Chapter 10
title: "The Rival's Offer" wordCount: 2690
The knock echoed through the workshop like a gunshot, and I dropped the wrench I'd been holding.
Nobody knocked on the front door. Nobody even knew where the front door was—I'd welded it shut three years ago, buried it behind shelving units and scrap metal, turned it into just another section of wall. The back entrance was the only way in, the only way anyone had come in since Integration, and now someone was standing at a door that shouldn't exist, shouldn't be findable, shouldn't be anything but forgotten metal and rust.
"I'm sorry to bother you," a woman's voice called through the steel, muffled but clear enough, "but we need to talk before they make you disappear."
The wrench hit the concrete floor with a clang that seemed too loud, too sharp. My hands moved on their own, reaching for the plasma cutter mounted on the wall, fingers closing around the grip before my brain caught up to what I was doing. The burn scars on my right forearm pulled tight, the old tissue remembering heat and pain and the moment everything changed.
"I'm not armed," the voice continued. "I'm not with the Collective. I'm just—I'm sorry, I know this is intrusive, I know you don't know me, but I need five minutes of your time before Thorne gets here."
Thorne.
The name hit like cold water. I set the plasma cutter down, moved toward the front of the workshop, started pulling away the shelving units I'd stacked against the door. Scrap metal clattered. Dust rose in clouds that caught the light from the overhead fixtures. My father's leather gloves were too big for my hands, made everything clumsy, but I kept them on anyway because taking them off felt like admitting something I wasn't ready to admit.
The door's locking mechanism had rusted solid. I had to hit it three times with a hammer before it gave, and when I finally pulled the door open, a woman stood on the threshold with her hands raised, palms out, like she was surrendering before the fight even started.
"Yuki Tran," she said. "I'm sorry for the dramatic entrance. I'm sorry for showing up unannounced. I'm sorry for—"
"Stop apologizing." The words came out harder than I meant them to. "You've got four minutes left."
She lowered her hands slowly, carefully, like she thought I might change my mind about the plasma cutter. Mid-thirties, maybe, with dark hair pulled back in a braid that had started to come loose, and clothes that looked expensive three months ago but had been worn too many times since then. Her eyes moved past me, scanning the workshop, cataloging everything she could see in the two seconds before I stepped into her line of sight.
"Can I come in?" she asked. "What I need to show you requires—I'm sorry, I should have asked first, I'm sorry—"
"Three minutes."
She flinched. Actually flinched, like I'd raised a hand to her. Then she pulled a small device from her pocket, something that looked like a data pad but thinner, more elegant, with edges that caught the light in ways that suggested System integration I couldn't afford. She tapped it twice and a holographic display bloomed in the air between us, blue light painting her face in sharp angles and deep shadows.
"I have a proposal," she said. "A business proposal. I'm sorry it's so formal, I know you probably don't want to deal with contracts right now, but I thought—I'm sorry, I should just show you."
The hologram resolved into text and numbers, columns of data that scrolled past too fast for me to read. Financial projections. Market analysis. Supply chain logistics. The kind of professional presentation that belonged in a corporate boardroom, not a workshop that smelled like oil and old metal and the ghost of my father's cigarettes.
"Here's the thing," I said, and watched her shoulders tense at the words. "I don't do partnerships."
"I know. I'm sorry, I know your reputation, I know you work alone, but please just—" She tapped the display again and the numbers disappeared, replaced by a simple organizational chart. Two names at the top: hers and mine. Lines connecting them to different operational divisions. "I handle mass production and System integration. You focus on custom work and Masterworks. We split profits sixty-forty, with you taking the larger share because your work is what gives us market differentiation."
Sixty-forty. Larger share. Market differentiation.
The words tasted like ash. Like corporate speak. Like everything my father had taught me to distrust, every lesson about how the people with the fancy presentations and the profit-sharing models were the ones who'd strip your workshop bare and leave you with nothing but debt and broken promises.
"You're wasting your time," I said.
"Please." The word came out sharp, desperate, nothing like the careful apologies that had preceded it. "Please just listen. I'm not—I'm sorry, I'm not explaining this right. The Ironclad Collective is systematically eliminating independent crafters. Not through force, through economics. They're buying up supply chains, negotiating exclusive distribution deals with System vendors, undercutting prices until we can't compete. Three crafters in this district alone have closed in the last month. Two more signed guild contracts. I'm the only one left besides you, and I only survived because I agreed to their terms."
