Chapter 91: Proof of Concept
The day started like a dare.
Hikari took the Kestrel-X out the way it was meant to be taken out - quietly brutal. The bike didn’t so much accelerate as vanish and reappear farther down the lane with a line of sound under your ribs. Stripe-lights went liquid under her. She took the long first curve without drama, knee a respectful breath above the deck, then bled throttle into a drift so controlled the playback looked fake. Not a wobble, not a mercy. She leaned and the Kestrel answered like "yes, of course! I thought you’d never ask!"
On her second pass she clipped the inner radius until someone watching her held his breath and remembered how to exhale only when she straightened. By the fourth, she was riding the knife-edge between physics and nerve, flicking the rear in delicate smears of tire that would later make mechanics sigh and touch the marks like art.
Far behind - honestly, in a different conversation - Ichiro came through on the hover quad. He flew dangerously because that was his setting. The bike skimmed low, then dared higher until a Warden on the rail shouted something about unhelpful precedent. Ichiro tilted a palm without looking, coaxed a slab of stone out of the packed earth to bridge a gap that didn’t exist three seconds ago, kissed it with the hover’s cushion, and was gone with a tiny, inappropriate smile that meant he’d gotten away with something.
He wasn’t competing with Hikari. He wasn’t close enough to see her lines. She never even looked back - she wasn’t that kind of rider.
Two floors over, Feris had declared a private war on centripetal force. The wing-pack’s twin jets whispered open; she took a half-step into the harness and became a spin. The mace swung on a short tether in her right hand, first slow in a clean vertical circle, then faster, and faster - jets feathering thrust so she hovered at the center of her own storm. She let the head blur, then interrupted the arc with a snap of wrist that would have dislocated the shoulder of a less stubborn human. The head stopped dead on the mark of a painted circle - dead center - then resumed its orbit as if sulking. A tech behind the glass pumped one triumphant fist and pretended not to have done it.
Down the hall, in the lab, Saffi finally let herself sit. She sank onto a stool like a battery finding its charging cradle, hugging her slate against her ribs as if it might grow legs and escape.
Raizen didn’t notice the sitting. He had the rig’s chest frame open, both anchor pods off, the drum exposed, the line spooled in pale, dangerous sheen across his hand. He used the pad of his thumb to feel micro-resistance at the edge of a flange, eyes half-lidded in concentration like he could hear the thing breathe.
"It’s heavier than it needs to be. Way heavier." he muttered, mostly to the device. "And it’s still not talking loud enough, but being quiet enough."
"Talking?" Esen leaned on the bench like a cat pretending to be furniture. "Does the machine gossip or just backstab?"
"It feeds back. Sometimes all three" Raizen said. He rotated the drum, brake off, then pressed it with pressure and stopped it without a click. "If I can feel the set, I don’t need to trust my eyes at speed. I want the line to tell me what the anchor can’t express."
"In plain words" Esen persisted, "you want it to be efficient and let you do your little disappearing tricks without turning your joints into confetti."
Raizen huffed. "I want the line to work with my steps, not against them. I think I can combine the pull with the dash without fighting either."
In the background, Kori had materialized at some point as she always did - between corners, out of nothing. She leaned on a column with another coffee she hadn’t acknowledged buying. Saffi stood beside her, trying to look useful and not like an exhausted moth. Kori pitched her voice soft for Saffi alone. "He’s going to run it past what the room thinks is sensible" she said, not fond exactly, but not far. "You don’t have to be in front of that train."
"I... I know." Saffi pushed her glasses up and did not move away. "But if something goes wrong because I wasn’t here, I couldn’t forgive myself."
Kori’s mouth did its small, private shape that lived between amusement and respect.
Raizen tightened one last fastener, closed the pod, and clipped both housings back onto the frame. He stood, rolled his shoulders like a fighter about to meet the bell, and nodded toward the core. "Alright. This should work. I need the big room."
