Part 2

"Bayne!" the foreman shouted, "We have a loose pylon on scaffold 73. Get down there!"

A decade later, Gordon Bayne was working for the mine full time. He was big, strong, and fearless, and had learned to be a skilled welder. Being a mining welder was one of the most dangerous jobs you could find in Atro City, but Cage paid well for the work.

Gordon started the climb down to the rigging platform. Most pit mining didn't require a scaffolding be maintained at the perimeter, but something about the geology Gordon didn't understand made it necessary. Something about the lava tubes they had to avoid shifting the ground unexpectedly. So there was a giant network of scaffolding, rigid platforms secured to each other with heavy chains, so they could move, but not too much. At least this was an open air job, and no likelihood of gas pockets like you'd find in the tunnels splintering off from the pit.

"Hey Lumpy, get your sorry ass out of here! Or better yet, take the dive!" Jimmy Dortz could be heard jeering at him from the next scaffold over. He and Troll were fucking around, doing who knows what. They were lazy troublemakers, but they had an in with someone in management, so they could do whatever they wanted as long as they looked like they were working when someone was watching, and still get a bag of coin at the end of the day.

Gordon hated being called Lumpy. The gang had chased him through the alleys one day, trying to take his money. The roadway collapsed beneath them, sending Gordon and Spike falling into the darkness. It was a widow's nest down there, and both were bitten many times. Still, it could have been worse for Gordon. Spike, ironically to his namesake, was impaled on a jagged piece of metal when he fell. Even though he was older and stronger at fifteen, the numerous bites made Gordon sick enough he almost died. The swelling left him deformed, hence the nickname, Lumpy.

"Go fuck your mother Jimmy! Don't let Troll have all the fun." Gordon didn't like to engage. Frankly, He'd rather just be alone whenever possible. But he was angry, and he knew Jimmy was sensitive about his mother after he caught Troll spying on her in the shower. Sometimes it felt good to twist the knife.

Working his way down scaffold 73, Gordon found his way to the loose pylon. The metal was shit, and was always getting corroded. But it was cheaper to keep having it fixed than import better materials. Atro City was an island nation, east of Nova Scotia. Not as bad as shipping from the mainland to Hawaii, but the US enforced tariffs and sanctions trying to leverage the loosely affiliated consortium of corporate leaders who essentially owned the islands and everything (and everyone) on them. They never gave in though. There was always more labor, desperate for a new start to take up the workload of those who fell to sickness and injury. There was always more profit to be made as an outlaw freeport, a hub and haven of drugs, human trafficking, and espionage. Who cared about getting better steel for the damn scaffolding?

Gordon pulled the pole straight, and secured it with a clamp. He clipped on the electrodes and set to welding it back to functionality, and adding a few chains to reinforce it. The scaffolding looked like the webbing you might imagine for a giant iron spider.

"Hey Dickface, don't talk about my mother!" Jimmy Dortz screamed as he swung by a free chain into scaffold 74. The scaffolds had to support the sides of the pit if the earth moved, but they had to be able to move as well so they didn't collapse when it happened. So when Jimmy slammed into the scaffold next to the one Gordon was hanging from, it swung just far enough to crash into 73. Each of the scaffolds weighed tons overall, and when his left wrist got crushed between the pylons, it made a sickening crunch, reminding Gordon of the sound of a rat's head being smashed by a hammer.

The pain was overwhelming, and Gordon lost his grip. He fell free of the scaffold, only saved by his harness and the electrodes still clipped to 73. After what seemed like forever, he regained his senses and tried to pull himself back onto the scaffolding. He tried over and over, but couldn't figure out why he couldn't grab hold with his left hand until he looked down at the mangled flesh and crushed bone that wouldn't respond to his will. Eventually, he got back to safety, and climbed back to the top. The aid center wrapped his wrist and called a rickshaw to take him to a clinic for treatment. The foreman docked him half a day's pay for leaving early.

The clinic amputated the ground meat that was all that remained, set the bones of his forearm in such a way that they'd eventually fuse, and bolted on a stump made of the same shitty metal Atro City used for coins, pylons, the corrugated steel roof of Gordon's shack, and apparently medical prosthetics.

Weeks later, Gordon was only working part days, still recovering from his trauma. One day as he was out shopping for food other than the state dispensed Nutripaste (some people managed to run indoor gardens with hydroponics, it kept the food mostly safe from the toxic soot always falling from the sky), he happened across the collapsed cavern where he'd fallen years ago. Out of morbid curiosity, he climbed down to look around. Exposed to the elements, it was no longer suitable as a widow's nest, and the spiders had moved on. Spike's bones still lay atop the wreckage of rubble where he fell, picked clean by the vermin of the city.

Gordon looked at the jagged metal his tormentor had died upon. It was different from the metal he normally worked with. Much harder, seemingly immune to the corrosive effects of the island's acid rain and salty air. It wasn't as large as it seemed in his memory, just over a foot long. Using his good hand, Gordon pried it from the rubble, and took it with him. As a welder, he had access to a decent metal shop at the mine, and he used this macabre treasure to craft himself a giant hook, which he secured to the nub, along with a metal sheath for his forearm, to help hold it all together. As he became accustomed to it, the hook proved generally useful at the mine, for climbing and carrying, and even to steady work he couldn't safely hold with his hands in the most durable leather gloves.

The hook had another benefit as well. It unnerved people. Strangers kept their distance. Even most coworkers didn't want to be too close. Something about the hook set people's souls on edge, though none of them knew it's history.