Second Genesis

Grey stood at the edge of the courtyard and watched Brad pull.

The hammer didn’t move. Not even a fraction.

Brad’s arms trembled hard enough that the muscles beneath his skin seemed to ripple, though there wasn’t much muscle left anymore. His fingers had gone pale around the handle, his shoulders hunched forward, and every few breaths his knees threatened to buckle before he somehow forced them straight again.

Grey could hear the strain in his breathing from where he stood, each inhale shallow and rough, but Brad still didn’t let go.

But... Grey wasn’t sure that Brad could let go even if he had wanted to. He was basically forced to continue to stand there until the hammer gave way or he did. That was the cruelty of The Relentless’ test.

Grey narrowed his eyes and let his Resonant Sense spread. At first, he focused on the hammer itself, looking for some sort of lock, seal, curse, whatever bullshit The Relentless had left behind to make the trial work. There was definitely something there, a network of energy spreading through the metal and into the stone pedestal beneath it, but that wasn’t what caught Grey’s attention.

The energy didn’t stop at Brad’s hands. It was inside him.

Grey’s expression tightened as he took a step closer. Threads of energy spread from the hammer into Brad’s arms, then farther, passing through his shoulders and chest before branching through the paths of his Neural Frame. It wasn’t violent in the obvious sense. Nothing was tearing through him or burning him from the inside, but somehow that made it worse.

The hammer was growing into him like a cancer.

"What the fuck..."

Petri looked over. "What is it?"

Grey didn’t answer. He stepped closer again and focused harder, his eyes following the structure spreading through Brad’s body. The longer he looked, the more something bothered him, something that felt obvious enough that Grey got irritated with himself for not seeing it sooner.

Then it clicked for him and he realized something he had missed. Brad had a Linear Neural Frame.

Grey froze.

"Oh, fuck me."

This time Petri’s expression changed. "Grey?"

Grey barely heard him.

He could feel Brad’s Frame clearly. That alone was strange enough, but Grey had spent so much time digging around inside his own Frames, Amunet’s, mechs, bloodlines, everything else that the shape stood out immediately now. Brad’s Neural Frame was straightforward compared to his own, a direct structure built to move power through clean routes without all the branching, feedback, and external projection Grey was used to.

Which was exactly the fucking problem.

Guardians were failed Paladins. Grey had heard enough about the history of the Church by now to understand the basic idea. Guardians weren’t failures in the sense that they were weak, far from it. They were people born with the talent necessary to walk the Paladin path, but without the bloodline required to actually complete it. So, somewhere along the way, that talent had been redirected into something else.

But that meant something important: Paladins had Resonant Frames.

That was the foundation of what they did, projecting their power beyond their bodies, imposing it on the world around them, influencing weapons, enemies, space, whatever else their particular path allowed them to touch.

Brad did not have that.

Brad had a Linear Frame, one of the most common Neural Frames there was, and Grey hadn’t given that fact even half the thought it deserved when he’d casually pointed Brad toward The Relentless’ trial.

Grey clenched his jaw.

The hammer didn’t care about the difference. It was testing Brad as though he had a Resonant Frame since Brad had dared to touch it.

The energy spreading through him wasn’t just binding him to the trial. It was pulling on his Neural Frame, stretching it beyond the boundaries it had been built to handle, forcing it to extend into the hammer and the world outside his body.

A Resonant Frame was designed for that, a Linear Frame was not.

Of all the major Frame Types, Linear had the most difficulty influencing anything outside its own body. Its strength was internal direction, taking power from one point to another with speed and efficiency, sharpening the body and whatever passed directly through it. It could eventually begin mimicking some Resonant-like functions, but not until the Vanguard Class, when the Frame had evolved enough to handle those kinds of external demands.

Brad was nowhere near that.

Grey’s stomach sank.

Every second Brad stood there, his Frame was being stretched thinner, dragged farther outside the limits it was supposed to have. The fact he was still alive didn’t mean the trial was safe, it just meant Brad was too stubborn to die... for now.

"Idiot..." Grey muttered.

The word came out weaker than he wanted.

Brad had listened to him.

That was the part Grey couldn’t dodge around.

Before he left, Grey had looked at Mauve, seen her walk into a convenient inheritance, then looked at Brad and thought the big bastard needed something of his own. The Relentless was recruiting disciples andBrad was strong, sturdy, and built like a tank, so Grey had thrown the idea at him without thinking much beyond that.

Then Grey fucked off to deal with his own problems, but now Brad looked half dead because of his suggestion.

Grey stared at the hammer and felt his teeth grind together.

This wasn’t bad luck. It wasn’t the Church screwing Brad over, or the Genesis System dropping another surprise on them, or some alien asshole changing the rules.

This one was his fault.

He had practically sent Brad to his death because he hadn’t bothered to think for another goddamn minute about whether the trial even made sense for his Frame.

Brad’s knees dipped and Grey’s heart jumped.

For a moment, it looked like he was finally going to collapse, but Brad growled through clenched teeth and forced himself upright again. His hands tightened around the hammer, blood leaking from where the metal had torn into his palms.

Grey’s guilt twisted into anger at himself.

"Alright."

Petri glanced toward him.

Grey stepped forward until the edge of whatever barrier surrounded the trial hummed against his senses. He stared at Brad, then at the hammer, his expression hardening.

He had gotten Brad into this. He was damn sure getting him out.

Grey grit his teeth. "No matter what."

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