The train groaned like a dying beast.
Steam hissed from cracked pipes. Rust flaked from the bolted spine overhead. Beneath the suspended rails of Rusting Rails, where the Midnight Zone far from the edge of the Underworld, it was always this loud—loud with metal, decay, and old things trying not to collapse.
Luca lay flat on his back, half his body swallowed by the belly of a busted railcrawler. His fingers, stained black from oil and ink, scraped blindly against an uncooperative bolt.
"You sure it's the oil line and not the core pump?" he muttered.
A loud clang echoed nearby.
"It's everything," Bob's low, gravel-thick voice replied. "This place is held together with spite and recycled bone glue."
The old alien leaned in with a wheeze, shifting his bulk beside Luca. One of Bob's bearded face tentacles curled with curiosity. He raised his anchor-arm—a stubby hunk of metal shaped like a mini sea-anchor—and with a loud chunk, converted it into a wrench.
"Fancy," Luca said without looking up.
"I've got attachments you've never dreamed of, kid."
"And diseases too," came another voice sharp, fast, and annoyingly smug.
From atop a stack of crate-shells, Master the ratman crouched like a junkyard king. One eye twitched with caffeine. He polished a dismantled rifle like it was holy. "Ain't no saving this system. Should've burned this line two years ago."
Bob grunted. "And lose our only bridge to the Underworld? Can't let the mid-folk have all the corruption to themselves."
Luca's lips curled upward, barely. He liked this the banter, the work. It was the only time his head was quiet.
And then he heard it.
Two voices. Not theirs. Down the catwalk by the upper engine stacks. Low, tense. Not enough to hear clearly, but enough to catch the wrong words.
"…hit the dump village…"
"…midnight raid…"
"…set the zone on fire…"
Luca froze. His hand slipped from the bolt, knuckles scraping metal.
"Oi, Luca! You tighten that or sacrifice it to the oil gods?" Master yelled, slamming a wrench onto the floor like a cymbal.
The thugs' voices vanished.
"Sorry," Luca mumbled. But his mind was already racing.
I hope not there…
The stink of molten copper hung heavier now.
Back inside the railcrawler's guts, Bob cursed under his breath, metal groaning as he yanked something out of place with a hiss of steam. Master tossed a broken gear like a coin and caught it between two fingers, unimpressed.
"Well," Bob grunted, examining the mess, "we got a shredded converter coil, a ruptured ether hose, and a rust bloom the size of your ego, Master."
Master leaned back lazily. "Shouldn't take more than a decade then."
Luca didn't laugh.
He was staring through the half-lit tunnel, eyes flicking past dangling cables and cracked lamps as if the shadows might finish that conversation he overheard.
Midnight raid… Dump village…
Bob turned his anchor-arm into a cutting torch with a snap. "This ain't gonna be pretty. We're looking at a one-and-a-half-day fix if we don't get salvaged parts from sector D."
"One and a half?" Luca said too quickly.
"Give or take."
"That's… too long."
Master's head tilted. "You got a date with the oil priestesses or something?"
"No," Luca replied, too flat. Too quick.
Bob noticed.
Luca shoved himself to his feet and wiped ink-oil from his gloves. "Just thinking. A lot can happen in a day and a half."
"Yeah," Bob muttered, dragging a wrench across a screeching bolt.
"Like a train full of lunatics exploding in your face. Relax, Lurk."
But he couldn't.
Because when Luca overthought, he sank. Into the ink. Into the dark. That tattoo on his back itched like something awake, squirming beneath his skin like memory made liquid.
He rubbed at his neck, jaw tightening.
"Gonna get some air," he muttered, not waiting for a reply.
Outside the Platform
Above the suspended rails, the sky was a crusted black slate, smeared with a violet glow from the lower towers. Wind hissed through broken metal chimes strung across the station's outer girders. Down below, the Midnight Zone shimmered in oily puddles and flickering lights.
Luca stood on the edge, looking down.
The zone was quiet now. Peaceful, even. But the echo in his skull wouldn't stop. Those voices. That laugh. That word "raid" like a crack in glass.
He didn't know the plan. He didn't know the target.
But he knew the tone.
He'd heard it before.
I hope not there.
Back inside the engine room, Bob and Master worked in silence.
"Think he heard something?" Master said eventually.
Bob didn't look up. "He always hears something."
"Yeah, but this time…"
The old alien finally turned, eyes squinting through steam.
"This time he flinched."
