Fragile Remedy

by Maria Ingrande Mora

  “Fix my alarm system. If you electrocute yourself and die,” Alden said, “you’re fired.”

  “Does that mean you’re paying me?”

  “No.”

  Nate rubbed one of the oozing scratches along his ribs. “Then what do I get?”

  “We can start with your life, dove. You’re clearly incapable of managing on your own.”

  It took Nate five hours, but eventually he fixed the security system Alden had rigged to go off whenever someone approached the back stoop. Since he was already covered in grease and small cuts, Nate worked on the electricity too. He increased the power intake so Alden could run a few indoor lights—and his cooler box, if he was careful.

  “You should put a switchpad on this door back here,” he told Alden that evening. “It wouldn’t be so hard with the right parts.”

  “How do you know so much tinkering?” Alden asked from the doorway, slowly smoking an entire package of hand-rolled cigarettes that smelled like rot.

  “My aunt taught me. She made the trains go fast.”

  Alden laughed. “You’re adorable. Stay with me.”

  A current of relief ran through Nate. Alden’s shop was well-established and secure. Nate would never find a safer place to stay.

  “Fix things,” Alden went on. “I always have something that needs fixing.”

  It only took Nate a few days in the curio shop to see that Alden pushed chem. Fiends came in wild-eyed, clutching credits or trading away jewelry and tech. Representatives from the pleasure houses bought in bulk, collecting huge bottles of pills that looked like chunks of sugar.

  “And that, Natey,” Alden said, “is why you don’t take candy from strangers.”

  When Nate didn’t keep busy enough, he let himself wonder what Alden would do with him if he knew what Nate was. Sometimes, people lingered in the shop, gossiping over cups of muddy tea. They talked about the city and the riches there. They whispered about people called Breakers who had piles of credits to give anyone who found a GEM and handed them over. Alden always laughed and sent them off forgetting what they’d wished for in the first place.

  Alden got chem from all over, accepting deliveries in the back from toothless chemists with patchy hair and sores. He entertained in the basement, taking his guests downstairs and never, ever allowing Nate to follow.

  “There are some places you oughtn’t go,” Alden said, playing with Nate’s hair.

  Nate had given up on trimming it, and it hung shaggy and soft in his eyes.

  Before Nate knew it, a year had gone by. He’d fixed enough things in Alden’s shop to develop a reputation for tinkering. Every few days, Alden’s clients dropped off broken tech for Nate to repair.

  “Keep them,” Alden said when Nate showed him the palm full of credits he’d earned fixing things while Alden’s visitors spent long hours in the basement. He gave Nate a long look. “They’re yours.”

  Nate was fifteen and running the register when an older boy stormed in, fit to take the front door off its hinges. Recognizing the haunted look in his pale-green eyes, Nate said, “Lemme grab Alden for you.”

  “I’m not looking for chem. I’m looking for a boy—”

  “We’re not that kind of establishment.” Alden pushed through the curtain from his side room. “The boys here aren’t for sale.”

  The boy—broad-shouldered, almost a man—spoke to Nate as if he couldn’t hear Alden. “His name is July. He’s got short red hair, about this tall,” he said, patting his collar. “You see him, you tell him Reed is looking for him. His sister’s looking too. We only want to help.”

  “This is touching.” Alden took an antique brush off the counter and ran it through the ends of his hair. “But if you’re not buying anything, I won’t have you loitering.”

  “Alden,” Nate said, “he’s trying to find his friend.”

  Alden smiled. “It’s a cold, ugly world. We’re all trying to find a friend.”

  Reed wrenched the brush out of Alden’s hand and threw it across the room. It knocked over a display of beaded necklaces, and they shot across the counter, hissing along the glass. Alden’s eyes flashed with rage, but he held very still as Reed pushed him against the wall with a forearm to his throat.

  Nate froze. He only had to reach out his fingers, and he’d have the stun gun in his hand, but he didn’t know how to use it. And Reed wasn’t hurting Alden. He was only holding him still.

