ONYXSPIRE: THE DESCENT OF CLIVE COLLINS

Chapter 10. A Quiet Moment Amid The Trash

Clive Collins regained consciousness through a dull ache.

Not the sharp, nerve-ripping agony of the synchronization at the bottom of the ravine, but the kind of pain that felt as if his body had been crushed beneath a steam train, then left to freeze in a pile of snow.

He tried to open his eyes. His vision blurred with the silhouettes of rusted pipes stretching across a low ceiling. The smell here was foul, a mix of burnt machine oil, damp metal, and soup cooked from whatever scraps people could find.

“Cough!”

Clive choked. His chest felt tight. As he tried to move, he realized he was lying on a bed made from stacked cardboard and patched cloth arranged carefully enough to feel soft.

[Status: Conscious.]

[Physical Condition: Stable (Minimal). External wounds have been sealed by Lycus secretion.]

[WREN: You were unconscious for eighteen hours, Clive. Statistics indicate that if you had woken up two hours later, your internal organs would have begun digesting themselves due to caloric deficiency.]

“WREN... where am I?” Clive whispered. His voice was hoarse, as if his throat had been sanded raw.

He turned to the left and immediately froze.

His left arm, the black monster he hated and needed at the same time, rested on a filthy pillow. But what made his heart pound was the fact that the arm was completely uncovered now. Its black scales gleamed faintly beneath the swaying light of an oil lamp.

And beside the bed, a girl sat on a small wooden chair.

The same girl he had seen among the garbage heaps was busy cleaning a steam-engine component with a dirty rag. Her dull brown hair was tied back with copper wire. She wore an oversized apron stained with oil, nearly three times too large for her tiny frame.

When she noticed Clive moving, she turned toward him. Her large, clear eyes stared at him without fear. She set the machine part aside and stepped closer.

“Don’t... don’t come near me,” Clive muttered, trying to pull his left arm away. “This hand... this hand is dangerous.”

The girl paused for a moment, but she did not step back. Instead, a small calm smile touched her lips. She raised her hands and made quick, fluid gestures with her fingers.

“She can’t speak, Clive. She’s mute,” WREN’s voice echoed in his head. “And based on gesture analysis, she’s telling you not to move too much unless you want the stitches in your stomach to tear open.”

The girl, whom Clive later learned was named Mina, a bitter coincidence that stabbed straight into his chest, reached for a small metal bowl on a short table. Steam curled from the brownish liquid inside. Carefully, she lifted a spoon toward Clive’s mouth.

Clive hesitated.

But the hunger dictated by Lycus began to stir.

"Eat... Clive... Warm... This human... Kind..."

Clive opened his mouth and let the liquid slide down his throat. It tasted bland, like boiled roots and leftover animal fat, but it was the most delicious thing he had tasted since leaving Lumeria. He swallowed bowl after bowl that the girl fed him until every drop was gone.

After eating, Clive leaned against the metal wall of the shack, which trembled every time one of the massive pipes outside released steam. He looked around.

The shack was tiny, maybe ten feet by ten feet, yet arranged with surprising care. Shelves lined the walls, filled with bolts, gears, and ancient electronic parts salvaged from the dumps.

“Why’d you help me?” Clive asked, even though he knew the girl couldn’t answer aloud. “I’ve got a monster arm. I could’ve killed you the second I woke up.”

Mina set down the empty bowl and walked toward a cracked mirror in the corner. She picked up a small chalkboard and wrote quickly.

[Everyone in The Gutter has scars. Yours are just a little bigger.]

Clive fell silent as he read the words. He looked at his left arm, which now appeared calm, as though it were sleeping. The tiny eye on the back of the hand remained tightly shut.

“I’m not just hurt, Mina,” Clive whispered, his voice trembling. “I lost myself. I killed people... a lot of people.”

Mina wrote again.

[In Onyxspire, people die to live. You’re still alive, so don’t waste it.]

For the next three days, Clive stayed in that tiny shack.

He learned that Mina was an extraordinarily talented mechanical scavenger. The girl could repair a shattered communication module with nothing but scraps of wire and sheer luck.

There was a strange peace amid the mountains of trash in The Gutter.

Here, there were no aristocrats looking at him with disgust. No Radiant Guards chasing him with plasma spears. Only the roar of machinery and the silent kindness of a girl who did not judge him.

For the first time, Clive felt a piece of his humanity returning.

He helped Mina carry piles of heavy scrap metal with his right arm. He was still afraid to use his left arm for anything domestic.

“WREN, can I just stay here forever?” Clive thought one evening while watching Mina asleep atop a pile of cloth after exhausting herself with work.

[WREN: Technically, you could hide. However, Lycus cellular degradation demands evolution. If you do not continue seeking the ‘Essence’ you require, within six months that arm will consume the rest of your body and turn this shack into a biomass graveyard.]

“I know.” Clive sighed. “I just... I just wanna feel human a little longer.”

He stood and walked toward the small window covered by mesh cloth. Outside, The Gutter looked like an ocean of rusted steel illuminated by dim purple neon lights. He watched people passing by with crippled bodies and crude steam prosthetics.

Then he saw something that made him freeze.

In the distance, on the muddy street beneath the main pipeline, several figures wearing black robes with silver-wing insignias on their shoulders were interrogating scavengers. They carried energy scanners emitting red beams.

“Sheldon Mallory’s agents,” Clive hissed.

[WREN: Lycus energy signature is beginning to register on their scanners. Distance: five hundred meters and closing.]

Clive turned toward Mina, who was still asleep. The girl’s face looked peaceful, untouched by the cruelty of the underworld.

Clive clenched his fists.

Fear crawled back into his heart, but this time it was not fear of death.

He was afraid his existence would destroy the only place that had shown him warmth.

“I have to leave, WREN,” Clive said quietly.

[WREN: Agreed. However, statistics indicate your chances of escaping undetected are extremely low if you move now. They have already blocked the main exits of The Gutter.]

Clive walked over to Mina and placed a silver coin he had found in the pocket of his old cloak beside her chalkboard. He did not dare wake her. He could not bear seeing those eyes again when he had to leave and become a monster once more.

He wrapped his black arm in thick cloth, then pulled his hood low over his face.

“Thanks, Mina,” Clive whispered before stepping out into the poisonous air of Onyxspire.

As the shack door closed, Mina’s eyes slowly opened.

She had not been asleep.

She simply did not know how to tell the man that in this world, running away never truly worked.

She stared at the silver coin, then picked up her chalk and wrote a message on the board, one that might never be read by anyone.

[Be careful, kind monster.]

Outside, Clive Collins walked into the dark alleys while Lycus hissed excitedly in his ears.

"Hunt... Clive... They’re... Close... Smell... Metal... And... Fear..."

“Come on, Lycus,” Clive hissed, his eyes glowing red beneath the hood. “Let’s give them what they’re looking for.”