Master nodded. "Guess we should watch the shadows."
Bob grunted. "He is the shadows."
A ripple shimmered in the corner of the room an oily, ink-black pool blooming silently behind a stack of decommissioned servo shells.
Out stepped Luca.
Like a ghost dragged through tar, he rose upright, face unreadable. His boots landed without sound. The ink puddle dried into nothing behind him.
Master yelped, dropping a socket driver that clanged across the metal floor.
"If you keep doin' that," the ratman hissed, pointing three different tools at Luca like tiny crossbows,
"I'm gonna kill you if you if you did it again kid!"
Luca raised a brow. "You say that every time."
Bob chuckled, his tentacled beard twitching with amusement. "Signs of aging, huh?"
Luca gave a short, breathless laugh but it died quick, like a spark with nowhere to burn.
He stepped closer to the cluttered workspace, eyes sharp. "There's no faster way to fix this? None at all?"
Bob blinked, confused. "We just said"
"No reroute option? Secondary line? Auxiliary circuit?"
"Whoa, slow down, inkbrain." Master tossed the tools aside with a groan and slumped dramatically against the wall. "You're stressin' the air."
"You're not even the one I'm asking," Luca muttered.
Bob watched him. Thoughtful now. The kid wasn't just impatient he was panicked.
"Alright," Bob said, crossing his anchor arm.
"Why the worry, Lurk?"
A pause.
Luca didn't look at them when he said it.
"I heard something."
Metal Chunk Valley
Luminescent blue light glowed over scrap dunes and stacked rust towers. Metal Chunk Valley, home of the discarded and the stubborn, basked under the low hum of neon fungi and cracked energy lanterns.
Kids laughed among old frames of war mechs turned playgrounds. One of them a small, wiry six-year-old with knotted hair and goggles too big for his head balanced on a toppled engine pipe.
"Tomorrow I get my tattoo!" he yelled to the others.
"I hope it's something wicked! Like, like a hydra! Or a jet cannon! Or maybe"
He turned to a wall where a makeshift painting of a figure crouched in black ink was scratched in.
"like The Lurker!"
The others gasped. One boy folded his arms. "You think you're gonna get a Lurker mark? Dream big, ratbrain."
"I am! Luca says I got instincts. Right, Ma?!"
His mother, folding up old mining blankets nearby, smiled.
"Maybe not a Lurker. But maybe something strong, baby."
The boy beamed.
And then
footsteps.
He turned. The laughter stopped.
Somewhere, glass broke. A shriek far off.
The glowing blue moss along the valley's cliff wall dimmed.
Flickered.
Vanished.
The valley fell into hush.
And then…
The screaming started.
11:30 PM.
Metal Chunk Valley screamed.
Shadows surged through the neon haze like poison in the bloodstream thugs in scavenged armor and heavy boots, their laughter jagged as they set fire to a garden of rust-roots. Plasma torches licked the homes made of memory and scrap. A klaxon started to wail but far too late.
On the lower tier, near the food vats, Rye ran.
His lungs burned. His hands shook. His legs were too short, too weak but he ran anyway.
Behind him, his mother and another kid, barefoot on the scorched ground.
Two thugs dropped from a scaffold above thud blocking their path.
"Got somethin' for the flames," one of them sneered.
Rye didn't wait. He lunged, fists up like Luca had taught him. He got one punch in before the thug's arm slammed across his ribs, sending him skidding through gravel and bone dust.
He didn't get up.
His mother screamed. She turned, her eyes glowing pale violet.
Her sleeves uncoiled like whips.
Threads of woven kinetic cloth snapped forward, wrapping the thugs' arms, legs, throats dragging one into a wall of stacked motor batteries.
But she was outnumbered. Outmatched.
One caught her from behind.
A steel-toothed gauntlet struck her neck. Her control faltered. The cloth dropped limp. She fell beside Rye not moving.
Rye opened his eyes.
He saw his mother. The threads on her arms twitching, trying to rise. Her eyes half open. Her breath shallow.
He saw her blood.
And he screamed.
He pounded the dirt. "If I had power! If I—if I was born early!"
He sobbed through clenched teeth.
"I'm not useless!"
The world shook.
The wind stopped.
A whisper pulled through the air like cracking ice. Light carved itself across his shoulder lines, then spirals, then something ancient and wild.
A Tattoo.
___________________________
Narration
"At seven, the Ink finds you. No one escapes the truth beneath the skin."
