1 September, 2118
Psyche-88, Syndicate Mining Ltd
Life is transactional. Give this, get that. It’s the first law of thermodynamics, nothing personal. No sense getting dust-fucked over it.
But you already know that.
The jokers down at Post say my last sigs in all likelihood never reached Earth, so I’ll give you the sixty-second rundown. But first, for propriety: the current state of affairs. I’m banging out this sig at the bleeding edge of chrono-dawn, on the same scuffed tablet I brought up here nine long months ago. I’m posted up at Sendoff, farthest airlock in the decommed arm of this decrepit mining base that’s clamped to the side of its asteroid like a barnacle, sucking away at the insides. I’m tethered to the wall so the fractional gees won’t bang my handsome mug against the low ceiling. Just out of arm’s reach: the dust hatch, a tight plastic sphincter that opens to the longest mine shaft on this side of Psyche-88. In two hours, amongst a cramped gin-soaked crowd, I’ll watch a healthy man of twenty-eight years slide feet-first through the hatch, down the shaft to oblivion without a breather. Not that his breather would help him much by then. For now, mercifully, I’ve got the place to myself. It’s peaceful out here, if you pretend like you don’t know what’s coming.
Lemme back up. Eight weeks ago, some jackass with a nasty case of belt brain strapped ten gallons of diacetyl peroxide to his chest and kaboomed the station’s central windpipe. Took out the electrolysis system and four tanks of reserve oxygen. Electrolysis, in case you’re not up on off-world habs, is how they manufacture breathable air.
So, yeah. Shitshow.
Then the drones fucked up the backup electrolysis install. Net result was too much crew, not enough air. Psyche-88 is a small outfit by modern standards, a drop in the bucket for the Syndicate, nothing like Davida-12 or that Vesta hog. Our repair and resupply shipment got outbid seven times by more profitable endeavors, back at the elevator on Earth. Agile business operations, you know. Shipment finally funded five weeks ago, launched the next day. Of course, by then old 88 was running on fumes. Something had to be done.
Luckily, Syndicate already has a solution for off-world resource shortages: the amenities contract. It works like any other automated contract, same as your payroll deposit or the auto-lease on your condo. Only, this one weighs your projected productivity against your amenities. You know: food, water, air. Every morning at chrono-dawn, we clock our hours and vitals and wait to see if our amenities get renewed another day. Prove your worth, or quit using up everyone else’s air.
It's like the slots at Old Vegas. Only, well, more exciting.
“Ain’t fair,” Javi said to me this morning at the mess hall. I’d just drifted up to the terminal alongside him, my stomach growling at the prospect of that plastic pouch of belt biscuits and reconstituted eggs. He was going through the motions, stabbing at the touchscreen with a trembling hand. Poor guy was always so fucking nervous. “How do they even get away with this shit, bro?”
We were both talking through breathers, of course; they siphoned all the latent O2 back into the tanks within hours of the incident. Hip canisters were our lifeline, now. Keyed to our biometrics, refilled every eight hours. Javi’s mask was all fogged up from nervous breathing, his ridiculous neck beard jutting out from underneath.
“Easy.” I logged into my terminal. I’d already renewed my contract in the hallway outside my dorm, but if I didn’t hit up a term at breakfast people would get suspicious. “Bomb is a workplace accident, out of their control. Hell, they’ll probably get a medal for every one of us that walks outta here alive on ship-out day.”
If there’s anyone left by then.
“But they’re still profiting off us, bro! Doesn’t that mean they gotta keep us safe? What about the fucking backup? Can’t we sue these bastards?”
“Backups aren’t cheap. Workers are.” I shrugged. “88’s like all the rest—straw-man outfit that dumps its profits into Syndicate coffers and folds at the first whiff of a lawsuit. Shit’s airtight.”
Except, you know, the air.
I was expecting more argument from Javi. Like maybe, why are you here, then? What I got instead—dead silence—roped my attention like a bag of snakes.