  “If you push chem on that kid one more time,” Reed said, “I will find you where you sleep, and I will cut your heart out.”

  “I sincerely doubt that, Mr. Reed.” Alden’s breath whistled. “You’re clearly a man of many scruples.”

  “Stay away from July, and you won’t have to wonder one way or another.” He gave Alden another violent push and let him go.

  Alden gasped for breath and massaged the reddened skin at this throat.

  “Reed,” Nate said hesitantly. “If your friend, July . . . if he comes in here, where should I find you?”

  Reed turned his troubled gaze to Nate. He was pretty, but muscular. There was something kind about his expression, something gentle about the shape of his mouth.

  A jolt of want ran through Nate, so hot and startling he studied the speckled floor so that Reed wouldn’t see it on his face.

  “Walk along Downing Street in the night,” Reed said. “And my gang will find you.”

  The door closed with an angry thump. Alden turned on Nate, red-faced and shaking, hand raised like he wanted to slap him. After a harsh breath, he lowered his hand. “Go upstairs. I don’t want to see you right now.”

  That night, twisted up with guilt but not sure what he’d done wrong, Nate slipped through the dark into Alden’s bed.

  Alden reached for him and drew him close, his breath a gentle sigh in Nate’s hair. Nate knew what it usually meant to share a bed, but Alden never pushed him for it. Nate was grateful for Alden’s disinterest in his skinny frame and narrow face. He cared about Alden, but not that way.

  When the weather dried up for a season, Alden’s supply of chem dried up too. Once the last of the tiny pills in little white boxes ran out, Alden spent days yelling at Nate and his grandmother, who lived in the bedroom behind the shop. He threw up everything he tried to eat and couldn’t think straight long enough to do the bookkeeping. He forgot to turn on the security system and lost a whole shipment to thieves. He got as thin as an insect.

  On days when Alden couldn’t get out of bed, Nate fed him sips of sugar-water and wet his forehead with cool rags, the way Aunt Bernice had done for Nate when he’d been young and sick with fever.

  “I wish it wasn’t like this, Alden.”

  Alden looked away. “Me too, Natey.”

  Nate’s left hand started trembling one winter morning. By nightfall, his whole arm tingled and every breath sliced through his chest. The next day, he passed out in the washroom after scrubbing his teeth. When he came to, shaking and sobbing with pain, Alden was there, pushing Nate’s hair out of his face with a desperate, hungry look in his eyes. Beside him, a dusty little machine blinked orange and chirped an alarming noise.

  “You cut your lip,” Alden said. “You were bleeding, and it happened sudden, like they say it does, so I checked. I know—I know what you are. I know why you’re sick and how to help you, and you can help me too.”

  “Are you going to sell me to the Breakers?” Nate choked on his tears. His body was trying to turn itself inside out, and his heart hurt so much.

  Alden’s breath rasped out, his gaze clouded with indecision long enough for Nate to let out a frightened sob.

  “No,” he finally said, still touching Nate’s cheek, his fingers icy and shaking. “I’m going to keep you.”

  For the first time, Nate shrank away from him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  On the way back from Alden’s the n
ext evening, Nate’s head throbbed like it was full of sludge. Alden’s medicine had worn off, but fuzziness lingered. He hadn’t been in a hurry to leave, and now that he was out on the street, guilt twisted through him like the knots in his bootlaces. He should have left the moment he could stand. There was no reason to linger at Alden’s like it was still his home.

  Nate’s shoulders tightened at the lingering smell of smoke from the wreck. The street was still busy with people congregating on their stoops and in the street in the last of the light.

  “The sick-dens are full,” a young woman said, holding her pregnant belly with two hands. “Not right, giving these dogs good beds.”

  Her friend spit in the street, so close that Nate had to dodge it, and asked, “What choice would they have? The Old Gods wouldn’t leave them bleeding.”

  “Then send them back where they came from.”

  Their conversation faded. Usually, music could be heard from nearly every corner. Buskers with drums or a group singing snatches of songs remade to tell the stories of the Withers—stories of hunger and hope. But tonight it was only rapid-fire conversations and eyes darting to the smoke rising in the distance.

