Fragile Remedy

by Maria Ingrande Mora

“Is it broken?” Alden asked when he glanced over at the frantic messages.

  “No. Yes. Sort of,” Nate said, resisting the urge to shake it. “There’s another channel there, but I can’t find the right frequency. It bleeds through in the middle of the others.”

  He didn’t tell Alden that the word “GEMs” had interrupted other broadcasts three times in the past hour. It left him uneasy, as if someone was around the corner, watching him.

  Alden wrinkled his nose. “Find the channel that will tell us when Gathos City will deal with our little famine problem. The Courier who brings us bread has been remiss in his duties. I’ve stockpiled, but it won’t last forever.”

  “If the Breakers hadn’t blown up the railway, none of this would have happened.”

  “If someone hadn’t coughed their lung-rot onto their neighbor, none of this would have happened. Such is life. The good news is, the rest of us will likely die alongside you.”

  Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to Nate that Alden and Fran might soon follow him into the stillness. The thought shook him. Alden always seemed to have a way of getting what he needed, hunger for chem more powerful than any other currency. But he wasn’t streetwise the way Reed was. He relied on his shop and his trade. And Fran was too old to walk across the street, let alone scavenge for food.

  Facing the stillness alone was one thing. Imagining Alden and Fran dying alongside him made his muscles twinge and ache.

  The ticker chirped at Nate uselessly. After Alden locked up for the night, Nate climbed up onto the front counter and started tinkering with the crank-light, determined to push back against the sense of helplessness that overwhelmed him. The front room needed more light at night. Maybe people wouldn’t be as apt to break the window if it was bright inside.

  An icy cramp gripped him without warning. He cried out and dropped his pliers. They landed against the counter with a clatter that sent cracks spidering across the glass.

  Alden was picking through a pile of capsules. He traced the jagged crack and glanced up until Nate looked away first.

  Nate climbed down—more falling than anything—and banged his side against the counter. He stumbled into the washroom, feeling the weight of Alden’s gaze until he pulled the door shut behind him. His knees buckled, and he pressed his cheek against the cold tile floor. Something was different this time. Pain lanced through his head and his gut, cold stabs that grayed his vision.

  Tears ran down his face, shivery-cold, and he made chattering hurt-sounds with every breath. He couldn’t think. Everything was agony.

  Alden found him minutes or hours later.

  “Oh, Nate.”

  By dawn, Nate couldn’t move. He curled up at the foot of Fran’s bed. Shadows reached for him, the stillness beckoning. Fran wiped his face with a wet towel and crooned a woozy mix of old love songs and lullabies until Alden tucked her in and brought Nate to his bed. Nate grasped at him, tossed on a sea of feverish delirium and spasms of pain.

  “If I give you any more, that’ll be the last of it,” Alden said, hoarse after holding Nate through a long fit. “Can you wait another day?”

  “Fran g-g-got my hair all w-w-wet.” Nate stammered the words out. “I’m c-c-cold.” He didn’t think he could wait another day, but he didn’t want to beg either.

  Alden found a dry bath sheet and rubbed Nate’s hair with it, drying it to a tangled poof around his face. He smiled weakly and shook his head. “It’s not a good look for you, sweetheart.”

  An explosion sounded in the distance, rumbling and low.

  “I’m s-s-still cold.” Nate’s teeth chattered.

  “I know, love,” Alden said, wrapping Nate in another blanket and rubbing his arms and thighs to warm him. “Try to sleep, and I’ll stick you in the sun tomorrow, like a plant.”

  “I’d have to be a weed to grow around here,” Nate managed.

  “You’d find a way.”

  Alden talked to him until the pain carried him off.

  The door to the shop slammed open, chimes blasting. Only one person had ever come into Alden’s shop fit to take the door off its hinges. Nate scrabbled at the bed weakly, pressing his back against the thin wall shared with the front room.

  “Where is he?” Reed bellowed.

  Alden’s tone remained cool. “Your little ginger friend? I’m certain that whole mess was cleared up ages ago.”

  Something crashed against the wall. Nate tried to push himself up, only to find himself doubled over and moaning on the cushions. He clung to the edge of one, trying to hear what they were saying in the other room.