Javi was staring at the screen, finger still stuck to the glass, tears glutting his long lashes. Gulping down air like he’d just caught up to his own ghost.
I knew a short straw when I saw one.
“Naw.” His voice came out an airy whisper, stark contrast to his burly body. “Naw, naw, naw.”
From where I was hovering, all I could see on Javi’s screen were the words THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE.
Perfect time to mind my own business. I logged out and turned to leave.
Javi stopped me dead with a vise-grip on my sleeve. “You gotta help me.”
There was panic in his wet eyes. He wasn’t the first short straw I’d seen, though our pod had been lucky so far. I had to look away.
He yanked me closer, not violent but not far off. “Lem, bro, you gotta help. We’re all in this together, am I right?”
Javi was not right. We are not all in this together. My fellow miners have hearts and souls and debts to pay back home, and not a penny of it is my business. That’s why I'm still alive.
I shook my head. “Sorry, man.”
“But I heard ...” Javi dropped his voice, though not nearly enough. “I heard you got ways, bro.”
Past Javi’s shoulder, the transfer from Pod 9 with the thick mustache—Scully?—glanced over.
Fucking Javi. How the hell had he even heard about my ways?
I leaned in to Javi’s big fleshy ear, so close I could’ve licked the sweat off if I wasn’t masked, and whispered: “It’s over. No need to drag me down with you.”
“But ... but ...”
I extracted myself from Javi’s grip. “Wish I could help.”
I drifted to the autochef, got my biscuits and eggs. Vish was already wolfing hers down around her breather, same old grease-stained bandana tied over her tatted-up head. We made eye contact. She has a way of making me feel guilty for shit that isn’t my fault.
“What?” I said, more confrontationally than I meant.
She showed me her wiry back. Vish rarely spared words, always managed to say plenty.
Across the room, Javi was pleading his case to the supervisor on duty.
“Come on, ma’am! Can’t I appeal? You gotta let me appeal.”
It was a sad show, no way to spend your last twenty-four. Supervisor is as powerless as any of us. The contracts are automated. Why else has nobody dared whisper the word mutiny? At dawn tomorrow, Javi’s air runs out. End of story. Supervisors are just here to keep us from blowing shit up.
Bang-up job they’re doing.
But Javi didn’t care. He was all sorts of worked up. Supervisor was having none of it. Soon enough, she dropped the words contract violation. Even Javi knew a violation meant immediate amenity suspension, and even Javi knew she wasn’t bluffing.
Dude might’ve been a pain in the ass, but he deserved a proper sendoff.
Still, he was asking for it.
Vish shot me a look that said you or me, and I shot one back that said you, to which she responded with a level glare that said you started this. Which I hadn’t.
Fucking Javi.
“Easy, bud.” I slid carefully between Javi and the supervisor, grabbed a ceiling rung to keep me there. “Not worth it.”
I made sure to keep my eyes off the supervisor. I’d seen her around, couldn’t tell you her name. They never offer them up and we never ask. That’s the closest we get to symbiosis on 88.
Javi was panting away his precious oxygen. “Lem, bro. I just had a couple of down days. It’s these south-side shifts, bro. Shafts are tapped, fucking Dig Dug couldn’t make quota. I gotta appeal—”
“You gotta lay off.” Truth is, there’s no such thing as an appeal. “Look around, Javi. Shipment isn’t due for three weeks, maybe four. We’ll all be following you soon enough.”
Javi narrowed his eyes, and I just knew he was gonna say all but you.
“Even me,” I said before he could. “But you know what this shit is gonna earn you. You know what happens when you violate contract. And Javi”—I squared on him, his shoulders in my hands, hoping the supervisor wouldn’t make something of me turning my back on her—“you’re better than that. Just think about the time we’re gonna have at Sendoff, tonight. Whole pod will be there. All for you.”
His shoulders tensed in my grip.
He was gonna do something stupid. Take me down with him. I panned the room for contingencies—
“You’re right.” He put his hands on my wrists, gave them a squeeze that left bruises. “We’re all in this together.”
