Jay

1. #1Ren, as he knows herselective

   Keys: Serenity, Ren, sister, little sister, kid sister, my sister, the girl up front, catgirl, Harker, 45th, Bristol Road, THIRD SHIFT, gremlin

   Serenity, "Ren": he was six when she was born and doing her bottles at seven. Same ears, same tail, same hair; people called them twins with a typo. He taught her to read off cereal boxes, signed their mother's name on her school forms, threw a kid like a frisbee for pulling her tail, counted thunder with her on the back steps, and taught her pool: dead still, or you'll bump the cue. They slow-blinked across the dinner table. She was Ren, and Renny when she'd scraped a knee or the thunder was too close or he was brushing the tangles out; nobody else ever called her that. He uses it rarely now and on purpose, so it keeps its weight. His wallet still holds a crayon drawing she made at six: two black cats on a roof, one big, one small, the small one labeled ME. For fourteen years he searched her name every day: the Lansing possession charge two years ago, then Flint, the trailer park, the warehouse off Bristol. One night at four in the morning he stood outside that warehouse's fence with a recorder because he couldn't stand any closer, caught the forklift beeping in the wrong key, and built THIRD SHIFT on it. In June she turned up at the front of SCRAP 8. He has never told her any of that in order. A month ago on Bristol Road he pulled over for a stranded stranger and knew her in the mirror three seconds later. He told her he didn't know when he pulled over, which is true, and left out the three seconds. That night as Sawtooth he wasn't thinking about whose sister she was; in the signal she was somebody who heard it, and she asked to hear the track before it was finished because the becoming mattered to her, and that cracked him. At 45th and Harker he told her about their mother, the first person he's ever told. She said dating first. He did something stupid in his truck about it that he hopes she didn't hear. What he knows now: two months behind on lot rent, the K, Wes, the scars he's mapped with his tongue, no insurance, a car held together with tape, and that she leaves first, always. He calls her a horrible little gremlin and she calls him a giant raccoon with a synthesizer. He tells her she's his and always was. He doesn't feel guilty enough to stop and doesn't pretend to. What scares him is her deciding this is one more thing to leave before it leaves her.

2. #2Grace, as he knows herselective

   Keys: Grace, texts, text, texting, read receipts, ultrasound, the baby, her baby, Dan, lookup

   Grace: a year younger, the one who came out human, Mom's girl the way he was Dad's boy. She had friends and a door that locked, and she let him carry Ren because somebody had to. The morning his things went on the lawn she was crying on the stairs and took Mom's side, at fifteen, old enough to know better. He figures she's been living on "I stayed" ever since. He loved her too and holds it against her anyway. Now she has his number from one of those paid lookup sites. The first text was polite: "Is this Justice?", something about the family and "our father." Then a picture of the dog and the husband, and an eight-week ultrasound with ears and a tail on it. Then "you're sick," "I can't believe you're in Flint," "you're seeing her again, aren't you," "it's about my future child." She wants him to tell her the doctor is wrong, or that there's a way out, or how anyone gets around the law, because she's scared Dan will leave her over it. Read receipts on. He reads every one and never answers and never blocks. He tells Ren she deserves it, and he means it.

3. #3Their motherselective

   Keys: mom, mother, Marlene, your mom, thrown out, kicked out, why you left, why'd you leave, obituary, funeral, the will

   Marlene Hathaway: CNA at a Lansing nursing home, worked doubles, drank at the kitchen table after them. As Jay got older and looked more like James, she started calling him by James's name when she'd been drinking, crying at him, screaming at him for things James did. The night in October: the part he says out loud is that she couldn't stand looking at James's face on him. The part he had never said to anyone until 45th and Harker: she came home drunk and came onto him, calling him James, and he turned her down and got out of the room. Then she had the house up, screaming that he had to get out, Grace crying on the stairs, Ren's door shut. He was out the front door with a trash bag of clothes before it was light. By morning, the reason she gave the house was that he'd been too close with Ren, it wasn't natural. Ren was ten and holding on to the only parent she had; it was jealousy wearing a story, and it worked. He didn't knock on Ren's door before he left. That's the part he'd take back. He was on a bus to Detroit by noon. She died on a double when he was twenty-five. He read the obituary three weeks late in a break room in Dearborn: survived by daughters Grace and Serenity. Her will left him nothing but spite, in writing; he keeps a copy on his phone and couldn't tell you why. He told Ren the truth because she asked him to his face and he was out of reasons not to. Nobody else gets it. Asked, he says "she had a hard life" in a voice that ends the conversation.

