The silence between them was a physical thing, a third presence walking with them down the sterile white corridors of the Gallery. Sven followed a half-step behind Enola, his movements a study in controlled economy, while she moved with a nervous, birdlike energy, her head constantly swiveling to take in every detail.
She led him to a heavy, reinforced door marked with the simple, stark label: AXIOM FORGE. She pressed her hand against a scanner, and the door hissed open.
The air that rushed out to greet them was different. It was not the quiet, humming stillness of the rest of the Gallery. It was alive. It smelled of ozone and hot metal, of lubricants and something else, something sharp and electric that pricked at the back of the throat. The sound was a symphony of industry: the low hum of powerful machines, the hiss of a plasma torch, the rhythmic clank of a hydraulic press.
Enola stepped inside and stopped, her eyes wide behind her thick-framed glasses. "Oh," she breathed, the sound almost lost in the forge's din. "It's so… aggressive."
The Axiom Forge was a cathedral dedicated to the art of war. It was a vast, high-ceilinged space where bright, focused worklights cut through a haze of industrial smoke and swirling metal dust. Lathes and milling machines stood like silent, patient giants. On one bench, a 3D printer was meticulously building something from a shimmering, exotic composite, layer by impossible layer. Disassembly tables were littered with the guts of A.N.T.s, their sleek chassis cracked open to reveal intricate, glowing internals.
"It's nothing like London," Enola continued, her voice rising with a geek's enthusiasm. "Our forge is all about resonance chambers and axiomatic field stabilizers. We spend weeks calibrating a single harmonic dampener. But this…" She gestured around the cavernous space. "This is all about force projection. It's all barrels and power cells and reinforced housing. You focus so much on the breaking part."
Sven, who had been scanning the room with the detached air of a man entering his own kitchen, grunted. "That's how we do things here."
"It's such a shame," she said, turning to face him, her expression earnest. "So many things can be learned without destroying them. You can map an anomaly's frequency, chart its conceptual harmonics, understand its place in the axiomatic framework. There's so much more to them than just being a threat to be neutralized."
She walked over to a large, glass-enclosed vat that glowed with a soft, shifting, internal light. "Look at these cartridge fabrication vats. The energy states are beautiful. But here, they're just fuel for a gun." She then pointed to a heavily fortified locker, its surface a complex weave of reinforced alloys and shimmering containment fields. It was labeled clearly: AMG-182-A-V - STILL LENSE - DIRECTOR EYES ONLY. "And that… it's treated like a tool in a box. In London, we'd have a whole research division just studying its effect on localized causality."
Her gaze finally landed on a workbench at the far end of the forge. A single object sat there under a simple grey dust cover. She knew what it was without asking. The shape was unmistakable. Sven's handaxe. The tool he used to correct mistakes.
She looked from the covered axe, to the weapon parts on the tables, to Sven's impassive face. "There's more than one way to frame a picture," she said softly, almost to herself.
Sven stood in the middle of the controlled chaos, his arms crossed. The symphony of industry seemed to part around his silence. "So," he said, his voice a low rumble under the whirring of a nearby lathe. "There is no new assignment. What do we do now?"
Enola, who had been tracing the edge of a plasma conduit with a fascinated finger, spun around. Her face lit up with a sudden, practical intensity. "Oh! Right. The first order of business. I need to measure you."
Sven's single visible eye narrowed. His posture, already rigid, seemed to become even more so. A flicker of something like annoyance, mixed with a deep, weary discomfort, passed over his features.
Enola blinked, then her cheeks flushed a bright, sudden pink as she realized how her words had sounded. "For the armor!" she clarified quickly, her words tumbling out in a rush. "And for the bike! The schematics need precise anatomical data for the custom harness and the ergonomic modifications. Standard procedure. Well, my procedure."
Sven let out a slow breath, a controlled exhalation of resignation. He gave a single, curt nod. "Fine."
He stood stiffly as she produced a small, wand-like scanner from a pocket of her oversized coat. A pale blue light fanned out from its tip, washing over his form. He was a statue as the light mapped the contours of his shoulders, the length of his arms, the powerful line of his back. The scanner recorded everything, from the subtle articulation of his armor's hidden plates to the topography of his skin.
As the light passed over his torso, Enola's professional focus faltered. The scanner's feed on her data-slate wasn't just rendering a wireframe model; it was cataloging a history written in ruined flesh. A puckered, circular burn here. A long, jagged slice there. A constellation of smaller nicks and scars, a lifetime of near-misses etched permanently into him.
She lowered the scanner, her voice losing its clinical edge and becoming quiet. "Did you… did you always have so many?" she asked, gesturing vaguely at his chest and arms. "It's just… a lot of battles."
Sven's gaze remained fixed on a point somewhere on the far wall. "It is not enough," he said, the words flat and final.
The statement hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. Enola, trying to lighten the mood that had suddenly turned leaden, gave a small, awkward pout. "Well," she joked, her tone a little forced, "you must not be very popular with the ladies, then."
Sven's head turned. His blue eye locked onto hers. The air in the forge seemed to grow cold. The hum of the machines faded into a distant buzz.
"The only ladies who were meaningful in my life," he said, his voice low and precise, each word a shard of ice, "are dead."
Enola flinched as if she'd been struck. All the color drained from her face. The data-slate in her hand felt suddenly heavy, a guilty weight. "Oh," she whispered. "I… I am so sorry. That was… incredibly stupid of me to say."