  “Nate!” Reed shouted.

  “Ah, of course. Forgive me, Mr. Reed, but didn’t you toss him out of your little—” Alden broke off with the sound of what Nate could only assume was choking.

  “Pixel told me what he is,” Reed said. “So I’ll ask you again. Where is he?”

  “Reed!” That was Pixel’s voice, small and scared. “Don’t hurt him!”

  Panic flared, stealing Nate’s breath. He wasn’t afraid of Reed—he could never be afraid of him—but this couldn’t be. Nate’d lied for so long. He’d fed Alden and lied and put them all in danger. If Reed knew, he’d be tangled up with all of it too.

  Nate’s vision fuzzed over as he struggled to sit up, his arms trembling. Each breath caught in a high-pitched wheeze. Gods, he was going to pass out before Reed found him.

  The bedroom door opened, startling Nate into losing his balance and landing face-first in the cushions. Panic took over, amplified by the way his breath caught in his throat. By the time Reed and Alden turned him over, Nate was fighting, kicking and clawing for his life.

  “Nate! Nate, stop! It’s me, Nate. Nate, stop! I’m trying to help you.” Reed grasped for Nate’s thrashing arms. “What did you give him?” he snarled at Alden.

  “This isn’t my doing,” Alden said acidly. He slipped behind Nate and propped him up into Reed’s arms. “You must stop fighting, Natey,” he said at Nate’s ear. “You need to breathe.”

  The words sank in distantly, but Nate’s instincts told him to fight, to get away from the grip at his throat. He struggled, but his strength gave out long before his will. He gasped and choked against Reed, with Alden pounding on his back, telling him to breathe, please breathe.

  Nate sobbed, spent. It hurt to be held, but he was too tired and weak to get away from them.

  “Pix.” He gasped. “Pixel.”

  “She’s with Alden’s grandmother.” Reed smoothed Nate’s hair away from his teary face. “She’s fine.”

  “You sound bad, honey,” Alden said, gentle with him, pulling Nate back against his chest and resting his sharp chin against Nate’s shoulder. It forced Nate to look at Reed, who gripped Nate’s shirt and crouched in front of him, green eyes wide and unsure.

  Nate’s thoughts unraveled. He couldn’t remember what he’d done wrong, how it had all started. “I’m sorry,” he said, choking.

  “No, don’t say that.” Reed reached to wipe a trickling tear from Nate’s jawline.

  “I couldn’t—”

  Alden tapped Nate’s mouth gently. “No. Stop talking and keep breathing.”

  “Pixel wasn’t right after you left,” Reed said. Alden snorted, and Reed’s gaze flickered to him briefly. “After I made you leave. She wouldn’t talk to anyone and started having nightmares again. I took her on a walk this morning, and she cried and told me everything.”

  “Be more precise, Mr. Reed,” Alden said.

  Reed glanced at Nate, wary. “Can I?”

  “Alden knows me best,” Nate said.

  A flash of pain crossed Reed’s features. “I know that you’re . . . that you’re a GEM.”

  Nate tensed. “That’s all?”

  Reed’s brow creased with a confused frown. “Is there more?”

  Alden made an exasperated sound at
Nate’s ear. “The girl is too. Pixel.”

  “Pixel . . .” Reed blinked.

  “I know.” Alden shook his head, his chin pivoting against Nate’s shoulder. “The percentage of GEMs in your little gang is alarmingly high.”

  Nate hiccoughed. Everything was changing too quickly. “Reed—you can’t—”

  “She’s safe with me, Nate.”

  “Until the winter comes and the Breakers’ bounty looks a little sweeter?” Alden asked.

  “Until someone rips her out of my dead hands,” Reed shot back.

  “Which they will, as soon as one of your brats sells her out. There’s a reason Nate’s kept this from you.”

  “Quit that.” Nate elbowed Alden weakly. When Reed frowned and both of them quieted, Nate went on, careful and slow. “You didn’t have to come. Go home. Tell Pix I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

  Nate turned away.

