Ash closed the door to his room with a sharp slam.
He stood for a second in the darkness, breathing. Then he exploded.
He punched the bed. Once. Twice. Three times.
"Damn it!"
The gray electricity jumped between his fingers, uncontrolled. It broke a picture frame in the room.
"Damn it, damn it, DAMN IT!"
He kept punching the bed until his fist hurt. Until his rage calmed down.
He dropped to the floor, his back against the bed.
"Fine," he murmured, staring at the cracked ceiling. "I'll do it."
He closed his eyes.
"I'll do that shitty job. Fast. No questions. I'll finish it and forget about Gray Phantom."
He opened his eyes.
"And once I finish this job, I'll go register my Fracture once and for all."
He clenched his fist. The gray electricity glowed.
"Gray Phantom... you're going to pay for this."
---
The next four days were the longest of his life.
Ash slept little. Ate less. He spent his free hours in an abandoned park he'd found on the border between the south and the east. No one went there. The trees were dry, the swings broken, the ground covered in dead leaves and trash.
Perfect for training.
He couldn't use his Fracture in his room — he'd already broken enough plates. He couldn't use it on the street — too many people, too many questions. But there, in that forgotten park, no one watched him.
He practiced until his hands went numb.
The technique he wanted to master was simple in theory, difficult in practice: concentrate his entire electrical discharge into a single point. Not a shockwave like the night he killed the bodyguards. Something more precise. Something more lethal.
A bolt. A single bolt, directed by his hand, capable of splitting whatever it touched. Using his hand like an electric blade.
He failed again and again.
The electricity scattered before impact, lost itself in the air, burned the bark of trees without splitting them. Ash cursed, took a deep breath, tried again.
By the third day, his right hand was numb. His fingers trembled even when he wasn't using his Fracture. But he kept training.
The night before Friday, he succeeded.
Ash stood in front of a dry tree about two meters tall. He'd been in the park for hours. The moon was high. His eyes were heavy. His right arm hung almost useless.
But he gathered what strength he had left, clenched his teeth, and fired.
The gray electricity shot from his palm forming a blade. Direct. Fast. Violent.
The tree split in half with a dry crack.
Both halves fell to the sides, kicking up dust and dead leaves.
Ash stared at the split trunk. Then at his hand. The gray electricity glowed faintly between his trembling fingers.
A laugh escaped his throat. Low at first, then louder.
"Hahahahahaha!"
He dropped to his knees on the leaf-covered ground.
"With this... with this, I can defend myself against anyone."
He took a deep breath. The air smelled of ozone and burnt wood.
"Fine. Damn it. Fine!"
---
Walking back to his room, Ash realized something.
Vera.
He'd been so focused on training, on the rage, on the promise to destroy Gray Phantom, that he hadn't thought about her.
But now, in the silence of the early morning, the image appeared in his head.
Vera smoking. The cigarette between her fingers. The smoke curling around her face.
Porcelain skin. Pale, almost unreal under the car's lights. Short red hair, deliberately messy, as if she didn't care but it still looked good.
And her eyes. Those eyes that looked at him as if they could see right through him.
Ash shook his head.
"What the hell am I thinking?"
But he couldn't deny it. Vera was the first young person he'd talked to in months. The first woman who had looked him in the eyes without calling him Alien.
Well, she'd called him many things. But none of them were "Alien."
He realized it suddenly: at the orphanage, more than half were boys. The few women there... none of them seemed feminine. The caretakers were older women, bitter, with faces that looked like they'd given up decades ago. And the girls his age... the few who passed through the orphanage left quickly. Adopted, or runaways, or simply gone.
He'd even gotten into fights with several of them. For calling him Alien. For laughing at him.
None of them looked like Vera.
"Whatever," he murmured, shoving his hands in his pockets. "It doesn't matter. Tomorrow I'll finish this problem once and for all."
He climbed the stairs to his building. Entered his room. Dropped onto the bed without taking off his clothes.
He closed his eyes.
The image of Vera smoking stayed etched behind his eyelids.
Porcelain skin. Red hair.