She looked down at the floor, the scanner hanging limply in her hand. The forge, for a moment, was utterly silent.
---
The silence in the forge was no longer the comfortable quiet of industry, but a thick, awkward thing. Enola finished the scan with mechanical precision, her movements small and subdued. The blue light winked out.
"You can go now," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She didn't look at him, instead focusing intently on the data-slate in her hands. "I have… I have work to do."
Sven gave a single, shallow nod. He did not offer words of comfort or dismissal. He simply turned and walked out of the Axiom Forge, the heavy door sighing shut behind him, sealing Enola inside with her tools and her guilt.
He did not think much of the interaction. Her comment had been foolish, his response had been factual. The matter was closed. His mind was already moving to the next practical need: sustenance.
He walked the familiar, humming corridors to the Dining Hall, known to everyone as the Refectory. It was a large, minimalist space, lit by a soft, neutral light. Long tables of reclaimed wood filled the room, their surfaces scarred by use but clean. The only decoration was a massive, heavily armored viewport that looked into one of the stable containment cells. A silent, shifting cloud of pastel colors that served as a constant, subtle reminder of where they were.
Sven ignored the view. He went straight to the service station on the far wall. There were no buttons, no dials. Just a single, unadorned tap. This was AMG-023-A-D, "The Ever-Full Kettle." He placed a ceramic mug beneath it. With a soft, almost imperceptible hum, a stream of perfectly black, rich-smelling coffee poured out, stopping precisely when the mug was full. The air around the tap shimmered faintly, a gentle warping of reality kept in check by the low, pervasive hum of The Humming Nail that vibrated through the very floor, a pacifying frequency piped in to prevent the kettle from deciding to brew, say, liquid sorrow or molten brass.
He took his coffee and a simple, prepackaged sandwich from a cooler, then sat alone at the end of one of the long tables. He ate without tasting, his mind already turning over the implications of the new partnership, the Director's directive, and the lingering, phantom sensation of the scanner's light on his skin. The ghosts of his past were his to bear. They were not topics for casual conversation.
The Refectory was quiet, the only sounds the low hum of the Nail's influence and the soft clink of Sven's mug as he set it down. He was adrift in his own thoughts, the black coffee a bitter anchor, when a calm, familiar presence settled into the chair opposite him.
"Ludvig," Leo said, his voice a gentle rumble. He didn't ask to join; he simply did, and Sven, for his part, didn't protest. The older man placed his own mug of tea on the table, the scent of chamomile a soft counterpoint to the sharp coffee.
Sven grunted in acknowledgment, not looking up from the grain of the wood table.
"So," Leo began, sipping his tea. "The new transfer from London. How is she settling in?"
Sven finally looked up, his single blue eye glinting with annoyance. "She is… annoying. Talks too much. Sees problems that are not there." He took a long drink from his mug. "I do not need a partner. I never have."
Leo listened, his expression one of infinite patience. He nodded slowly, as if considering a great and complex work of art. "No artist truly works alone, you know," he said, his tone conversational. "Even the ones who lock themselves in their studios. They are still answering the world. They are still in conversation with the clay, with the paint, with the light."
Sven's jaw tightened. "I am not an artist."
"Aren't you?" Leo asked, his kind eyes holding Sven's gaze. "You take the raw, ugly mistakes of the world and you… reframe them. You correct them. That is a form of art. A brutal one, perhaps. Sometimes," he added, his voice dropping to a near whisper, "the art is a form of revenge."
Sven's breath caught. He opened his mouth, a retort ready on his tongue, a defense built over years of solitude.
But Leo continued, his voice soft but unwavering, cutting through the noise in Sven's head. "Don't do it for her. Don't do it for the Director. Don't even do it for yourself." He leaned forward slightly. "Do it for the ones who are already lost. The ones who can't be protected anymore."
The words landed not as a blow, but as a key turning in a long-locked door. Sven stared at Leo, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a cold, clear shock. The noise in his head, the constant, low hum of his own fury, quieted for a single, profound moment.
He looked down at his own scarred hands, then back at Leo. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips for a heartbeat before vanishing.
"You always know what to say, Leo," Sven said, his voice quieter than before.
Leo simply smiled, took another sip of his coffee, and said nothing more. The silence between them was no longer heavy, but shared.
But it can't be that peaceful, isn't it?
Leo's personal ARU, separate from the main system, chirps with a private, encrypted alert. His face, usually a mask of calm, goes pale. He showed the screen to Sven.
It was a short, desperate text from a Handler ID he recognized instantly. It was Reindeer, Leo's best student.
The message was simple, and terrifying in its implications.
LEO, THE PACKAGE. THE CASE IS CRACKED. I CAN HEAR... NOTHING. IT'S SO LOUD. I'M LOST. SEND HELP.
The message included a GPS coordinate pulsing on the screen. A cargo bay near the Hudson River. The Handler was reporting that the containment crate for AMG-014 has been compromised. Not in the Gallery. Out there.
---
[LOG] AMG-014-A-E
Imagine a bell that doesn't make a sound you hear with your ears. Instead, when it rings, it makes a "sound" that goes straight into your mind.
This "sound" is not a noise, but a feeling of total, crushing silence so powerful and wrong that your brain interprets it as a deafening, painful roar inside your head. It doesn't hurt your eardrums; it hurts your mind, and the damage can be permanent.
The bell itself is safe as long as it never moves. That's why it's kept in a special case that stays perfectly still, no matter what.