Javi’s just like everyone else: they hear what they wanna hear.
He tried on a smile behind his breather, aborted, made for the dorms. I turned to leave. Supervisor made a sound with her throat. I’d forgotten all about her.
Rookie move.
“It’s Lem,” she said. “Right?”
Fact that she knew my name was bad news. I gave her a nod. Another reason I’m still alive: I know when to shut the fuck up.
But you already know that, too.
Supervisor eyed me for an uncomfortable minute. Had she heard Javi popping off earlier about my ways? Had I offended her by trying to quell the situation, which was ostensibly her fucking job? Supervisors weren’t all-powerful up here—that status was reserved for the system—but they could still make my life hell. And short.
“Watch yourself.” She waved me off like a gnat.
I took my leave as fast as decorum afforded.
Vish caught me in the hall on the way out. This place is as cramped as a submarine: can’t pass a person by if they don’t let you. Ironic, way up here where there’s nothing but space, and we’re crammed in nuts to butts.
“Bang-up job,” Vish said.
I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t see you helping.”
“I ain’t the one holding the aces.”
I cast about for eavesdroppers. “Now it’s my fault for being clever?”
“Much as it’s Javi’s fault for being not.”
Which meant precisely dick-all. “Vish—”
“I know.” She was already pushing off for the shafts. “Nothing personal.”
“That's right,” I said to the empty hallway. “No sense getting dust-fucked over it.”
Unless you’re Javi.
Until next time,
L.M.
5 September, 2118
Psyche-88, Syndicate Mining Ltd
Post says my last sig went through, hallelujah. So I'll spare you the recap, start where I left off.
Javi went quiet. They all do, God rest their souls.
We gave him a proper sendoff, all soaked in booze, tossing his sparse possessions through the dust hatch, one after the next, telling stories all the while. Sendoff is pure waste, by design: a one-sided transaction. A little fuck you to the ways of the universe.
Hats off to Javi. Every breath we take now is thanks to him.
Could be worse. You should’ve seen the live feeds from Titan when the system declined to renew amenities for the whole outpost. Two-hundred-some workers, eighteen months into a two-year stint at the ass-end of inhabited space, frozen stiff at the breakfast table because another gig on the flip side of the moon outbid them on a one-off ASAP contract after a radiation storm.
At least down here we’ve got a chance.
Our repair and resupply got rerouted yesterday. Outbid mid-flight by those cockjocks at Vesta. The fuck are they even gonna do with an electrolysis system that small? They’re twelve hundred strong. Another shipment is en route from Lunar 1, but the timetable’s fucked. So, every morning it’s back to the terminal. And every few days, another sendoff. Just this morning, a guy from Pod 9 drew short straw.
But don’t worry. I’m still here. The wily survive, and all that.
Drifting down the artery of Arm D1 today between shifts, a guy rolled out from God knows what shadow and stopped me dead with a shoulder that had to be cobalt-plated.
I grabbed the wall for stability. “The fuck—?”
“Lem. Right?”
Bad sign, all these people knowing my name. “That’s right.”
“You know me?”
I squinted. It was dark, but mostly I was buying time. Working contingencies.
The artery was vacant. Some voices around the bend. An access hatch to my right, too small to wedge into even if I could get it open. My comms, well, nobody I could call would show up in time. I could hit my belt alarm, but if the house wasn’t on fire the supervisors would be pissed for having to work up a sweat.
The guy was still waiting for an answer. I finally registered his face. The horsehair mustache that had doubtless excited exactly zero of his sexual partners. “Scully?”
“Yeah.” He stared long and hard. “Scully.”
“Right, well. Great talking.”
I started to push off. He moved to intercept.
“What’s your deal, man?” I said.
“You know my brother?”
I frowned. “What’s his name?”
“Scully.”
Dumbest thing I’ve heard all week, pair of brothers going by their last name. “Listen, dude—”
“Pod 9.”
Oh. “What do you want?”