  As he approached the secret entrance to the gang’s hideout, Nate heard a scuffle behind him and spun. He raised his hands, as ready for a fight as he’d ever be, but no one was there. A scrawny alley cat sauntered across the dark pavement. His heart jittered in his chest, and his racing blood made his hands go tingly. He waited several minutes, eyeing the shadows for signs of movement. Satisfied he wasn’t being watched, and clumsy with lingering fear, Nate climbed into the duct.

  Reed made a quiet, surprised sound when he opened the hatch. He pulled Nate in, his attention focused on the stitches at Nate’s hairline, as if he didn’t want to make eye contact. “Your hands are cold. But that looks well enough.”

  “Alden’s steady every once in a while.”

  Reed flinched, and Nate immediately regretted saying anything at all. His breath gusted out with a tired sigh, despite having slept for a day. He hung up his coat and dropped all the tech from his pockets into a small bucket by the door so Reed could see that none of it was missing if he cared to look.

  Reed climbed up to get his bag from the scaffolding. “We’ll head out now that you’re here.”

  The gnaw of guilt in Nate’s bones worsened. He’d held them up when they’d been ready to scavenge. He crouched to unlace his boots and jerked, startled, when Sparks put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Whoa,” she said, laughing. “You look fit to bite my hand off. I just wanted to check your head. Doesn’t look too bad.”

  Brick came up beside her and peered at Nate. “Heard you were a hero out at the train wreck.”

  He braced himself for teasing, but she wore a crooked grimace—Brick’s version of a smile.

  “Until I got trampled.”

  Sparks gave his shoulder a squeeze. “You can’t help being small.”

  “Never had that problem.” Brick threw her shoulders back and angled her body through the hatch. “You did a good thing, Nate.”

  The duct made a hollow ringing sound as they climbed down together, their voices mingling like distant music. Nate envied the companionship of their nighttime scavenging runs. At least he’d have Pixel to keep him company when the hideout got quiet.

  Reed hopped down from the scaffolding and lingered at the hatch on his way out. “Do you remember when you found us?”

  Nate fought an embarrassed grin and nodded, pushing his hair out of his face. “Don’t remind me.”

  He’d gone to Reed after seeing Brick’s brother, July, walking into a public den known for chem use and flesh trade. Reed had asked him for help with a smoking electrical wire outside their hideout.

  “You climbed up that pole without a look down. I’d never seen anyone do that before. You weren’t scared at all.”

  “My aunt showed me how to use my belt to shimmy up pipes and poles.” Nate shrugged, squirmy under the intensity of Reed’s gaze and unable to pinpoint what shone there. “I knew what I was doing.”

  “You fell.”

  Nate rubbed one eyebrow. “Well. I looked down.”

  At you.

  Reed stepped closer, one hand motioning like he meant to touch Nate. But he stopped and swallowed. “You landed on me, and we were fine, you know?”

  It had been one of the most mortifying moments of Nate’s life, but after that he’d met Brick and Sparks, and he’d spotted Pixel hiding behind a trash bin. And he’d felt something—a deeper longing than anything he’d ever known. A desire to belong.

  Months later, when he’d left Alden, half-starved and weak, he’d gone straight to Reed, and Reed had let him stay. Everyone had use for a Tinkerer.

  Nate didn’t know why Reed was bringing it up now, over a year later. He had a feeling Reed had a lesson in mind, something about being careful, but he couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to say. “I remember.”

  Reed watched him for a long moment and offered him a small smile. “Good.”

  They exchanged the night’s code, and Nate locked the hatch behind him, hands aching with emptiness. He lingered there, catching his breath and shaking off the unease of their conversation and his relentless desire to pull Reed close and hold him.

  Pixel skipped over, ducking under his arm and demanding his attention.

  “Did Sparks do that?” Nate asked, gently tugging one of Pixel’s ponytails. Stripes of frayed blue fabric wrapped around each puff of curls. Sparks didn’t have the heart to tell Pixel she was too old for babyish hairstyles.