The "big room" was a square of reinforced arrogance tucked into The Heart - concrete walls, ribbed and steel-pinned. Floor scored and repaired a hundred times. At the far end, a pane of layered test glass the size of a small door, cross-hatched with a white target: outer ring, middle ring, center dot. An access panel bled a little condensation where the room’s temperature differed from the world’s.
A Warden keyed the door. "Stand behind the line. Safety glasses."
Raizen put the frame on. The straps sat across him like they were there first and the shirt had been an afterthought. He slung the line across the spine, settled weight, toggled the pods live. The status lights blinked to patient green.
Saffi, chewing her lip, drifted to the side. Kori stood three strides behind the firing line like she could put a hand on the back of his neck if needed. Esen kept one shoulder on the pillar and projected the air of a man fully ready to scream "DON’T DIE" if anyone did anything interesting.
Kori called, casual as a yawn: "Off target, you buy me breakfast. On target, you still buy me breakfast. That’s called leadership."
Raizen breathed once, twice. He raised his left arm, sighted through his own elbow, and found the center ring without paying for it with thought. The rig hummed - it had learned his heartbeat; he had learned its impatience.
"Firing" he said.
He pulled.
For a split second it was all clean and ordinary - the line leaving the drum in a silky whir, the anchor pod’s little hex opening like a flower, the hook a perfect blur - in flight so straight it looked guided by a very old, very simple law.
It hit the center dot.
And the world detonated.
Sound punched the room. The layered glass didn’t crack politely. The pane atomized - plate, laminate, temper - shocked into a million glittering knives that turned the room into the center of a snow globe from an angry god.
Everyone flinched. Everyone ducked. Saffi threw her arms over her head too late to help. Kori didn’t move, she just squinted and let the wind of the event push her hair.
The line didn’t stop. The hook blew straight through the carcass of the pane, hit the concrete block wall three meters behind with a noise you feel in your teeth, and buried itself deep enough to make hairline cracks radiate like a flower opening in stone.
The drum screamed in protest. The brake did its machined best. The line went taut like a guillotine rope. The rig pulled against Raizen’s body hard enough to slide him a shoe length across the floor. He killed power and dug his heels in and thought reckless, unhelpful thoughts like more.
Glass hummed as it settled. A second passed in the streetlight glitter of dust. Another.
Saffi lowered her arms and looked at the test stand through a film of disbelief. "Oh" she said, and then again with a different intonation, "OH!"
A Warden swore in Ukai’s dialect, stepped up to the ruin, and immediately got to the fun part: trying to free the hook. He put two hands on the line and pulled until his forearms popped ropes. Nothing. He tried a pry bar. He tried two. Two more Wardens joined, set their boots, and attempted synchronized competence. The hook told them a story about leverage and futility.
Kori strolled past, took hold of the rig’s rear housing, and pressed a button the size and shape of a reasonable idea.
The line zipped obediently back into the drum with a cheerful whine, hook reversing out of the hole like a fish deciding it preferred the river. The Wardens nearly fell over from the sudden absence of their own effort.
Kori handed the rig back by the shoulder strap as if returning a dog that had slipped its leash. "Well, at least we know that it’ll stick" she said to no one in particular, deadpan. Esen clapped once, delighted and appalled. "We tried friendship and forgot common sense. Classic."
Saffi remembered to breathe and then remembered everything else at once. "The pane" she whispered. "The pane was rated for -" She gave up on the number and rounded to a feeling. "- a lot."
An engineer in a stained jacket - one of the people responsible for making sure rooms didn’t explode - was already in the doorway, eyes huge, mouth a careful line. "Who authorized this trial?"
Saffi’s hand snapped up before she could stop herself. "I - no - he - We -"
Raizen’s voice cut cleanly through hers. "I did." He stepped forward, palms open. "Chose the setting, Primed the pods. I fired."
Kori’s eyes didn’t move from the engineer. "He did" she confirmed. "And he will be very respectful while you tell him interesting facts about what he owes you."