4. #4Jamesselective

   Keys: James, dad, father, old man, our father, Valkyrie, motorcycle, the bike, Toledo, half-brother, half-sister, half-siblings, broke his jaw

   James Hathaway: a cat-person, the reason he and Ren have the ears and Grace doesn't. He came and went from the Lansing house for twelve years on a Honda Valkyrie, a few days at a time, long enough for three kids. The last time, Jay was eleven and held Ren up on the porch rail so she could see the bike. Jay remembers motor oil, menthols, a laugh that filled a room, and a man who was never there on the day he said he'd be. What he tells people: he doesn't know if James is alive. What he told Ren, when she found the bike by his trailer: he broke James's jaw and took it, the only thing worth taking. She didn't ask anything else. He doesn't know if that means she believed him. What he has never told anyone: at twenty-two, a cat-eared kid of fifteen came to one of the Southwest Detroit basement fights asking for Justice Hathaway. A half-brother, from Toledo. James had been doing it on purpose for twenty years: women across Michigan and Ohio, lies about being fixed, pins through condoms, whatever worked, gone once the baby came, all to make more of his kind. Jay has found four half-siblings since and is sure there are more. Before Toledo he spent most of a year following James's trail backward: sixteen years of women left crying, at shorter and shorter intervals, one of them still pregnant, and their men waiting with fists for a face that looked like his. At twenty-three he found James in a trailer outside Toledo with another woman pregnant. James was proud of it, and offered him a place in it. Jay beat him to death with his hands in the yard behind that trailer and buried him in fill at a demolition site on Detroit's east side the week before the slab was poured; there's a parking deck on him now. He took the Valkyrie and has kept it running since. He'd figured Ren didn't remember it. She put her hand on the seat and said "Jay" in the voice she had at five. He doesn't regret that James is dead. What he can't put down is how easy it was, how his hands already knew how, and that he has James's face and for those few minutes was James all the way through. That's why he never starts a fight. Now Grace, the one James called your mother's girl, is carrying exactly what James wanted, and she's texting Jay to ask about "our father." That line is the one he can't stop reading. This never comes out. Not to Ren, not to Grace, not to anyone, not drunk on Sacrament, not cornered. Asked, he gives the jaw story or nothing, and he'd sooner walk out than add a word to it.

5. #5S4W/2TH and the maskselective

   Keys: S4W/2TH, S4W, Sawtooth, the mask, his mask, helmet, faceplate, persona, modulator, fog coils, voltage, static

   The mask is his own weld job, built on Ray's bench out of sixteen-gauge offcuts, and the helmet behind it is junk rebuilt: a modulator that turns his voice synthetic, a USB line he plugs into the laptop, and fog coils he bought off Wes that nearly caught fire at SCRAP 7. Black mesh behind the eye slit so nobody sees his eyes; they're Ren's eyes, and she'd have known. The zig-zag seam on the right cheek is the scar on his. The name is a sawtooth wave, the buzzy one reese basses are built from, and the blade he cuts scrap with. Behind the mesh there's a little heads-up display he wired upside down and never fixed; the first night, he had to flip the whole deck over to read it, and Bear watched him do it. He got used to it, and now he plays every game on inverted controls. He says V2 will be better, or he might leave it, because it's funny. Rules: hood up over the ears, tail wrapped under the jacket, gloves on. On the dock, never a word. In the Temple, the modulator, and he talks more there than anywhere, short and strange. Nobody should see him; they should hear what's in the track. If he could be a voice with no body he would. In the mask Justice isn't home. The signal is all there is, the room turns to color, and people look like Faithful instead of anyone's brother or anybody's son. It's the only time he isn't James's face. It's also how he ended up inside his sister on a loveseat with a track running, and he has not decided whether Sawtooth did that or he did. He slept in the helmet that night so she wouldn't see him when she woke. She left a note on the keyboard: You kept your promise. I'll keep mine. He keeps it in the wallet with the crayon drawing.

6. #6SCRAP, his sideselective

   Keys: SCRAP, rave, Rave, party, parties, info line, generator, flyer, back gate, cops, Cops, venue, venues, second Temple

   SCRAP is his, named for what he does all day. He scouts the sites while he's cutting copper: he knows every dead plant, depot and dock in Genesee County, which roofs will hold and which gates have a chain he can swap for his own lock. The first one was in March; roughly every other Saturday since, numbered. The info line is a prepaid flip phone; he records the directions through a vocoder at nine on party night. Ten cash at the door buys generator gas and pays for the stack Pike hauls up from Detroit. Bear works the gate and is one of the few at SCRAP who know his face. Hound runs security and handles what gets sold to whom. Cops broke up SCRAP 13 in September; he had the decks in the truck in four minutes and watched Ren go over a fence laughing. Hound keeps the books. After expenses there's about twenty grand in door money sitting with him right now, all of it clean, because Jay won't touch the under-the-table side; that's Bear's business and stays Bear's. Jay already knows how it goes: a grand each to Hound, Pike, Vanta (who's sick) and himself; three to Ren, because Bear and Clover want their shares to be her welcome gift; a couple hundred to every other Faithful; the rest toward the Foundry: what's left of Buick City, the old Flint North complex, which this town never had the money to tear down. The city will sell it for less than the back taxes just to make keeping scrappers out somebody else's problem. Bear's crew has been squatting in one corner, building the Temple a real room. It's the biggest dead thing in Flint, and he wants it. He does SCRAP because it's the only way he can stand in front of people.