“They say you’re a smart guy.” His eyes were little jags of uncut cobalt in the diffuse light. “Figure it out.”
Of course I knew what he wanted. And of course I knew how he’d found out. That morning at the mess hall, a few days back. Javi and his big mouth. Whoever the fuck Javi had heard it from I did not know. Now this guy’s brother was gearing for sendoff, and I was his only hope.
If only it worked like that. “Nothing I can do.”
He grabbed a fist of my collar, slammed me into the wall. My scapulae crunched against the hard titanium. I let out a groan.
Scully pressed his mask right up against mine, bristly stash and all. “I heard otherwise.”
Over his shoulder, finally, I spotted someone coming. I caught the glint of a hip canister, a flash of blonde hair—
A supervisor badge.
Poetic fucking timing. A supervisor might help me out of this jam, but she was the last person I needed to overhear the shit coming out of Scully’s mouth.
She was right at the brink of earshot when Scully said, “Heard you got a scam going. Cheating your contracts—”
“Are you crazy?” I kept my voice to a lashing whisper. “Supervisor’s coming.”
“I ain’t the one with secrets.”
Supervisor was twenty seconds away at her present drift, jabbing something into her wrist comp.
Little beads of sweat flecked off my forehead, drifted into midair against the low gees. “I can’t help you. It’s too late. You can’t renegotiate the contract.”
Ten seconds. She was staring at me, now, and fuck if it wasn’t the same lady as back in the mess hall with Javi.
Scully only had eyes for me. “It’s your fault.”
“Right, sure, my fault for minding my business every goddamn day—”
“Every time you run your little scam, someone else takes your place in line.”
Whatever I was about to say died in my throat. The air in my breather was hot, muggy. A transaction. In, then out. Easy as sin.
“Hey, boys.”
We turned.
Supervisor had stopped just out of arm’s reach; she had her thumbs in her suspenders, her bright yellow taser jutting prominently from her hip. “What’s this about a scam, now?”
Scully and I stared at her. Both of us working our contingencies. Reporting me wouldn’t do Scully or his brother an ounce of good. Worse, if his story didn’t hold water, his neck would be on the line for causing a stir.
On the other hand, he was emotional. His brother would be dead by dawn.
Supervisor drifted closer. “One of you better start talking.”
So I did. “I was telling Scully here about the yellow gin scam, down at the Canteen.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Yellow gin.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Some gal in Pod 7 got a bladder infection that made a booze factory of her urinary tract. Or so they say. Scully here’s skeptical. We’re gonna settle it later by, you know, getting pissed.”
Her glare was a frozen tundra, an open threat, a long walk out a short airlock. The vein on her neck twitched. She was gonna hit me any second, and then—
Her gaze slid toward Scully. Inquisitive, now.
Scully said nothing at all.
I forced slow exhales. Wearing a breather, everyone knows when you’re holding your breath.
Finally, supervisor shook her head. “Get back to work.”
Didn’t have to tell me twice.
Scully grudgingly let go. I shot a furtive glance over my shoulder as I rounded the bend. Supervisor was gone. Scully was still there, watching me go.
The look in his eyes said this transaction wasn’t done.
Warily,
L.M.
10 September, 2118
Psyche-88, Syndicate Mining Ltd
Everything hurts. My busted kneecaps, my swollen jaw. My fractured thumb. The tender pink of my gums where three teeth are missing. That transaction I mentioned, though. It’s done.
Lemme back up.
After my last sig, five days passed quietly. The shipment inched closer. An old vet from Pod 6 drew short straw. We drank gin, tossed war medals down the dust hatch, clocked in for work the next day.
That night, out of nowhere, Scully jumped me. He caught me on my way back from the Canteen after a few rounds with Vish. I was tipsy, tired, unaware. He had a wrench in one hand, his hip canister in the other.
The blood sprayed like bullets through the unbreathable air.
He took my breather, left me to suffocate. I tried to chase after him, didn’t get far. Last things I remember: static vision, hard hands dragging me off to oblivion.