The engineer breathed like a person who had run into a temple and found the statue had winked. "That pane... Was from Haldor. It ate a lot of bullets" he said. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled, crooked and unwilling. "I suppose we’ll say that it died for science."
Saffi turned to Raizen, face blanched, eyes luminous and furious at once. "You could have... you could have hurt -" She bit the word, swallowed, tried again. "You could have killed someone."
He met her gaze and didn’t blink. "You’re right. I’m sorry. That’s on me."
Kori took in the shattered room, minuscule shards covering the floor, the hole in a wall that had never imagined it would meet a hook, the bone-deep tremor under Saffi’s quiet. She nodded once, verdict passed. "Well" she said. "Now we know what it does."
Esen wandered to the ruin with the unkillable curiosity of a magpie. He toed a triangle of glass that had somehow survived as a triangle. "So" he said conversationally, "your toy punches through city armor. Any chance it will not also punch through your spine?"
Raizen flexed his wrist, checking ligaments like a man counting coins. "If the timing is right, it won’t. If the timing is wrong, it will teach me a lesson I... Uh... Only get to learn once."
"Terrific" Esen said dryly. "I adore single-use teachings."
Saffi pressed her palm flat to her slate before it leapt out of her hands and tried to do something on its own. "We need a kill limiter" she said, breath evening as she found the place where fear turns into work. "A fail. Something like a software brake. Something that cuts the line before it -"
"No." Raizen said immediately. "I don’t want any drivers. No magic. The full control is on me. If I fail, it’s on me. But I’ll handle this thing like it’s... Another limb."
Kori stepped on the intercom, told Facilities they owed a floor sweep and a bottle of something nice for the person who had to catalog every shard, and turned back to the kids in her charge who weren’t kids and never would be again. "Five minutes" she announced. "Then we box this up before the elders walk in here with delicate sensibilities."
Fate enjoyed timing. Wayyy too much.
The door opened. A Warden in formal colors, rain still freckling his shoulders as if the weather had decided to follow him inside. He looked at Kori, looked at the ruined pane, looked at Raizen wearing a rig that had just tried to redecorate the room, and found exactly the words his job required.
"Council Spire requests your presence" he said to Raizen. "Immediately."
Something in Raizen’s chest did a quiet, measured lurch. He’d assumed this moment would come the first time a door let him through after curfew. It arrived now, with the room glittering like a crime. He slid the rig off his shoulders with care, set it on the bench like a sleeping animal, and wiped his palm on his thigh.
"Understood" he said.
Saffi stepped forward, as if to stand between him and something she couldn’t see. "Wait - he - It was -"
Kori shook her head once, small and absolute. "He’ll be fine. Or someone there will cook him on low heat" she told Saffi. Then, to Raizen, lower: "Respectful. Clear. Don’t apologize for trying to keep people alive faster."
His mouth almost found a smile. Didn’t. "I can do respectful."
"I know" Kori said, and for one blink her hand hovered the way a hand does when it wants to touch a shoulder and remembers there are rooms that will misunderstand. She let it fall, something that said "Go."
As he followed the Warden out, Hikari appeared at the end of the hall, flushed from the bike, hair swept back, the smallest constellations in her ears. She took in the glitter of the floor, the hole in the wall, the set of his jaw.
"What did you do?" she whispered, which was both accusation and awe.
He paused, long enough to let his eyes tell her a whole thing. "Proof of concept" he said. "And possibly a court date."
In the test room, a shard chimed as it finally settled. Esen bent, picked it up, and held it to the light. "On the bright side" he observed, "we have confetti. And something that isn’t Raizen’s Ankles"
Saffi made a helpless noise that landed between laughter and the urge to pass out. Kori pinched the bridge of her nose and told Facilities again to bring a bigger broom. Somewhere above, Neoshima’s streets buzzed, like they always did.
No one said it out loud, because the room would’ve rolled its eyes, but it hung there anyway:
Raizen might be in trouble. Big trouble.