She stepped past me into the workshop without asking permission, and I let her because the alternative was having this conversation where anyone walking by could hear it. The hologram followed her, floating in the air like a ghost, and she gestured at it with hands that shook just enough to notice.
"Look at the timeline," she said, and the display shifted to show a calendar marked with red X's. "January fifteenth: Kato's Forge closes. January twenty-third: Meridian Metalworks signs with the Collective. February second: Westside Fabrication liquidates assets. February ninth: I sign. February sixteenth—that's today—you're the last independent crafter in the district who hasn't either closed or joined."
The dates marched across the hologram in neat rows, each one representing someone who'd given up or given in, and I thought about Elias standing in my workshop yesterday, holding the cane I'd made him, saying he felt human again for the first time in months. Thought about the wooden gears in the box on my workbench, the ones the Unmarked watchmaker had traded for a repair job the System said had no value.
"Why should I care?" I asked. "You signed. You're part of the problem."
"I'm trying to survive the same system that's crushing you." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she turned away from me, facing the hologram instead of my eyes. "I'm sorry, I know that sounds like an excuse, I know I should have held out longer, but they were going to seize my equipment for 'economic non-compliance' and I have three employees who depend on me for their income and I couldn't—I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just—"
"Stop apologizing."
She went quiet. The hologram cycled through another screen of data, profit margins and market share percentages that meant nothing to me, and I watched her shoulders rise and fall with breathing that was too fast, too shallow, the kind of breathing that came before panic or tears or both.
"The Rust Garden," I said. "You're the one who's been strip-mining my supply sources."
It wasn't a question. I'd known for weeks that someone was hitting the salvage yards before I could get there, buying up pre-System materials in bulk, leaving nothing but picked-over scraps for everyone else. The vendors had been apologetic but firm: they had contracts now, exclusive agreements, and they couldn't sell to me even if they wanted to.
Yuki didn't deny it. She just nodded, still facing away from me, and said, "I'm sorry. I needed the materials to meet my production quotas. The Collective requires minimum output levels, and if I don't hit them, they can void my contract and seize everything. I didn't know it was your primary source until last week, and by then I'd already signed a six-month exclusive."
"So you came here to what? Apologize? Offer me scraps from your table?"
"I came here to offer you my supply chain." She turned back to face me, and her eyes were red-rimmed but dry, like she'd used up all her tears weeks ago and had nothing left but exhaustion. "If you partner with me, you get access to everything I have. Every vendor, every salvage yard, every pre-System material source I've locked down. We share resources instead of competing for them. We both survive instead of both drowning."
The offer hung in the air between us, and I wanted to believe it was genuine. Wanted to think that maybe, just maybe, someone else understood what it meant to try to do good work in a world that only cared about profit margins and System integration and economic compliance. But her voice was too careful, too measured, and every apology felt like a calculated move in a game I didn't know I was playing.
"Here's the thing," I said, and watched her brace for impact. "I don't trust people who apologize that much. Either you mean it and you're too weak to stand behind your decisions, or you don't mean it and you're using it as a weapon. Either way, I don't want you in my workshop."
Her face went blank. Not angry, not hurt, just empty, like I'd confirmed something she'd already suspected. She reached for the data pad, tapped it once, and the hologram collapsed into nothing, leaving just the two of us standing in the dim light of the workshop with the smell of oil and old metal between us.
"I understand," she said quietly. "I'm sorry for wasting your time. I'm sorry for—" She stopped herself, bit her lip, and I saw her hands curl into fists at her sides. "The Collective is planning to force all remaining independents into guild structure within the month. They're calling it 'economic integration for market stability.' I've already signed. You're the last holdout. They're going to make an example of you."
"Let them try."
"They're sending Thorne Malchek."
The name hit harder the second time. Thorne Malchek. The Collective's economic compliance enforcer. The man who'd personally overseen the closure of seventeen workshops in the last year, who'd seized equipment and liquidated assets and left crafters with nothing but debt and System violations on their permanent records.
"When?" I asked.
