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Cain dragged him over to the abomination, barely gleaming in the dull moonlight, and Zero remembered the first time he'd seen one of these. He hadn't been Zero back then, and the suit was copper, not tin, glowing deep red in the autumn suns. He hadn't even known what the thing was, but even then he hadn't wanted to go near it. Standing right up at the barrier, trying for a nonchalant lean, the proceedings were still too close, too intimate. It had taken half an hour to get that prison open, cracking the metal, splitting the mage work, until the occupant had finally spilled onto the street.
It had been party time down at the station then, a celebration of their fortune. They had a good bunch, for tin men, and lucked out on the guy in charge, but nothing could top a copper on the beat. Native to the territories far beyond Ice Mountain, trained in the wild, close to invulnerable as you were like to find, and loyal to the laws till the end. Made their own badges from mountain metal, the final part of their trials, and then they were assigned a post, mostly tracking the runners, anyplace quiet and lonely. To get one sent to a city...
The man had been put to work as soon as he could walk straight, no sane officer would waste a copper on sick time, and within days he was striding around like a local, a mongrel shape shifter by his side, trapped in a canine shell. But he wasn't a local, and it showed in his innocence, his modesty, and especially the Goddamn manners. Vecchio took it as a challenge, tried to get 'Benny' to fit in with the real folk, but Ray just wanted him out. He'd seen enough people destroyed by this city, came too close himself often enough, and saw no point in shipping in more just to watch the metal tarnish and corrode.
Big Red had returned home a year before the mess started, a national hero, free to answer the call of the wild. It was the only thing Ray could ever thank the stars for. He'd been switched back to the sneaks, got back into the rhythm of scrubbing the stink from his skin after days of playing petty criminals, till he got the call. 'The chance of a lifetime, a job to retire on, and you don't even have to leave the force.' He took the offer, immersed himself in the life of a dirty cop, and it all got shot to hell the day the sorceress took over.
Should have listened to his gut, should have always listened to his gut, right back when he first saw a metal man and got the instinct to run as far as he could. The The Viewer in his blood ran pretty true, last benefit of belonging to the Polacks, Ma used to say it accounted for his hair. He lingered on these final bittersweet memories of a life sixteen annuals gone, and dragged his feet to his fate, but didn't struggle. Not as he was tugged closer to his prison, not as his bindings were let loose, not even as the door closed, and he saw Cain's hard face through the window. Instead he pushed all his will into his blood, his life, draining whatever magic his mangled ancestry had brought him. He pulled it to the surface, forced it through the aged metal, and thought only word at those cruelly artificial life systems. Off!