Our route quickly takes us into the denser parts of the district, closer to where it borders the Electric Town. No auto transportation of any kind is allowed here, so the streets are filled with uni students on their off hours. Excited first-years trying the bakeries and coffee shops; later seniors in tees and gym shorts hauling bags of groceries back to their dorms. Everyone keeping a wary eye on the brooding sky.

It’s only when Feint says we’ve reached the last turn that the pedestrian flow ratchets back down. Two quick alleys away from the busiest downtown plazas, we’re walking down a wide, dimly-lit brick lane all by ourselves. Humble houses and small stores shuttered for the offseason flank the sidewalk. I hop the curb and walk right down the center of the street, listening to the soft sounds my sneakers make while I pass between circles of shadow and lamplight. My eyes roam the sidewalk until I finally spy the one dark silhouette amidst the other lit-up buildings. A huge warehouse, two stories that have the height of three, boarded windows and dusty glass. Above the wide bay doors, a hand-painted sign marked with handprints of all sizes. The paint is faded, the wood chipped, but the name beneath them is still legible.

I stare up at the sign for a long, long moment. Hands in my pockets, rocking on my heels. Only when a streetlamp flickers behind me do I finally remember where I am and who I’m with. I glance both ways down the street. Dead empty. Feint draws up beside me, a small puff of steamy breath pluming up from her scarf.

“How do you want to do this?” she casually asks.

“I’ve got a few ideas.”

I head under the front awning to inspect the bay doors. One tug confirms that they’re locked in place. Bolts rusted through, too. An alley keeps heading down the side of the warehouse to my right, running down its flank. Couple windows, nailed-down wooden boards, undisturbed like sacred ground. It takes one JOY-powered elbow to smash through the first window I see and get us an entrance.

Wincing at the noise, I wave for Feint to follow and ease through the busted boards, letting my weight rest on the first foot through. Something catches my ankle as I start to duck though. I throw my hands forward and just barely keep from braining myself against the windowsill as I tumble into pitch-black lobby on the other side, a hot itch of pain crawling along my hip. Gasping, I start to palm over the cut, then immediately flip to my feet when a bright spotlight slams on behind me. My silhouette leaps to life on the wall. Heartbeat shooting straight into overdrive. Panicked adrenaline spikes through my veins for the two frames it takes me to whirl around and come face to face with a creaky Oldtech projector sputtering out its last life, upside-down on the floor. Not a spotlight, not a security guard.

Feint’s worried face pops over the windowsill. “Shit, what happened?”

I kick the thing’s power cord off my foot with a growl. “Getting a little paranoid, is all.”

The projected footage keeps flickering on the wall. Some old tape of a coaching session, degraded by time, two people in a gymnasium I don’t recognize. Staticky audio plays in a distorted warble. Three words make it through before the projector starts coughing on dust.

“First comes hands…”

My eyebrows narrow. Toeing off the projector with my sneaker, I pull out my JOY and set it to hover behind my shoulder, spreading a wispy blanket of electric-blue illumination while Feint eases between the boards far more more gracefully than I did. She moves smoothly even with her hands in her pockets. Agile like a bite-sized acrobat. If she hadn’t told me she doesn’t fight, I’d peg her as a natural fit for any of the mundane martial classes. Duelist, maybe.

We wander the lobby together, kicking up clouds of dust as we go. I can’t stop my sneezes, only stifle them, pinching my nose so I don’t make even more noise. Cyan light spills past my shoulder over the warped wooden paneling and old memorabilia littering the walls. Silver trophy cups from college tournaments dated almost two decades back gleam in the darkness. Tattered banners of prestigious noble houses from faraway Sections rustle quietly. Battered weapons of various martial disciplines hang on simple hooks: a katana’s detached blade with an oil-stained edge, a revolver with a shattered barrel, knuckle tape soaked in blood. Huge photographs printed on real paper; tons of them, unimaginably expensive in a digital age. Many people fill the frames, but one manages to find his way into each photo: a powerful fistfighter with a smile always on his face. Sometimes he’s front and center. Sometimes taking the photo. Rarely he’s in the background. Once or twice, he’s looking out over some incredible vista, giving a human scale to the otherworldly wonder captured between the margins.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I pad along the history of his life, watching him grow from a boy as old as I am to a young warlord at the head of an army, to a powerful hero waving to a thousandfold crowd, and at the end, the quietest moments those crowds would never see. The index finger of my left hand brushes along the monochrome memories, clearing away the dust. A lump rises in my throat. I swallow it down and look away.

Feint’s watching me with a mix of curiosity and concern. “You alright, Tay?”

“It’s nothing,” I say. I hold a hand to my forehead and put the pictures behind me. “Someone went to a lot of work to make sure this place was kept in good shape. Why was it shut down?”

“Beats me. I heard the Sectional Director zoned it off as a government investment, kept anyone from buying up the property.” She looks around the darkness, searching the low roof and ancient brick floors. “Maybe it was important to her. Clearly was to someone.”

A reception desk waits in the darkness ahead. Half-disintigrated papers are scattered atop it. I thumb through them briefly, but most of them crumble to dust when I touch them, and those that don’t are nothing helpful. Nothing that screams this way to Aunt Jolie, at least.

Across the hall, under a wide mouth of an opening so low I have to duck under and Feint waltzes right beneath, the air temperature drops ten degrees flat. We’re in the main floor of the warehouse, I think. Guided by the meager light of Feint’s JOY, I search the walls until I find an old lever for the overheads. Takes both hands to throw it. An electric hum shivers through the air once I flip it upright.

Most of the spotlights up in the rafters are out, but a few begin to glow once power reaches them, patiently warming towards a golden ambiance. I blink slowly, eyes adjusting to the new illumination. Shift slowly on my heels, taking in the vastness of the space. A sea of rusted punching bags and decades-old weight racks runs along the brick walls. Heavy wooden pillars naturally divide the floor into partitions for training, stretching, sparring, and more. It’s a gym, alright. A beautiful one, handmade and mausoleum quiet, suffused with all-natural retro that the Electric Town can only hope to copy. Perfectly preserved in dusty amber; like a sword in a stone that’s lain dormant for eons, patiently waiting to fulfill its purpose.

There’s a weight to the air here. A stillness that grows as I approach the full-size sandstone square in the center of the gym; fighting instincts magnetized to it. I run my palm along the flattened surface, eyes closed, feeling the history of lessons learned and friendships forged in its scratches and scuffmarks. For a moment, I’m taken back to that little rock garden in my memory. I can almost hear the squeaking shoes, the slap of skin against wood. Black hair, golden eyes. I wince.

Then my ears perk up. Blinking back to the gym as I’m dragged out of the moment and my ears twitch again. This time back and to the left, towards a little side exit to one of the alleys. Squeaking shoes, just outside. Not a figment of my imagination.

Keys are already rattling in the door. Sucking in a breath, I look to Feint for help, but she just throws her palms hands up, eyes wide with panic. There’s nothing but pillars and workout equipment around us. No time to hide, the door’s already creaking open and-

“-like ten years, right? I didn’t even think the lights could still work.”

My stomach drops as one by one, four elite uni fighters fresh from a workout squeeze through the creaking door, gazing around the lit-up gym with the same wonder I just did. The first through, a boy with a sleeping fox resting over his shoulders, is still talking.

“Maybe it’s a sparkrat?” he offers, eyeing the rafters. “Lots of them coming up from the Vents lately.”

But their fiery leader has already seen me. His expression hardens.

“Nah,” he growls, releasing his bag. It hits the ground with a violent thud. “Different kind of rat.”