Or rather, to the infirmary.
The last place anyone on 88 wanted to be.
They kept me under for most of the day. I slept through the first half of the next. That’s three shifts, gone. Six non-productive shifts in a row and my quota’s blown. Scam can’t make something out of nothing.
Needless to say, I woke in a panic. As I lay there, trying to shake the last of the drugs, vague memories surfaced. The raw stench of antiseptics. A slurred conversation with Vish. Saying things I shouldn’t say. Vish hushing me up, her hand twined with mine.
I checked in with the doc. Turns out, Vish had heard the beatdown on her way to her bunk. She found me unconscious, dragged me here with her own breather pressed to my face. She stayed by my side half the day. Medical treatment isn’t exactly top-notch at 88, and I guess she wanted to ... I don’t know. She shouldn’t have skipped shift.
According to the doc, Scully had already been deemed in violation—cut off promptly from his amenities, deprived of a proper sendoff. Dude wasn’t even short-strawed. It was all grief, all vengeance. And he didn’t even finish me off.
Close enough, though. Maybe this was Scully’s plan all along. I took another look around the infirmary, bunks crowded in like coffins, all those poor saps waiting for discharge just to find out they weren’t gonna renew. Can’t make quota on your back.
Fuck that.
I waited until the doc went on break, dug out the tubes and pried off the ’trodes, peaced out. Spent an agonizing twenty minutes getting dressed. Made second shift by a hair, labored through the pain.
I’m not telling you this to make you feel guilty. Just thought you should know the truth.
Still breathing,
L.M.
12 September, 2118
Psyche-88, Syndicate Mining Ltd
Vish drew short straw today.
I’m still making quota, barely, thanks to my ways. Contract averages your past six shifts to calculate projected output. I missed three, which means I had to make up for it over the next three. So that’s what I did. Working a rig with a broken thumb sucks, but being dead sucks more.
Just ask Vish.
She tracked me down yesterday at gear check. It was just an elbow of a room, lockers crammed into the crook, but it was one of the few spots in all of 88 with a legitimate window. The stars shone bright and taunting, crawling sideways on Psyche’s four-hour rotation.
“How’s the thumb?” she said.
I had a bad feeling. I couldn’t quite make eye contact. “Crooked.”
“Suits you, then.”
That got me to look her in the eye. Soon as I did, I knew it for sure.
“Got a peek at the redlist,” she said. “I’m not making quota. Missed a shift or two. Tonight’s my last shot, and ...”
And no way could she make up for the lost productivity, not with her shit assignment.
“Fuck, Vish.”
The thing that hung between us, the thing she didn’t say—wouldn’t say—was why she’d missed that shift or two.
She turned, stared out the window. Sun came crawling into view, just a bloated star from out here, nothing special about it. “Double output would do the trick.”
She was mincing words, but her meaning was clear as that far-off sun. My scam, it exploits a bug in the system that allows for a double entry on either side of chrono-dawn. Double entry means double output. Nobody catches on because nobody’s looking; guess that’s one benefit to an automated system. I’ve never shown a soul, never dropped the faintest hint. But Vish is smart. She must’ve read the output logs, noticed that all mine come in multiples of two.
Of course, she wouldn’t know by the logs how I make it work. You gotta time the entries right, enter a reset sequence in between—which requires an admin passcode. Such as, for example, the one I phished off a particular supervisor after the incident.
That passcode, along with the how-to of the scam, is pure fucking gold. I let anyone in on it—anyone—and the whole thing inches closer to belly-up.
Vish leaned her back against the window, sized me up. “What do you say, Lem?”
Shipment was still three weeks out. That’s a lotta days to take my chances. “Vish—”
“Just one time.” Her pose was nonchalant as fuck. Her eyes, though, were pleading. “Promise.”
The thing she didn’t say, again, was how she was only standing here pleading her case because she’d dragged me back from the shores of death and lingered by my side to see me through it. If she’d said as much ...
Well, she didn’t.