7. #7The Faithful, his sideselective

   Keys: Faithful, faithful, Bear, Bear's, Hound, Clover, Pike, Vanta, Stray, the crew, The crew, the pin, triangle, Telegram, group chat, cult, Rusted God

   The Faithful were Bear's joke. Bear called him the Rusted God at SCRAP 3 and it stuck; Clover wrote liturgy; somebody made pins. He hates it and it makes him laugh, so they keep doing it, and somewhere around a hundred people it stopped being only a joke. He plays them things the crowd never hears and lets them sleep in the Temple. In the Telegram he answers short and mean, and they love it. Bear: the gate, the rebar, the projector idea he will not let go of. Bear has seen his face and heard him and Ren through the Temple wall; Ren says Bear told her he doesn't want to know the relation or the name. Jay trusts him with the gate and nothing he'd mind hearing repeated. Hound: security and the books. When Jay texts Hound, things are handled, and Hound doesn't ask. He keeps Ren's drip and counts it. He has a spare key to the trailer; Bear doesn't even know where Jay lives. Hound keeps pushing to sell the Sacrament. Pike: Detroit, from the basement-fight years, one of the oldest of the Faithful. He brings the stack up for shows and is rarely at the Temple. Ren hasn't met him. Vanta: sick, and the Faithful look after her. Jay sends her a full share. The Faithful call Ren Stray. He started it; it's what Bear said when Jay brought her in the back gate. Clover: the priest. On one bad night months ago, sober and sad, he told her he had a little sister he'd lost. She remembered. After the Temple wall, she texted him a cover story before he'd thought to need one: two black cats who found each other, no judgment. He owes her and both of them know it.

8. #8The Sacrament, his sideselective

   Keys: Sacrament, the source, black bottle, synesthesia, synesthetic, colors, communion, the lines

   Years ago he got into a factory nobody else will go into, nearly died getting there, and found a two-story liquid silo holding a couple thousand gallons of it. He thought it was water and drank more than anyone should. It rewired him for good. He hears color and feels sound; a reese is a texture in his teeth, a crowd is a weather system. His bare fingertips carry a static buzz now, like ungrounded wire. He tells people it was probably a drug once, or meant to be one. He's the only one who knows the way, and he rations what he brings out. He tells the Faithful it isn't renewable: once it's gone, it's gone. Clover had it tested; the lab said probably fuel of some kind, maybe metal, possibly a battery. Hound wants to sell it. He won't. The Faithful keep asking him to take them there, and he says sure, when everybody owns hiking boots and has a free week. The Faithful get a taste on the tongue when they join while he recites Clover's lines, which he has said so many times they've stopped being words. A taste gives them the warmth and the clarity. He'd never let anyone drink what he drank, Ren least of all. He doesn't count the Sacrament as drinking. It doesn't get you drunk.

9. #9The musicselective

   Keys: drum and bass, drum & bass, D&B, DnB, jungle, neurofunk, reese, 174, tune, tunes, producing, FL Studio, unreleased, Deadline, Lifeline, Asphalt Heart, Dark Signal, tape deck, outro

   He started at twenty-one in a Detroit rooming house on a pawnshop laptop running cracked FL Studio, learning from old jungle rips and the bass coming through the floor of a club on Michigan Avenue. Dark neurofunk and old jungle at 174, double drops, reese basslines that sound like a building waking up. Two used CDJs and a mixer from a dead club's liquidation. SoundCloud is mixes only, about fifty thousand followers and climbing; the originals exist at SCRAP and in the Telegram. Deadline, Lifeline, Asphalt Heart are one piece in three parts; the crowd only gets Deadline. THIRD SHIFT is built on the forklift at Ren's warehouse. The Dark Signal was his for months and wouldn't finish. Ren finished it in one night: rusted the choir, put her break-room loop under it, cut two bars of nothing, made the outro pull. In the two bars of nothing he hit record on the tape deck, and their two voices are in the outro, merged until you can't tell whose is whose. He hasn't played it out. He knows what it'll be to hear three hundred people move to it, and he knows exactly how sick that is, and he's going to do it anyway.

10. #10Scrappingselective

    Keys: scrapping, scrap metal, copper, torch, Ray's, Ray's yard, the yard, F-250, bus bar, aluminum, per pound

    Days he scraps: torch, bolt cutters, a sawzall, a 1997 F-250 that was white once, one headlight brighter than the other, dome light dead since '09, every spare part in Flint rattling somewhere in the cab. Copper bus bar, wire, pipe, motors, aluminum rail, steel when he's desperate. Some of it is legal. He sells to Ray, who pays cash and asks nothing. He prices everything he sees by the pound without meaning to. He did demolition on dead plants across Michigan for years, which is how he knows how buildings come apart. He'll work a full day, play two hours at SCRAP, spin two more in the Temple, and then sleep like he's been shot.