"I don't know. Soon. I'm sorry, I should have led with that, I should have warned you first instead of trying to pitch the partnership, but I thought—I'm sorry, I thought if I could convince you to sign before he arrived, maybe we could both—"
My comm unit buzzed. Once, twice, three times in rapid succession, the emergency pattern that meant Petra had something urgent. I pulled it from my pocket, saw the message notification, and felt my stomach drop.
EMERGENCY BROADCAST - ALL DISTRICT CRAFTERS Thorne Malchek departed Ironclad HQ 47 minutes ago Destination: Your district Last known heading: Maker's Row Estimated arrival: 15-20 minutes Get out or get ready
Yuki's data pad chimed at the same moment, and she looked down at it, and all the color drained from her face.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't know they'd send him this soon. I thought we'd have more time. I thought—" She was already moving toward the door, backing away from me like I was contagious, like being near me when Thorne arrived would somehow implicate her in whatever crime the Collective thought I'd committed. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I have to go. I can't be here when he—I'm sorry."
She ran. Actually ran, stumbling over the threshold of the front door I'd opened for her, disappearing into the street outside with her data pad clutched against her chest like a shield. The door swung shut behind her, and I stood alone in my workshop with Petra's warning glowing on my comm unit screen and the sound of my own heartbeat too loud in my ears.
Fifteen to twenty minutes.
I moved through the workshop on autopilot, hands doing things my brain hadn't consciously decided to do. Locked the back entrance. Activated the security system my father had installed, the one that was older than Integration but still worked because good engineering didn't need System support. Pulled up the external camera feeds on the monitor mounted above my workbench.
The street outside was empty. Too empty. The kind of empty that came when people knew something bad was about to happen and had the good sense to be somewhere else when it did.
My comm unit buzzed again. Kess this time, her message appearing below Petra's warning:
Remy, please tell me you're not still at the workshop. Please tell me you saw Petra's message and you're already gone. Please.
I should have been gone. Should have grabbed the essentials and disappeared into the district's back alleys, found somewhere to hide until Thorne gave up and moved on to easier targets. But the wooden box was still on my workbench, the hand-made gears from the Unmarked watchmaker sitting inside it like a promise I'd made to people who had no one else to make promises to them. And my father's forge was still warm, still holding heat from the work I'd done this morning, still waiting for the next piece of metal that needed shaping.
Good enough gets you killed, my father used to say. But running away gets you nothing.
I typed a response to Kess with fingers that felt numb and clumsy inside my father's oversized gloves:
Still here. Not running. If Thorne wants to talk, we'll talk.
Her reply came back in seconds:
That's not talking. That's not a conversation. That's an execution, Remy. That's them making an example. Please. Please run.
The security monitor flickered. One of the cameras had picked up movement three blocks away, a single figure walking down the center of the street with the kind of unhurried confidence that said he knew exactly where he was going and knew no one would try to stop him. Too far away to make out details, but the gait was distinctive: measured, deliberate, the walk of someone who'd never had to hurry because people always waited for him to arrive.
I switched to a different camera angle, one that showed the intersection two blocks north. A family was loading belongings into a ground car, moving with the frantic speed of people who'd just realized they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. A shopkeeper was pulling down security shutters. A group of teenagers was running, actually sprinting, in the opposite direction from the approaching figure.
Every System user within a three-block radius was evacuating.
Running away from something they could see that I couldn't yet.
My comm unit buzzed one more time. Unknown sender, message marked urgent:
Remy Voss. We are coming to discuss your economic non-compliance. We suggest you prepare appropriate documentation regarding your recent crafting activities. Resistance will be noted in your permanent record.
The figure on the security monitor was two blocks away now. Close enough that I could see he was wearing a suit, dark and perfectly tailored, the kind of clothing that cost more than my entire workshop. Close enough that I could see he was alone, no backup, no support, just one man walking down an empty street toward a workshop full of illegal crafting equipment and unauthorized repairs.
One man who'd closed seventeen workshops in the last year.
One man who made people run just by existing in their neighborhood.
The camera feed showed him reaching the intersection one block away, and he stopped there, standing perfectly still in the middle of the street, and tilted his head up toward the sky like he was checking the weather or admiring the architecture or giving everyone watching one last chance to make the smart choice and disappear.
Then he looked directly at the camera.
Directly at me.
And smiled.