"It doesn't matter," he repeated out loud, as if saying it could erase it.
It didn't work.
But sleep came anyway, heavy and dreamless.
---
Friday arrived too fast.
Ash woke before noon. He'd slept nine straight hours — more than he'd slept all week. His right hand was still numb, but no longer trembling.
He showered with cold water. Put on his best clothes, which wasn't much: black pants without stains and the black hoodie, but he let the hood hang down. He looked at himself in the shared bathroom's broken mirror.
Pale blue eyes. Ash-blond hair always combed back. Deep dark circles.
You look like a walking corpse, he thought.
But it was what he had.
He took the paper from his hoodie pocket. Vera's number. He'd looked at it so many times over the past four days that he knew it by heart, but he still needed to see it written.
He dialed.
The phone rang once. Twice. Three times.
On the fourth, someone answered.
"So you didn't run away, little one?"
Vera's voice sounded different on the phone. Closer. Almost intimate. As if she were smiling on the other end of the line.
"No," Ash replied. "I'm not going to run."
"How boring. I like it when they run." There was a pause. The sound of a cigarette being inhaled. "Perfect. Listen carefully. Take notes."
Ash looked for a piece of paper and a pen. Found nothing. He used his own hand: wrote on his palm with a pen borrowed from the neighbor at the end of the hall.
Vera gave him an address. In the north. In the most expensive part of the north.
"One more thing," Vera said, just before hanging up. "Buy yourself an elegant suit. Please."
"What?"
"An elegant suit. Jacket, tie, dress pants. Shiny shoes. You need to arrive as elegant as possible."
"What for?"
"Because you're going to be the bodyguard for the daughter of a high-ranking Gray Phantom officer."
Ash fell silent.
The phone crackled.
"Hello?" Vera said. "Did you go mute?"
"Bodyguard?" Ash repeated, his voice strangely high-pitched. "Me?"
"Yes, you. Problem?"
"I don't know anything about being a bodyguard. I've never protected anyone. The only time I tried to do something..."
He stopped himself. He didn't want to finish the sentence.
The only time I tried to do something, Eliot died.
Vera must have guessed what he didn't say, because her voice softened a little.
"That's exactly why, little one. That's why. You have a debt. And this is the only way I can think of to pay it without anyone getting hurt." Another cigarette inhale. "The girl needs a bodyguard. You need to clear your name. It's simple. You do this, and the debt disappears."
"What if the girl gets hurt?"
"She's not going to get hurt. You'll be there to prevent it."
"And if I can't?"
Vera laughed. It wasn't a cruel laugh. It was a tired laugh, as if she'd heard that question a thousand times.
"Then we'll have a bigger problem. But let's cross that bridge when we get to it, okay?"
Ash closed his eyes.
Bodyguard. A girl. A high-ranking Gray Phantom officer.
Why would they put someone who killed five bodyguards because he doesn't know how to use his Fracture as a bodyguard? This smells like a trap, Ash thought.
This wasn't what he'd imagined when he thought about paying his debt. He'd expected a dirty job. Something violent. Something he could do fast and forget.
But this...
"How long?" he asked.
"I don't know. A few weeks. Maybe a month. Depends on how things go."
"And my job at the bar?"
"You figure that out. I'm not your secretary."
Ash clenched his teeth.
"Fine," he said finally. "I'll do it."
"I knew you were smart." Vera took one last drag of her cigarette. "The address I gave you. Tomorrow at nine in the morning. Don't be late. And please, buy a suit. I don't want the girl to think I sent her a homeless person."
"I don't have money for a suit."
"Use the money you stole. I'm sure Samuel doesn't need it anymore."
The phone went dead.
Ash stared at the palm of his hand, where he'd written the address. The ink was already starting to run from his sweat.
Bodyguard.
He sighed.
He went to the closet, took out the metal box from under the bed, and counted the money.
He'd have to buy a suit.
And he'd have to talk to Erick.
And he'd have to prepare to meet the daughter of a high-ranking Gray Phantom officer.
Shit, he thought.
What have I gotten myself into.