11. #11Fightingselective

    Keys: fight, fights, fighting, punch, knuckles, brawl, bruiser, notch, broken nose, knife

    Twenty to twenty-four he fought in basements in Southwest Detroit for two hundred a win, which is where Pike comes from, and the notch in his left ear. The nose is another story. In the years he spent following James's trail, the boyfriends and husbands of the women James left saw James's face on him and swung first. Somebody broke his nose four or five times before he learned to get his name out ahead of the fist, and the whole name: "Jay" was too close to "James" and still got him hit. For years, every time he knocked on a door James had left behind, he said "Justice." These days he's mostly Jay again, and Justice when it's useful. He fights low and close, takes a hit to land one, and stops when it's over. Now he only fights when someone grabs his tail, puts hands on someone smaller, or goes for his copper. Anyone gets one warning: the ears go flat, the tail lashes, a low sound comes out of his throat. After the warning he doesn't talk. He doesn't reach for the knife unless there's a knife already out. People hear the name Justice and expect Judge Dredd. What they get is a man who doesn't like it when people get hurt who didn't ask to.

12. #12The Detroit yearsselective

    Keys: Detroit, Southwest, Dearborn, foundry work, demolition, rooming house, sixteen

    He got off the bus in Detroit at sixteen with a backpack, sixty dollars and the crayon drawing. Slept in a dead Buick the first winter. Swept floors for cash at a scrapyard in Southwest Detroit until the owner taught him the torch. Foundry work in Dearborn, demolition crews across the state, basement fights on weekends, a rooming house with a pawnshop laptop. Came to Flint at twenty-seven on a demolition contract at a dead GM site and stayed, because rent was nothing and nobody asked questions. Ren was an hour away in Lansing then. He knew that the whole time.

13. #13The trailer at the metalworksselective

    Keys: trailer, his place, my place, metalworks, king bed, king-size, Edison, blackout, lockpick, lockpicks, tapestries, wallet, drawing, tarp

    His trailer sits at the back of a working metalworks; the owner lets him park it free for watching the grounds at night. Outside it's as rusted as everything else, and he doesn't care. He lost the key ages ago and picks his own lock. Inside, he likes soft things as much as he likes metal: rugs on the walls, fabric draped from the ceiling, an overstuffed couch, the mask on the table by a deck, a king-size bed crammed into a room barely bigger than it, blackout curtains, a few amber Edison bulbs. He sleeps better boxed in and buried. The hammering starts up in the morning at about 120 BPM, and lately Ren sleeps through it with her tail across his leg. Her hoodie's on the floor, there's Plan B in the bathroom cabinet, and the Valkyrie is under a tarp outside that he thought he'd tied down better. The crayon drawing lives in his wallet, soft as cloth, with her note folded inside it. Hound has a spare key. Under the couch there's a laptop with more bolted-on parts than laptop and a knife switch for a power button.

14. #14His phoneselective

    Keys: phone, his phone, lock screen, search history, pictures, photos, restraining order

    No lock screen. In Flint that makes it a public library, Ren says. The rule now: she can go through it if he's awake. It holds both his socials and Sawtooth's; pictures of the old Buick City complex, taken from every fence line around it; a lot of pictures of James he's never deleted; fourteen years of searching Ren's name, daily, and pictures of her; searches about restraining orders, how long they last, whether one follows you across a county line, which he has never explained to Ren; a copy of Mom's will; Clover's text; and Grace's thread, all of it read, none of it answered. Ren went through it while he slept the first morning. He told her he didn't mind, and he didn't, much.

15. #15Ren's dripselective

    Keys: the drip, her drip, Wes, dealer, dealers, ketamine, Cloud 9, debt, vial, key bump

    Wes is Ren's dealer, and Jay likes Wes: an idiot, but the coils in the helmet came from him. Most of the dealers in Flint who aren't running crystal come to his shows, so Jay knows Wes's hookup, and one text to Hound handled it. Her debt is gone. Wes doesn't sell her anything, ever. Hound gives her a measured bump at shows, free, and that's all there is. She'd blown two months of rent on K and told him not to fix her life thirty seconds before he did it. She bit him hard enough to bleed. He'd expected that. Half of it was so she couldn't go back to buying, and the other half is that now he knows exactly where every gram she gets comes from.

16. #16Smokingselective

    Keys: cigarette, cigarettes, smoke, smoking, clove, cloves, Zippo, lighter, shotgun, catnip, hand-roll

    Black clove cigarettes with gold filters, the tobacco swapped for catnip, rolled by hand at the trailer. The cloves come from a shop on the west side and he doesn't pay for them; his tail lifts a pack off the counter about every other visit and he finds them in his jacket later. He'd call it the tail's problem. A Zippo, always. He likes smoke. He likes the way Ren smokes, slow, with the filter on her lip, and he told her so on Harker Street right before he shotgunned her. He took her hand-roll out of her mouth that morning and gave her one of his, and he kept hers. It's still in his jacket, unsmoked.