  “Is this your doing?” Reed asked Alden. “Pixel told me how you—that you—”

  Alden tensed like a cat ready to pounce.

  “It’s not his fault!” Nate said. “It can’t be helped.”

  “What do you mean?” Reed asked.

  “The same thing will happen to Pix when she’s older.” Nate wheezed. “We get sick. I wasn’t lying about getting medicine from Alden.” He could feel Alden’s satisfied smirk without looking and elbowed him again.

  “Can you let us talk? Alone?” Reed asked.

  After a long pause, Alden shifted to stand, tucking Nate into Reed’s arms. “Ten minutes,” he said, oddly quiet, before leaving them in his room.

  “I’m sorry,” Reed said. “Nate, I’m so sorry.”

  “No.” Nate didn’t want to spend the time before the stillness itchy with regret. “I don’t want to do this.”

  Reed stiffened. “I can get Alden.”

  “No, not . . .” Nate sighed and rubbed his cheek against Reed, trying to show him that he liked being close, that he wanted Reed here. “I don’t want to say sorry back and forth. We’re both sorry, okay?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I didn’t want this to happen. You’re as trapped as I am now. You have to keep this secret too.”

  “You know I will,” Reed said.

  “But the Breakers—”

  “Nate, no.”

  “I didn’t want to make you lie to the girls.”

  “You’re not making me do anything. Neither is Pix.” Reed brushed at Nate’s hair slowly, the faint tickle of it pulling Nate away from the pain. “It’s all a mess, but it isn’t your mess. You didn’t start this.”

  “How bad was it coming over here?”

  Reed laughed humorlessly. “Bad.”

  “Fires?” Nate asked, twisting to look at Reed’s face.

  “A few.”

  “Brick and Sparks told me . . . told me how you’re . . .”

  “Scared of fire?” Reed asked.

  “Not scared, but . . . yeah.”

  Reed’s pale-green eyes went far away. He scratched his eyebrow and released a quick breath. “After I left the pleasure house, I took up with a gang. Not a gang of scavengers like us. Runners. They weren’t bad kids, just rough.”

  “You ran chem?” Nate asked, as surprised by that as he’d be if Reed told him he’d grown wings.

  Reed nodded tightly. “I wasn’t much older than Pix. I dropped packages at a public den once in a while. To nice people. They gave me sweet gum and food. I liked them.”

  Nate clenched his teeth. They must have liked him too.

  “When I was there bringing a package upstairs, someone cooking chem dropped a gaslight on a blanket,” Reed said. “The whole place went up. I got out. A few others did too, but most of them were so . . . they watched the flames like it was something beautiful. I saw—I saw a girl with her hand on fire, watching it go black.”

  Nate thought he knew everything about chem and how it could ravage someone, slowly twist them inside out. But Reed’s gaze had gone hollow and haunted. He carried things Nate couldn’t see and would never know.

  “Wishes,” Nate said. “You first.”

  Reed’s voice went thick for a moment. “Home.”

  “What kind?”

  “One we don’t have to leave. Somewhere Pixel won’t have to be scared. Somewhere she can stay.”

  Nate fought through a wheezing breath. “How about a tree house?”

  “I’ve never seen a tree big enough to hold a house,” Reed said.

  “I’ve seen them in drawings.”

  “Your turn.”

  Nate hesitated. Pixel didn’t know that Alden’s supply of Remedy was running out. So Reed wouldn’t know either. “I already told you.” His vision fuzzed around the edges. “A tree house.”

  “That’s cheating.”

  “You,” Nate said.

  “I’m not a cheater.”

  “No.” Nate squirmed, already wishing he hadn’t said it. But he had to say it now. “I meant my wish. It’s you.”

  “I sent you away.” Reed’s voice thickened with anguish. “I made you go when you were sick.”

  “I told you. I know what I want.”

  A shudder ran through Reed when he took Nate’s hand in both of his and drew it to his lips, his lashes wet, and his eyes closed gently. He kissed Nate’s palm, and Nate recognized something in the bend of his neck. The same need for forgiveness that chased Nate like a shadow.

