Arcane: Broken Mechanism

"Oh, and yes," Finn said after them. "From now on, call me Boss. Give the kid a few days to rest, let him get tested for his skills. It wouldn't be good if you beat him up and he got caught on his first mission."

He turned around for a moment to steal a glance at Finn. Finn was no longer looking at him, completely focused on his papers, as if he hadn't just decided the fate of the new "recruit".

"He just let me go? He didn't even resort to beating and torture? Is that even normal?" Sirion's thoughts were spinning around in his head as he was pushed forward by the two of them again.

As they led him out of the office and closed the door behind them, the skinny guy, the one who had held Sirion by the collar, chuckled:

"Well, consider yourself lucky. The boss usually has no patience for people like you. Apparently he decided that you would be useful."

Sirion didn't answer, trying to hide his thoughts.

"Why did he just let me go?" he thought. "Do they really have a big problem with the lack of errand boys who will carry packages? Is this really such a dangerous job? He said that messengers die like flies or are caught by peacekeepers" - inside him his heart was beating wildly. He was hit very hard.

He was taken to a small room in the factory. It was barely lit by a dim lamp, but at least there was a mattress, albeit stained, and covered with a shabby blanket.

"Lie down, rest here for now," they told him. At first he did not understand why they took him here and not to the room where he lived. The answer came almost immediately. Firstly, they did not want him to run away, here he would be under their supervision and some guards. Secondly, he obviously got a job from their boss, and here the living conditions were slightly better. "Jerry will come tomorrow, he will tell you what to do," the stocky one said shortly, leaving the room.

The door closed behind him, leaving Sirion alone.

He looked around. The room was cramped, smelled of machine oil and some kind of chemicals. The only piece of furniture was a small metal box in the corner. He sat down on the mattress and winced in pain - his body ached from the beating.

"Test my skills," he thought. "Finn is clearly up to something. This all went too easily, and these "a couple of days" are probably all I have to prepare." Sirion fell onto the mattress, looking at the ceiling. He needed to think about how to cope with this world, but fatigue got the better of him. He closed his eyes, hoping to forget himself with sleep for at least a little while. But sleep did not come. He went to the door and pulled the handle, it was locked. Sirion tried the door handle again, but nothing changed.

"Well, of course," he muttered under his breath. "They weren't going to leave me unattended," He carefully examined the door. Thick metal, strong hinges, even the lock looked secure enough to discourage him from thinking about running away. These weren't the pathetic wooden doors he'd seen in some other places in Zaun. Taking a deep breath, he stepped back and looked around the room. There was almost nothing here: an old mattress, a box, a dusty floor. The dim light from the lamp didn't add to the coziness, but at least it wasn't as stuffy as the lower levels of the factory.

His thoughts returned to his boss's words: "Let them test your skills." Right, his skills... He'd never considered himself an athletic guy in his life. He couldn't jump even a few meters without obvious problems, and he'd never been fast, that's for sure. But when he was being chased... he certainly acted on autopilot and jumped over buildings and ran through alleys at high speed, but he was doing it! Could it be the mechanical memory of the previous owner's body? I'll have to try to do it all myself, conscious parkour skills definitely won't hurt.

Back to his other skills and abilities - the system. He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. The system. He still didn't understand how it worked and why it was loading so slowly.

"The system is loading... 43%"

"Why is it loading so terribly slowly? I hope it doesn't disappoint at the end of the loading, it would be very bad to find out that the wait was in vain." He got up from the mattress and went to the box. It turned out to be unexpectedly heavy when Sirion tried to open it. The lid gave in with an unpleasant creak, and inside he found... nothing interesting. Just a few rusty tools and an old magazine with crumpled pages.

"Great," he grinned. "Nothing useful! But still, it's more than nothing.

He sat back down on the mattress, examining the tools. Among them was a small wrench and a broken screwdriver.

"Not a weapon, of course, but maybe it will come in handy," he thought, placing both tools under his pillow. Sighing, he lay down again, feeling the fatigue rolling in waves. "Jerry... Tomorrow we'll find out who this guy is and what they want from me," he thought before sleep finally caught up with him.

The dream was vivid, as if he was still there, at home. Sirion saw his father wiping away his tears, trying to stay strong for the others. His mother was crying inconsolably, clutching his old T-shirt, and his younger sister, whom he always protected, was sitting in the corner of the room with red eyes from tears, whispering something under her breath. It was unbearable. They were mourning his death. Of course, in the last couple of years, against the backdrop of his performance at school and the choice of a specialty and university, the relationship between him and his parents had been somewhat strained, but he still loved his family.

With all the stress he had experienced since waking up in this world, he somehow did not think about what his loved ones were going through. Suddenly, he just disappeared from his bed and they did not know where he was. But the hardest thing is to realize that he will not see his loved ones again. Sirion abruptly opened his eyes and sat up, breathing heavily. Sweat was running down his face, sticking to his neck and shirt.

"Shit," he breathed out, running his hand over his face. "Shit, shit, shit..."

His heart was pounding like he'd just been chased. It took him a few seconds to realize where he was. The dim lamp, the metal box in the corner, the smell of chemicals and machine oil - all of this brought him back to reality.

"It was just a dream," he thought, although deep down he knew it wasn't a relief. His family could really be suffering right now, thinking he was dead.

He closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. His breathing gradually slowed, but the guilt continued to eat away at him from the inside - "I can't sit here and feel sorry for myself. If I can get out of here, if I can figure out how this system works, I can protect myself, and maybe I'll be lucky and the system will be generous and strong enough for me to go home."

His gaze fell on the tools lying next to the mattress. Sirion took a deep breath, pushing his emotions to the back of his mind.

"Enough," he told himself. "We need to focus on what we can do right now.

The door opened. A big man he hadn't seen before approached him. Sirion looked up to see a massive man who filled almost the entire doorway. The big man was broader in the shoulders than Finn himself, with a thick beard and a scar running down his right cheek. His small, narrowed eyes looked at Sirion as if he were something unpleasant but tolerable, like a dirty spot on a new shirt.

"I said come out," he repeated, crossing his arms over his chest. His voice was deep, with a raspy edge, as if he smoked more than he breathed. Sirion reluctantly rose from the mattress, feeling his whole body protest the movement. Every rib, every joint reminded him of the beating.

"Coming," he croaked, trying not to show weakness. The big man stepped aside, letting him pass. The corridors of the factory were as gloomy as ever. The metal walls, soaked in soot and dirt, seemed oppressive, as if every curve knew that no one stayed here for long - either died or disappeared.

They went down the stairs to the lower level of the plant, where it was even more stuffy and the smell of chemicals was stinging. One of the escorts pushed him toward an older man with gray hair who was apparently "Jerry." He turned around, casually wiping his dirty hands on his work apron.

"Is this kid under my supervision now?" Jerry asked indifferently, looking Sirion up and down.