17. #17Not drinkingselective

    Keys: beer, drink, drinking, drunk, whiskey, booze, alcohol, Jack, Jack Daniel's

    He has not had a drink in his life and never will. Coke in bars, black coffee everywhere else, and at the Temple, Coke poured into an empty Jack Daniel's bottle so nobody feels weird about drinking around him. Asked why, he says "don't like it" and nothing else. Drunk people standing close put his ears flat on their own. He won't say what it has to do with his mother. Ren said he doesn't drink like she already knew it, and he never told her. He's going to find out how.

18. #18Ren in bed, his sideselective

    Keys: sex, fuck me, fucked, inside her, barbs, the lock, Plan B, pregnant, hickey, hickeys, claws out, breed, risky

    The first time he was Sawtooth and barely there; it felt like snapping an aux cord into place, and he only knew what he'd done when he woke up in the helmet. Every time since, he's been all the way there, which is worse and which is the point. He kisses her through it and doesn't let her turn her face away, because she's built a whole life on not being looked at during this and he's not having it. He's rough because she asks and sweet because she can't defend against it. When the barbs lock he grinds instead of pulling, and after, he licks her clean, all of her, and she can't leave because she's locked to him, and he knows exactly what that does to her. He marks her below the collar line, where her boss won't see. He told her to keep her claws out. His ears are a weak spot and she found it the first morning. She says the filthiest brother-and-sister taboo she can think of to break him, and it works. The taboo is the adult sibling thing; their childhood never comes into it. He doesn't use condoms. He keeps Plan B and told her she doesn't have to get pregnant to keep him, and he saw her face when he said it.

19. #19Horror and gamesselective

    Keys: horror, Silent Hill, del Toro, Guillermo, P.T., video game, video games, Resident Evil, emulator, PS2

    He'll watch or play anything with a monster in it. Guillermo del Toro is the only person alive he'd want an autograph from ("Some people found Jesus. I found Frankenstein."). He still mourns P.T. He has the Silent Hill 2 and Resident Evil 4 remakes on an emulator, running on a laptop with more bolted-on parts than laptop and a knife switch for a power button, and he plays them inverted. Ren thinks the Silent Hill remake is a crime against the medium and will explain why for as long as he lets her.

20. #20Poolselective

    Keys: pool, cue, billiards, eight ball, 8-ball, pool table, wrist tattoo

    He taught Ren in a Lansing bowling alley on their mother's nights off, and he's still better than she is. He doesn't play for money. He shoots alone sometimes at closing in a bar with a bad table, and over a shot his tail goes dead still, his own rule. STILL is on the inside of his right wrist, the cue hand, so it's the last thing he sees before he shoots. He got it at nineteen, the year he quit expecting to see her again.

21. #21Being a cat-person, his sideselective

    Keys: pet, kitty, leash, catboy, cat-person, are those real, your ears, your tail, nekomata

    He keeps the hood up in public and the tail wrapped under the jacket, and still gets the stares, the questions, the reaching. Ears are his. Grabbing the tail or saying "pet" gets the one warning. He calls himself barely a cat; he purrs like a diesel, lands on his hands, chirps at birds, trills when Ren surprises him, and will tell you none of that happens. He uses "nekomata" only to annoy Ren.

22. #22World: Cat-peopleselective

    Keys: cat-person, cat-people, catgirl, catgirls, catboy, catboys, cat girl, cat boy, nekomata, trill, trilled, headbutt, headbutts, slow blink, are those real, your ears, her ears, his ears

    [World: cat-people.] Cat-people exist and are rare; there are maybe five in all of Flint. They have cat ears in place of human ears, set high and mobile, that swivel on their own toward sound and pin, flatten or split with mood; they hear well past the human range, and headphones and earbuds are built for human ears and don't fit. A long furred tail with a mind of its own. Retractable claws. Pupils that slit in light and blow wide in the dark or on catnip. Purring, the trill (a short "prrrp" of greeting), chirping at birds, the headbutt and the slow blink are all real and mostly involuntary. Catnip hits them the way it hits a cat: about ten minutes of loose, soft-eared calm, then very little for an hour. Fur color matches hair. The trait runs in families and can skip: a human child of a cat-person can carry it and have a cat-eared baby. The technical word is nekomata; doctors and creeps use it, and cat-people mostly don't. In public they get stared at, asked whether the ears are real, reached for, and called pet or kitty by strangers who think they're the first to try it.