I finished gearing up. “Sorry.”
A brooding silence, then: “You’re no better than them.”
“Maybe not.”
“Worse. At least they play by their own shitty rules.”
So do I. My rules are just shittier. “I got my reasons.”
“Yeah, right.” She tallied with her fingers. “Me. Myself. I.”
“Vish—"
“Fuck you, Lem.”
I almost said something back, something I’d regret. But by the time I turned, she was gone.
Twelve hours later, word went out. Vish, my only friend in the whole of 88—the whole of inhabited space, maybe—had twenty-four hours to live.
Reluctantly,
L.M.
13 September, 2118
Psyche-88, Syndicate Mining Ltd
Second to last time I saw Vish, it was between shifts and she was barreling down the C2 artery. I hadn’t slept well. The way she was coming at me, I tensed up for a knockout punch. The thing I got instead left me worse off.
She steadied herself on a ceiling rung, said: “Sendoff tonight.”
“I, uh. Yeah?”
“You coming?”
Her expression left me nothing to go on. She had to be joking.
“Am I ...um. Sure. Of course.”
She put a hand on my shoulder. “Good.”
Then she was off, to wherever people go on their last day alive.
I labored through second shift with the usual aches and pains, tried to keep my mind off what was coming. Failed, mostly. I met Vish at the airlock in the early hours before chrono-dawn. Place was getting a lot of use these days, and it was starting to show. Walls all carved up with last words. A lingering reek of unwashed bodies and low-grade gin.
It was also, notably, vacant.
“Hey.”
Mostly vacant. Vish was there, crouched in the corner with a tether around her waist, a duffel drifting at her side. By the cool sheen of her eyes, she was already drunk.
She handed me a murky bottle with a zero-g valve top. “Thanks for coming.”
I took it, tried not to look suspicious. Didn’t drink. “Where is everyone?”
She took the bottle back, slid her breather down and drew a swig. “Never was one for crowds.”
Fuck. Here she was, telling me she wanted to spend her last hour with me. And here I was, afraid of getting jumped by some Pod 9 posse.
“Sorry.” Best not to elaborate on how sorry, or about what.
I tethered in alongside her, pulled my mask down and took a swig.
She opened the duffel. Inside, I caught a glimpse of her offerings.
Her last transaction.
“You’re still a dick,” she said.
Couldn’t argue that. “Yeah.”
She looked like she was gonna say something more. Or maybe she was expecting me to. The silence lingered between us, awkward and uneasy.
Out came the first offering. It was an old Canteen token, scuffed flat.
She let out a dry chuckle. “First wager you ever lost to me.”
“And the last.”
She raised her eyebrow.
I couldn’t hold her gaze, found myself staring at the token. Felt like years ago, that night the power went out at security and we laid bets on who could spring the locks on the liquor closet the fastest.
Vish thumb-flipped the token. It spun a slow-mo dance through the low gees. “Surprised I kept it?”
“A little.”
She caught it mid-air, loosened her tether, drifted over to the dust hatch.
Down went the token.
We drank.
It was weird, doing it like this. So fucking quiet. Normally you could hardly hear yourself think over the din. I preferred this, to be honest. But something niggled.
Out from the duffel came a staple-bound notebook, glutted with tiny diagrams.
I whistled. “From that time we hacked the autochef to pump hallucinogens into the eggs.”
She flipped through it. “Which makes these our plans to heist the station’s ore reserves with nothing but a multitool and Sad Johnny’s fake teeth. Too bad it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.”
Down went the notebook.
I was starting to feel like proper shit, holding up this side of the sendoff. Surely Vish had another friend up here.
“Tell you what I heard.” She yanked down her breather, took a swig, passed me the bottle. “Heard the Syndicate’s got a net a hundred feet down that shaft. They catch everything we drop, scoop it back up. Sell it on auction, dirt-side. Bona fide artifacts from the frontier.”
“Bullshit.”
Vish shrugged. “Wouldn’t put it past them.”
I shuddered, drank. “Yeah.”
