closer. When the wind kicks up it pulls a curtain of snow behind it, hiding them. When it drops its burden, a magic trick: their enemies are far closer than Baj would have thought. “That animal’s eyes are glowing,” they continue, desperately. “They could be Charn.”
Ash says nothing.
“Ash!”
“Get inside,” he says again, with a voice like a creaking coffin. “When it’s s, safe. I’ll get you. Don’t look out until then.”
Baj’s blood, already chilled from the wind, goes a sickening cold. Fine, they think, turning tail and bolting for the tower. Ash is an idiot with a death wish. He won’t buy much time, but maybe he’ll buy enough for Baj to summon the Fangs.
Through the ground door, up the stairs, up up up, key into the tower mainframe, where’s the goddamn handheld radio? There. “Tower to dispatch,” they bark into the microphone. “Hostiles incoming north by northeast. Ten or fifteen heads, plus what looks like—like a bear with … augments.”
Silence.
Then, crackling: “Collie on dispatch. Transmission acknowledged. Did you say augmented bear?”
“Collie, I need all the Fangs you can get now.” Collie is reliable. They can trust Collie to get the Fangs out.
“Roger. ETA on hostiles?”
“They’re—hang on—”
Baj ducks under an array of hanging wires and dance-steps through their collection of gear to reach the window. Don’t look out, they think snidely, like I’m a damn child—
They reach the little window that will show them what’s become of Ash, and they look, and they forget everything else around them. Tower? calls the radio. Tower, come in. I need the ETA.
Out the window, in the near-dark, they can see the small crowd. It’s splintered apart, most of them running for the tower, and a few hanging back. Between them two figures move in frenetic tandem. One is huge, three times the size of the other, glowing hexagonal plates bulging through its skin—the bear. The other is small, slight, and human, because of course it’s Ash. And Ash is glowing, too, a vicious orange that bleeds from his wrists and eyes. In his hands he holds a sword and shield, both burning that awful color.
Baj, I’ve got Fangs on the way, says the radio. Are you safe?
As Baj watches, one of the soldiers in the back of the crowd going for the tower shifts into a firing position. The report of a bullet rings out. Baj sees the moment the bullet hits Ash, and brace themself for the crumple.
It strikes him in the chest. Ash lurches back, nearly falling. A strange sick feeling rolls through Baj, and only worsens when Ash straightens, leaps out of the way of the bear’s glowing jaws, and runs full-tilt at the group making for the tower. His blade meets them first and slips between the ribs of one man—he pulls it free and with an inhuman burst of speed crashes through the others.
The attackers die. They fall with a horrifying swiftness. There is no beauty in it even though the blade arcs so perfectly, even though Ash moves like a dancer as he ends life after life.
The radio screeches. “Tower, this is Wynn Daniels. Report.”
Fear sinks into Baj’s chest like a knife. They can’t tell where it’s coming from, not anymore. The soldiers on their doorstep, the augmented bear, their mother’s sister, and the dawning revelation of what Ash has been keeping secret all this time swirls together within them before finally crushing their heart in icy fingers. They turn away from the window, but it’s almost worse. Their finely-tuned hearing betrays them; they can pick out each individual barked order and aborted scream.
“Tower,” they say into a radio that shakes curiously in their hand. Oh, they think distantly, it’s their hand that’s doing the shaking. That makes sense.
“Report, tower. I have Fangs en route. What is happening?”
Baj tries. They really do. They try to work their jaw, to make a sound. What happens instead is they throw the radio as hard as they possibly can into the reams of junk parts. They walk directly to their huge console and cram themselves under it, then cover their ears. It doesn’t help. The memory of the death shrieks echoes in their head.
“Ash is a Luminary,” they mumble aloud, because they can’t click it together in their head. The same man who helped them rescue Daniels, the man who brings them donuts, who dotes on Daniels’s child, is a Luminary. A Charnite.
Tower, calls the radio, muffled. Get somewhere safe and hold your position.
Time passes. Baj could not say how much. The shouting outside stops, replaced with roaring, and soon those stop too.
Then, the door intercom crackles. “Baj?” comes a haggard, thin voice. “It’s over. It’s safe.”
Safe. Safe. Baj feels a hysterical laugh building in their chest. They’ve allowed a mass murderer into their tower, their family’s home. Nowhere is safe. Certainly not around Ash.
“It’s safe,” says Ash’s strained voice again. “I … I’m hurt. The bear …”
Then nothing.
Before they know their own intentions Baj is on their feet. They watch themself grab the seven-inch hunting knife they keep under the console, then look outside. The snow is crimson. The body of the bear lies motionless, its jaw sliced cleanly from its skull. Human bodies litter the ground, and in the distance they see movement. Fangs.
Downstairs, quickly, quickly. They grip the knife, heart pounding. If Ash is injured this could be their only chance to kill him. Their only chance to avenge their family, to stop the threat before it strikes. They’d be a hero.
The door looms before them. Gritting their teeth, they yank it open, knife held behind their back.
No one is at the threshold. At least they think so, until they look down to see Ash lying limp in the snow. Blood coats his hair and body. The back of his coat and clothes has been ripped to shreds by massive claws. Through the blood and the fabric that still clings to him, they can see it, the tell-tale implants along his spine that only Charn can create. One is cracked.
“Ash?” Baj says warily. Nothing. He’s unconscious. The knife is heavy in their hand. Baj’s eyes sting from tears that threaten to freeze to their face.
They don’t want to be like him, is what they tell themself. They don’t want to be a killer, and they don’t want blood on their hands. They repeat it to themselves all the way up the stairs, dragging Ash with them. They repeat it as they bind him with the steel cables that litter the tower and stow him in one of the overflowing storage closets.
Then they sit back down, this time in their console chair. Their safe place. They look at the blood now smeared on their hands and front, and they begin to cry.