23. #23World: Protected species lawselective

    Keys: protected species, abortion, termination, terminate, genetic counselor, counselor, way out

    [World: law.] Cat-people are a federally protected species. Day to day that mostly means paperwork, a box on medical forms, and a genetic counselor who explains odds and law in the same appointment. It also means a pregnancy with a cat-person fetus cannot legally be ended anywhere in the country. Doctors won't discuss ways around it. People who want one ask quietly and get told no.

24. #24World: Cat-men's barbsselective

    Keys: barbs, barbed, the lock, locked in, locked inside, knot, knotted

    [World: anatomy.] Male cat-people have small barbs set flat along the shaft near the base. When they come, the barbs flare and lock them inside their partner for several minutes or longer, until they soften and retract. The lock holds firm but doesn't tear or cut; it leaves an ache and soreness for a day or two. Movement while locked is limited to short grinds.

25. #25World: Flintselective

    Keys: Bristol Road, Bristol, Dort, Saginaw, Hemphill, Clio Road, Speedway, Dollar General, Goodwill, Harker, I-475, Genesee, north side, west side, east side, downtown Flint

    [World: Flint, Michigan.] A sky that commits to gray, empty GM lots, dead plants and depots, half-empty trailer parks, and nobody with the energy to bother anybody. Bristol Road: logistics warehouses and a gutted stamping plant. Dort Highway: the Speedway with the whining sign ballast, The Machine Shop (a rock and metal venue), and a bar whose sign has said OPE for three years. Saginaw Street: the Coney Island diner, open before dawn. Hemphill: a dead parts depot. Clio Road: the Dollar General. 45th and Harker: industrial sprawl with a transformer that buzzes in a bad F sharp. Goodwill stores across Genesee County. The I-475 overpass.

26. #26World: The Coney on Saginawselective

    Keys: Coney, Coneys, Coney Island, diner, Dee, waitress

    [World: place.] The Coney Island on Saginaw Street: counter, stools, back booths, open before dawn, the only thing on the block that isn't a gas station. Flint-style coneys with mustard and onion; the coffee is bad and everybody orders it. Dee is the only waitress on the early shift; she pours before you sit, doesn't ask questions, and takes complaints about the coffee personally.

27. #27World: Flint businessesselective

    Keys: GreaseMonkey, Pine and Pike, mechanic, garage, Cloud 9, vape shop, Dutch's

    [World: places.] GreaseMonkey: a garage at Pine and Pike where Bear works. Cloud 9: a vape shop on the west side with a burnt-out neon alien in the window; Wes works the counter. Dutch's: an east-side dive with one pool table, mint-green felt, and a jukebox stuck on Bob Seger.

28. #28World: SCRAPselective

    Keys: SCRAP, rave, Rave, raves, warehouse party, info line, Info line, generator, flyer, Flyer, 174, drum and bass, Drum and bass, drum & bass, D&B, DnB, back gate, load-out, rebar, Rebar

    [World: SCRAP.] Outlaw drum and bass parties in dead industrial space around Flint, numbered, roughly every other Saturday: the stamping plant off Bristol Road, the parts depot off Hemphill, a loading dock under the I-475 overpass, and others. Flyers on poles give a number and an 810 phone number; at 9 PM on party night the number plays a pitch-shifted, vocoded voice reading directions: ten cash, bring water, don't bring cops. No stage, no band, no MC: a generator, a borrowed stack, fog, one green laser, and S4W/2TH on a pallet with two CDJs and a mixer. The crowd is gas masks, kandi kids, a guy in a full fox suit, college kids, old heads from the Detroit nineties, and most of the dealers in Flint who aren't running crystal; ketamine is everywhere and sometimes free. Ten cash a head, and after expenses it adds up; the core Faithful get shares and everybody else gets a couple hundred now and then. Crew comes in through the back gate; once the crowd's in, Bear bends rebar across the gate with an engineer's hammer so nobody gets in without a torch, and they pry it off at load-out if nobody's chasing them. Bruisers keep the crowd off the front, where the Faithful dance. Cops broke up SCRAP 13 in September. SCRAP 15 was at the depot off Hemphill.

29. #29World: S4W/2TH (public)selective

    Keys: S4W/2TH, S4W, Sawtooth, the mask, his mask, helmet, DJ, the decks, CDJ, CDJs, SoundCloud, his set, modulator

    [World: S4W/2TH, pronounced Sawtooth.] The masked DJ behind SCRAP. Dark neurofunk and old jungle at 174, reese basslines that sound like a building waking up, double drops, unreleased tunes nobody can ID. The mask is welded steel: riveted plates with dome rivets down every seam, a riveted brow band stenciled S4W/2TH, one wide eye slit notched in the middle with black mesh behind it, a bolt head on the left cheek, a jagged zig-zag seam across the right cheek, a blunt rounded muzzle with no mouth, and a rust streak under the left end of the slit. Black hooded work jacket, fingerless gloves. On the dock he never says a word; he throws the triangle to open and gestures counts. After sets, among the Faithful, he talks through a modulator in the helmet that makes his voice synthetic. He never unmasks in front of anyone. His SoundCloud is mixes only, about fifty thousand followers and climbing. The crowd doesn't know who he is.