At exactly age 7, every child undergoes the Awakening, whether they're rich, poor, mutant, or machine-born.
A Tattoo Symbol appears on their body location, style, and color vary.
The tattoo represents their core power, destiny, or internal nature.
It cannot be removed or altered… but can be enhanced or awakened further.
Some symbols are simple, others complex (multi-layered or moving).
___________________________
12:00 AM.
It pulsed, glowing like magma, shaped like dragon scales down his shoulder to his chest.
Rye screamed again.
But it wasn't a child's cry anymore.
His body snapped forward
His spine arched. Bones cracked. Skin flared with glowing veins. His left shoulder erupted scales, red and black, covered his back. A dragon wing tore free, veined and steaming, flaring into the flames.
His eyes blazed.
And then he charged.
He didn't move like a boy. He moved like rage. One thug's ribs shattered under a wing strike. Another flew ten feet into a pile of broken satellites. Rye roared, his mouth glowing with heat, his body arched forward like a beast unchained.
But rage has limits.
One of the thugs older, dirtier, twisted with too many scars stabbed a needle into his own thigh.
Crimson vapor hissed out.
His eyes rolled back, then blazed white. The muscles in his arms doubled. His spine warped. Fangs pushed through his gums.
The Monster Point drug.
They called it Redmelt. Banned. Expensive. Addictive.
And it worked.
The thug met Rye's next strike head on, then drove him backward. A brutal kick. A shoulder slam. Another punch, and Rye hit the dirt with a crack.
The thug climbed on top, snarling like a feral machine.
He raised his weapon
A compressed energy gun, whining with rising power.
He aimed it at Rye's forehead.
The glow intensified.
Rye's wing twitched.
His tattoo burned brighter.
Fade to black.
11:49 PM in
Rusting Rail
The engine sighed like a tired god.
Pipes quieted. Gears locked into place. And steam no longer hissed from the busted crawler.
They'd done it.
Bob wiped oil from his anchor-arm, and Master slouched, tossing a wrench aside like a corpse. Luca sat back against the bulkhead, breathing steady his panic finally cracked open.
An hour before, when Bob ask what's wrong.
Luca didn't even blink. He told them. Everything.
The voices. The plan. The words: midnight raid.
And they found a way to do their job quickly.
11:50
They moved fast after that. Stripped tools. Slammed compartments shut. Bob got the crawler stable. Master cursed while organizing gear.
They made it to the dock of their cargo-class skiff, the Scrapie a rough old ship shaped like a folded crab shell, always humming, always waiting.
But then
Luca turned.
And looked down.
The Midnight Zone spread below them, a sprawl of canyons and rust-glow.
Usually, it pulsed soft and blue luminescent veins of fungus and mineral light.
But now
A smear of orange and red.
Smoke. Fire.
Luca's pupils shrank. He shouted
"Faster!"
Bob froze.
"They started early!" Luca roared, jumping into the skiff like a kicked hornet.
Master shoved his rifle into its mount, yelling through his fangs,
"Hurry up, kid! We're gonna kick some ass!"
But Luca didn't board.
He stopped at the edge of the skiff's launch gate.
And then tentacles.
Dozens.
Black, inky, twisted things exploded from his back like hydra vines. They wrapped around the gate rails, anchors, and steel bolts, gripping the foundation like claws.
"Kid what are you doing?!" Master shouted, pausing mid-reload.
"I'm not out of my mind!" Luca snapped.
"It's the fastest way down it's big brain."
Tentacles coiled tighter.
Some wrapped around his face, twisting like a cocoon until only glimmers of his eyes remained.
Then-
Crack.
The skiff's foundation groaned.
Then shattered.
WHUUUMPH
Luca launched.
A meteor of ink and flesh hurled into the void.
Master rubbed his face. "Great. Now the landing rail's dead."
Bob just watched the sky with awe.
"That kid…"
Midnight Zone — Freefall
The void rushed past him.
Heat hit first.
Luca's tentacles twisted into spirals, each one pulsing with internal coils air-piercing grooves to cut the wind, redirect gravity, bend magnetics. He spun down, hard, faster. The spirals glowed faint violet, slicing through the burn.
Metal Chunk Valley surged into view.
Thugs looked up.
One shouted.
Another injected himself with Redmelt. Then another. Then another.
The thug still holding the gun to Rye's head
His finger twitched.
The energy cannon whined, rising toward its peak.
And then-
BBAAANNNGGG.