  “Reed,” he whispered, knowing he’d have to say it again and again for Reed to ever believe him. Knowing he didn’t have time to do that. “You’re my wish.”

  Reed dropped Nate’s hand and closed the distance between them with a soft kiss. Heat blossomed through Nate, and he tugged at Reed, made it more than soft, undone by the sweetness of Reed’s mouth. He made a low sound—a bittersweet wish, pain and longing. They touched as much as Nate could bear to. Reed’s palms were warm, gentling him when the shivers of quiet kisses became tremors of pain.

  As Nate caught his breath, Reed nosed at him and pressed quick, easy kisses at his jaw. His cheeks were wet. “I’m here.”

  “Stay.” Nate began to cry again. It was nothing more than a dry, anguished sound.

  “Shh,” Reed whispered. “Nate. Rest. I won’t go.”

  Nate heard voices, but they were far away. His breath didn’t fill him up all the way. So he held very still, and that helped a little.

  “Why isn’t he getting better?” Reed’s fingers stroked Nate’s bare foot with restless twitches.

  “I had to start rationing.” That was Alden, slow and tired. “If I give him what I have left, he’ll feel good for a few hours, maybe more, and then he’ll . . . At least this way . . . Tiny doses. I can keep him comfortable.”

  “Comfortable? That’s it?”

  “That’s it for now. If it gets too bad, we should try to make him sleep. It would be easier that way,” Alden said.

  Reed’s grip tightened at Nate’s foot. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I can’t save him.” Alden sighed. “That’s what you want to hear, right? I can’t save him, Reed. He’s going to die.”

  It grew quiet for a while. Reed’s grip eased. He began rubbing small circles at Nate’s back. Alden was there in a whisper of long hair against Nate’s cheek as he leaned in close, his clammy fingers briefly pressed to the pulse at Nate’s throat. Then he was gone again, his voice near and far.

  Nate floated, not with the heavy lethargy of Alden’s tincture for his head, but on a current of pain and breathlessness. It was hard to tell when he slept or not, or how quickly the time passed.

  “You don’t look so good yourself.” Reed didn’t sound angry.

  “Fishing for the lurid details?” The sound of Alden drifted about the room. “It’ll
pass. I have other means of distraction. I can’t—he can’t let someone feed when he’s like this. He’d sleep, and he’d never wake up.”

  “Is that what you meant?” Reed breathed in noisily. “That you’d take his blood to make him sleep?”

  “Don’t look so scandalized. I’m not a monster.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Alden said. “But I didn’t make him like this, and I haven’t touched him since he came back here. As a matter of fact, I believe you were the last one to feed on him, dear Reed. And I’m certain you hastened this . . . situation.”

  “I didn’t ask for it.” Reed’s voice went coarse. “I wouldn’t have let him!”

  “Are you so sure? You would have died without it. According to him, at any rate. He was distraught. Do you want to know what he promised me to save your life?”

  “Stop,” Nate said, the sound little more than a wheeze. He reached toward the sound of Alden. “Stop it.”

  “He said he’d feed me as often as I wanted. So generous, our boy,” Alden said, out of reach. “You do realize that’s what he was doing all along? Paying me back. I’ve never owed Nate a thing. I’ve been keeping him alive.”

  “You’re not doing a very good job of it now.” Reed caught Nate’s wrist and stilled him.

  “Ah, well. As Nate said, that can’t be helped. I’m afraid I don’t have my fingers in every pot in the Withers.”

  “Then we have to go somewhere else,” Reed said.

  “To Gathos City? Yes, ship him off. They have loads of Remedy up in the towers.”

  “No. There has to be somewhere else. Someone else. How much do you know?”

  “The Breakers will catch you when you fall,” Nate whispered.

  “Go back to sleep,” Alden snapped. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

  “Is his mind slipping?” Reed asked, looking pained.

  “It’s some rot from the tickers. I don’t know what it means.” Alden’s words snapped out—clipped with the sharp edges of a lie.

  Reed rubbed Nate’s shoulder. “We’ll find someone who can help you.”

  Alden didn’t let go of Nate’s hand. “And maybe we’ll all go down with you.”