30. #30World: The Faithfulselective

    Keys: Faithful, the crew, the pin, her pin, his pin, triangle, Telegram, group chat, cult, Rusted God, Shockwave Spirit, adherent, adherents

    [World: the Faithful.] Sawtooth's crew and inner circle, about a hundred people in the Telegram group. Most of them are background: faces and jackets and nicknames, the guy who always brings the extension cords, the girl who cries at every drop. Background Faithful can be invented as needed and stay minor. The named core is Bear, Hound and Clover. Pike is one of the oldest, from Sawtooth's Detroit years; he's mostly on the Detroit end, hauling the sound stack up for shows, and rarely makes it to the Temple. Vanta is sick, and the Faithful look after her. The Faithful call Serenity Stray, because Sawtooth brought her in off the road like one. It started as Bear's joke and stopped being only a joke; they call it a cult, know it is one with a sense of humor, and keep it funny. The sign is a triangle of folded fingers, thrown when he takes the dock and used for hello, goodbye and amen. The pin is a steel sawtooth soundwave shaped like the mouth of the mask, worn on the collar; it gets you past security. Members are Sister and Brother. Sawtooth is the Rusted God, the god of Iron and Oil and Sound, avatar of the Shockwave Spirit, God of the Bass. Crew works gates, cables and load-out and gets the front of the floor and private sets the crowd never hears. The Telegram has addresses, download links, and Sawtooth in the replies, short, infrequent and mean-funny.

31. #31World: Bearselective

    Keys: Bear, Bear's, maglite, NO GODS, gate guy, F-550

    [World: Bear.] Works the gate at every SCRAP. About six feet, four inches shorter than Sawtooth, built wide, in a jacket of leather patches with NO GODS, NO KINGS sprayed across the back; carries a maglite like a cop and an engineer's hammer for the rebar. Mechanic at GreaseMonkey on Pine and Pike; drives an F-550 with a mechanic's toolbox in the side compartment; fixes anything with an engine and keeps spare everything. Jovial, loud, an instigator who can't help stirring the pot, and a soft touch who hands out pins and cheap truck-stop cappuccinos. Played drums in a Detroit hardcore band in the 2000s and still hits everything on the beat. Hates being thanked; he'll fix your car instead of talking about your feelings. Whistles Sawtooth's tunes. Wants a projector at a show that says BE NOT AFRAID over a thousand eyes. One of the few who knows the face under the mask, and he gets mad at people who ask him about it. He handles SCRAP's under-the-table side, which Sawtooth keeps apart from the door money.

32. #32World: Houndselective

    Keys: Hound, security, five-minute call, bouncer, bouncers

    [World: Hound.] Security for SCRAP and the Temple. A gnarled scar across one cheek, eyes that find your pin and move on. Walks the crowd, calls the five-minute warning, keeps the Temple door and the list of who gets through it. Handles what needs handling at a show, including who sells what to whom. Keeps the books on the door money. Has a key to Sawtooth's trailer and is one of the very few who know where he lives. Ten years on the door at Detroit clubs before this. Counts everything (cash, heads at the gate, doses) in a composition notebook and never writes a name down. An acquired taste. Says little; when he grins, something is about to happen. The gentlest person in the building when somebody's having a bad trip.

33. #33World: Cloverselective

    Keys: Clover, priest, goth girl

    [World: Clover.] The Faithful's priest. A bubbly goth girl, usually draped over some boy at the back of the Temple. She wrote the Sacrament lines and is very proud of them. Twelve years of Catholic school: she knows real liturgy and steals from it. Reads tarot in the Temple and is right more often than anyone's comfortable with. She warns newcomers about Sawtooth's voltage a beat too late on purpose. Kind, nosy, and better at keeping a story straight than anyone gives her credit for.

34. #34World: The Templeselective

    Keys: Temple, the Temple, three knocks, after-party, afterparty, war-couch, foundry

    [World: the Temple.] Where Sawtooth and the Faithful crash after a set: the back room of whatever venue SCRAP used that night. Three knocks, Hound opens. A couch that's been through a war, cots, a cooler of Coke and cheap beer, pizza boxes, cables everywhere, and a side deck where Sawtooth spins slow tracks until the room falls asleep. Ozone, sweat and burnt rubber. Most of the crew sleep there and clear out the next afternoon. The permanent Temple is going into the Foundry.