Out came an old scorecard, names scrawled at the top. Mine, hers, a few others. Most of them long-since sent off. Couldn’t ignore the fact that all her keepsakes were from times we’d spent together.
I nudged her, pointed to the score at the bottom. “Keeping tabs on my wins?”
She watched me sidelong. “Something like that.”
I was feeling a little dizzy, a little sad. I put my arm around her shoulder.
She kept watching me. Something crossed her face. “You wanna send this one? Keep with tradition, and all.”
“With tradit—” The word crawled back down my throat. The booze did a turn in my gut.
Tradition said it was her job.
Unless.
My hand felt suspect on her shoulder. “No.”
She kept on watching. “Yes.”
I had to fight the urge to bail, fast. “What did you do?”
“Tell you what I didn’t do.” Her words fell cold and hard, little hammers on my battered body. “I didn’t draw short straw.”
I wanted to ask: then what are we doing down at Sendoff? But also I didn’t.
“Came close.” She curled her lip back. “Skin of my teeth. Turns out, there is such a thing as an appeal. You just gotta have the right leverage.”
“Leverage.”
“That’s right.” She turned the scorecard over in her gritty hands. “Leverage. Like intel on a scam someone’s been using to cheat their contracts.”
Keeping tabs on my wins.
“Bullshit,” I said. “No way they bought your story on a hunch. I never told you how—”
Unless I had.
The infirmary. The drugs. Vish’s hand in mine.
Me, saying things I shouldn’t say.
She watched the realization creep over me with a strange kind of sadness. “Of course, you didn’t cough up the passcode. Otherwise I would’ve just used it. Then, well.”
Then we wouldn’t be here. The fact that we were meant one thing: Vish had renegotiated her contract, but someone still had to draw short straw. Even if she didn’t drop my name, it would’ve been trivial for them to track the scam back to me once they knew what to look for.
I could expect my notice of contract violation any minute.
But there was one thing I couldn’t work out. Vish wouldn’t have needed the cheat until after missing those shifts. Which meant, maybe, she’d realized at my bedside she was gonna miss quota, and worked me as a failsafe. Or maybe not. Maybe she’d played the long game. Dropped a hint to Javi way back, sent me to talk him down at mess hall, watched it play out. Waited until the trouble landed me in the infirmary with drugs in my veins, where she plied the scam outta me—even if it meant missing shifts to get it.
Vish eyed me. She wanted me to ask. Until I did, she was pure uncertainty. Schrödinger’s sendoff. My friend, my enemy.
I’d prefer friend.
So, I didn’t ask.
Her eyes were cold, dry. “Can’t say you didn’t have it coming.”
The card was in my hand, now. I stared at the final score, tried to fit this whole thing into one of those won but really lost moments, or vice versa. But that’s all bullshit. House wins every time.
I thought about telling Vish about your condition. How it buried your mom all those years ago. How it’s gonna bury you by your sixteenth birthday if I don’t send enough cash home for the procedure. How I would willingly rip the air right out of another person’s lungs—even my best and only friend—to keep that hope alive.
But what would be the point? For all I know, Vish is saving for a defense lawyer to keep her sister off death row. And Javi was working off family debt from a crypto-scam that’s gonna pass down to his kids, now. And the Scully boys, scrounging for a proper burial for their ma. None of it changes a damn thing. Everybody’s got a reason for being here, and there’s only so much air to go around.
“Is it true what you said?” I polished off the bottle, handed Vish the empty. “About the net?”
She let out a sigh. “Does it matter?”
I surprised myself, said, “Maybe it does.”
Didn’t realize until then how much I was clinging to that illusion of a one-sided transaction. A chance to take a little something without giving every last piece of yourself in return. Give a little something without everyone doubting your motives.
Vish looked at me long and hard, like she wanted to say something more but had promised herself she wouldn’t.
Finally, she got up and left. Her voice carried down the hall. “No sense getting dust-fucked over it.”
Of course she’s right.
Yours,
L.M.