  Pixel pushed her shoulders back and preened. “Sure did.”

  Neither did Nate. “You should be sleeping.”

  She held her rag doll closer, and her smile became a stubborn line. “You should be sleeping too. Your head’s all tore up. “

  Nate could rewire an entire power intake in less than an hour, but he wasn’t any good at being stern with Pixel. Especially when she turned her big, dark eyes on him. Pixel was an uncommonly pretty little girl. Even Reed’s strong will couldn’t withstand her gap-toothed, sunny smile when she wanted something.

  “My head’s mended now,” he said, showing her the line of fresh stitches.

  “Did the Servants fix it?”

  “No.” Nate touched his cheek, struck by the shadow of a memory that faded into the fuzziness of his lingering headache. “They were busy helping the people at the train wreck.”

  “Reed said you needed lots of sleep.”

  “I slept all day. I don’t need rest now. You do. That’s how you grow.”

  But Nate didn’t stop her when she followed him around instead of burrowing in her bunk. He straightened up the hideout to the sound of distant shouting. Late in the night, it was usually quiet outside. Uneasy, Nate recalled the tension on the street on his walk home. It had felt like the staticky air before a lightning storm. Something was happening.

  He shook the dirt out of Reed’s tattered blankets. The patched-up fabric smelled sweet and warm, and he spent more time than he needed dusting the blanket off and folding it up.

  Pixel leaned against the scaffolding and watched Nate. The mismatched button-eyes of her rag doll watched him too. He imagined the doll knowing, somehow, that Reed meant more to him than he let on.

  Reed laughed too loud and endured the stinking heat of summer and the barren depths of winter without a complaint. He sat down to meager meals with a smile on his face, like he was the luckiest man in the Withers.

  And he made Nate feel useful.

  But Nate wanted more of the warm feeling he got when Reed was close. It was different than the sensation of a full belly. It was better.

  It was more than he should want from Reed.

  Reed had grown up in an ugly place where people traded their bodies away to stay alive. “My ma didn’t
have a choice,” Reed had explained once, tripping over the words. “The trappers, they’ll take anyone alone. Get back before it’s dark.” Trappers sold their victims’ freedom to the pleasure dealers. And pleasure dealers handed out chem to make the long nights easier to bear.

  Now that the Breakers had taken over most of the pleasure houses, the trappers were more relentless than ever. Fired up on good chem and desperate for more.

  Nate shivered. Their quiet hideout offered a little bit of peace from the horrors of the streets of the Withers, but it wasn’t escape. Everything terrible was still out there, where his gang dodged from shadow to shadow.

  A low hum of anxiety weaved through Nate’s ribs.

  He sat in Reed’s bed and pulled Pixel down to sit beside him. “If you’re not going to sleep, you have to stop playing.” After a brief tug of war with the rag doll, she let go and put her head down in his lap with a huff.

  “Sparks said the people on the train caught on fire,” she said.

  “Not all of them did.”

  “Why’d you save them?” She rolled onto her back to look up at him, wrinkling her brow.

  “Because I could help. I knew how to open the doors.”

  She bit her lip for a long moment and nodded once.

  A bang at the hatch startled them both. Pixel rolled out of his lap as he leapt up. The password sounded in code, each knock louder and more frantic. Nate rushed to unlock the hatch and wrenched it open.

  “You just left,” he blurted out.

  “We’re moving.” Reed grit the words out like a curse.

  “What?” Nate staggered back, clumsy with dread, as Reed climbed out and reached down to offer Sparks a hand. “But we’re settled. The shutters . . .”

  “You heard me. Start packing everything you can carry. Bring all the food you can.” Without another glance at Nate, Reed climbed up the row of bunks and began tearing down the concealed bags and boxes that contained their few belongings.

  Brick struggled through the hatch after them, wild-eyed and winded. She took Nate by the arm and spoke in low tones. “Trappers. Reed thinks they followed you back from Alden’s. We can’t risk it if they saw us. Gotta take cover.”