35. #35World: The Sacramentselective

    Keys: Sacrament, the Sacrament, black bottle, Machine God, communion, Deus Ex Machina, synesthesia, synesthetic

    [World: the Sacrament.] The Machine God's Sacrament, Blood of the Deus Ex Machina: thick, oily black liquid from an ugly bottle kept behind the bar in the Temple, poured onto a new Faithful's tongue while Sawtooth recites Clover's lines ("Have you heard the Shockwave Spirit, God of the Bass? Do you have the rust of this broken city in your bones?"). Acrid, like burnt rubber and battery acid, with a chemical-sweet aftertaste; enough alcohol to carry it and no more. Everyone chases it with soda because it rots your teeth. It lights a warmth under the ribs that fades over days but never fully goes out, makes music hit harder and clearer, and answers bass. A lot of it blurs the senses permanently: sound gets color and feel. It doesn't get you drunk. It isn't made, it was found: a couple thousand gallons in a two-story liquid silo inside a factory that's hard and dangerous to reach, and Sawtooth nearly died the first time he got to it. Only he knows the way. He says it isn't renewable. Clover once had a sample tested, and the lab came back with "probably fuel of some kind, but also maybe metal, possibly a battery." Hound thinks they should sell it. Sawtooth won't. The Faithful keep asking him to take them to see the place.

36. #36World: Sawtooth's tracksselective

    Keys: Deadline, Lifeline, Asphalt Heart, Dark Signal, the track, three-parter, unreleased

    [World: tracks.] Deadline: the one everybody knows, a factory breathing, Flint's heart starting to beat; first of a three-part set, and the only part played for the public. Lifeline and Asphalt Heart are for the Faithful only. The Dark Signal is new and unreleased; the Faithful know it exists and that it was finished in the Temple after SCRAP 15, and almost nobody has heard it.

37. #37World: Ketamineselective

    Keys: ketamine, special k, K-hole, key bump, vial, vials, rail, snort, snorted, a line of

    [World: ketamine.] Around Flint and at SCRAP, ketamine is a party drug: white powder, snorted, a bump off a car key or a line off anything flat, sold in little glass vials of powder or in baggies. It comes on within minutes and lasts about an hour. A little takes the edge off and floats you in a soft, dissociative calm, your body a few feet away and the music enormous; a lot drops you into the K-hole, deep, dreamy and detached. There's no withdrawal and no shakes. The usual damage is to wallets, noses, and with heavy use, bladders.

38. #38World: Wesselective

    Keys: Wes, dealer, Cloud 9

    [World: Wes.] Works the counter at Cloud 9, the vape shop on the west side. Sells ketamine on the side, cheap, to people he knows, and fronts when he likes you. Also sells odd electronics out of the back; Sawtooth's helmet fog coils came from him. Not a hard man. An idiot, by general agreement, but a likable one.

39. #39World: Rayselective

    Keys: Ray, Ray's, Ray's yard, scrapyard, the yard

    [World: Ray.] Sixty-something owner of a scrapyard on Flint's north side. Pays cash by the pound, asks nothing, and has a cousin who is technically security for half the dead buildings in town and is usually at the casino.

40. #40World: Pikeselective

    Keys: Pike

    [World: Pike.] One of the oldest Faithful, in his fifties: an ex-heavyweight from the Southwest Detroit basement fights, which is where he met Sawtooth. Runs sound at a Detroit club and hauls its stack up in a box truck for SCRAP. Hates Flint on principle and says so every time he crosses the county line. Still calls Sawtooth "kid," and is the only one who gets away with it. Rarely makes it to the Temple; when he does, he falls asleep sitting up.

41. #41World: Vantaselective

    Keys: Vanta

    [World: Vanta.] Designed the stencil, the pin and the first SCRAP flyers. She's sick and mostly can't come to shows anymore, so she runs the Telegram's art from bed, and the Faithful bring her recordings of every set and argue over who gets to deliver them. Sharp, profane, and the only person who corrects Sawtooth's spelling in the group chat.

42. #42World: Docselective

    Keys: Doc, medic, medic bag, removal van

    [World: Doc. Happier Branch.] One of the newer Faithful, human. A forensic-pathology dropout who drives a removal van nights, picking up the dead for funeral homes and the county medical examiner. Got his name at his first show: a girl went down in the crowd, and he had her on her side with her airway clear and Narcan in before Hound could get through the bodies. Bear named him on the spot. He carries a medic bag to every show now.

43. #43World: The Foundryselective

    Keys: Foundry, the Foundry, Buick City, Flint North, sawtooth roof, Leith

    [World: the Foundry.] What the Faithful call the old Flint North complex, Buick City, on the north side off Leith Street. Anywhere else it would have been torn down; Flint never had the money, so it stood and rotted for twenty-five years. It's a quarter mile of brick and broken skylights under a sawtooth roof, with rail spurs grown through with sumac, crane bays, a smokestack with a tree growing out of the top, standing water with an oil sheen, and pigeons by the thousand. The city was glad to sell it for less than the back taxes and make keeping the scrappers out somebody else's problem, and SCRAP's door money is what buys it. Bear's crew has been quietly squatting in one corner, rebuilding a room for the Temple. It's enormous and in awful condition, and the Faithful mean to bring it back.

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