She sniffed and shoved it into his hand. When she turned to look away, he resisted the urge to direct the frigid stream toward the back of her head.
It didn’t take long to rinse the grime off his skin. He craned to see Pixel still in her bed watching him, and decided against offering her the opportunity to bathe. She didn’t need to feel this—the ache of being treated no better than a stain on the floor.
Nate managed to rinse his hair, but after a few more moments, he dropped the hose, his fingers numbing and trembling. “I . . .” He didn’t want to ask for help. “I’m done.”
Juniper took a bath sheet off one of the pipes and dropped it on top of him. “Your clothes are drying. Agatha said you did well. I guess you’re stronger than you look. Stronger than she is,” she said, jerking her thumb toward the chair.
Val was there, slumped over and pale. Unmoving.
Nate stared. “Did Agatha kill her?”
“Why would Agatha leave a dead body in here? She passed out quick, that’s all. Won’t get much Remedy out of her. I think your mean friends should have done it instead. They looked strong enough.”
“Why Val? Why not other people?”
Juniper watched Nate struggle with the bath towel and sighed sharply. She crouched and took over drying his hair for him, rubbing his head and shoulders with the soft sheet. “One at a time. Because they might tell where we are. Even with the new doors, we have to be safe and keep our secrets. When they’re not strong enough anymore, Agatha has them chucked into the sludge. Won’t tell down there,” she said, laughing.
Nate imagined Reed and Brick in the sludge and shuddered.
“How much Remedy can Agatha get each time?”
Juniper snapped the towel at his ear. “Quit that. I heard her tell you stop asking questions. You’re not to be trusted.”
“Then why are you drying me off?”
“Because Agatha told me to. And because you smelled like a dead sludge-rat. Long dead.”
He wanted to snatch the towel back and finish on his own, but his legs and arms wouldn’t work. It didn’t hurt the way he’d hurt earlier, edging toward the stillness. But he was empty and weak, and that scared him more. He imagined being trapped in his own body, too tired to move or speak or fight—and realized that must be exactly what the GEMs in Gathos City experienced: a lifetime lifeless and bleeding out to make others feel good.
Juniper hauled him up with both hands under his armpits and managed to drag him to Pixel’s bunk, where she deposited him in a heap. Pixel wrapped around him, giving Juniper a wary look. She tucked her sheet around Nate. He was too weak to protest being treated like an infant.
“How long has it been?” he asked.
“Not long,” Pixel said. “My belly’s growling, though.”
Nate caught his breath, exhausted from helping Juniper drag him as best he could. “Do they feed you?”
Juniper stood there with her arms crossed and the bath sheet still draped over her shoulder. She breathed hard too, and Nate recalled that she wasn’t much better off. She’d been hooked up to that machine too. “Of course they feed me. I’m not a prisoner. You wouldn’t be, either, if Agatha didn’t think you’d run off and make trouble. They’re helping us. We’re helping each other. We’ll be kings and queens when the gates open and everyone wants our chem.”
“This isn’t a storybook,” Nate said, cross. He didn’t sound properly angry with his mouth numb and his throat sore.
She walked off in a huff, and Pixel leaned close to whisper, “Can I really be a princess?”
“Not down here, Pix.” He tugged one of her ponytails. “But when we get back out in the sun, you’ll be a queen.”
“Queen of the Tinkerers.”
“That’s right.”
Juniper returned from behind a curtain in the corner, dragging a basket across the floor. The handles sagged with the weight of the contents. Despite himself, Nate leaned forward, mouth watering.
“Told you they feed us. Didn’t know you were hungry. You have to say, is all,” she said, talking to Pixel. She crouched, her skirt pooling at the floor like dingy water, and began picking through the basket.
Pixel climbed out of the bed to perch beside Juniper. “All right. I’m hungry.”
“We’ve got . . . apples, bread. Dried something . . . green. Jar of preserves. No label, though, so don’t know if it’s any good or not.” Juniper lifted each item as she spoke in a quiet, singsong voice. “It’s healthy to eat. It keeps us strong.”
“I want an apple,” Pixel said, reaching for it cautiously. She scooted away from the basket and took small, quick bites.
“You don’t have to be scared.” Juniper huffed and grabbed the bread and a canteen. Without another word, she started wetting the bread and feeding Nate bites. His pride hurt, but he hadn’t eaten in days, and he slowly chewed and swallowed each bland bite.
Nate pictured a lifetime of this routine, and the bread in his stomach went sour and cold.
“I’m resting now. It’s healthy to rest,” Juniper said. “It keeps us strong.” She wandered away, taking a roundabout path across the room, as if lost. The curtain at her bed fluttered shut, and she didn’t make another sound.
Nate fought his way to sit and spent several minutes getting back into his clothes, with Pixel’s help. His ash-covered boots remained on the floor beside his bunk.
A rumble sounded, vibrating the cold concrete alongside the bunk. A small plume of plaster fell like ash from the ceiling. Nate had almost forgotten that the rest of Gathos still existed.
He didn’t want to forget.
Or resign himself to a lifetime of being hand-fed and hosed down and resting and resting and resting to stay fit for Agatha’s machine. His gaze lifted to the chimney—and the wide ventilation grating beside it.
Pixel put her hand against the wall. “Are Reed and Sparks and Brick gonna be okay?” she whispered.
He pulled her close to whisper back, “Maybe we should see for ourselves.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It wasn’t a plan, but it was better than nothing. Better than reconciling Pixel to a childhood spent waiting for her turn to be used up.
“She’ll trust you more than she trusts me, Pix,” Nate whispered. “You have a strong mind for tinkering. Ask her questions. Get her to talk.”
“What if she gets mad at me?” Pixel shivered.
He kissed her cheek. “No one could get mad at you.”
He should have warned her to be careful, but he couldn’t bear to scare her anymore.
Nate tried to stay awake, but the room was so quiet. Juniper snored in her bunk, and Pixel drifted off in his arms, each breath a rhythmic pull that dragged him off to sleep. When he woke up later, Val was gone.
He had no idea how much time had passed.
They settled into a routine. Meals on the floor around a basket of food. Agatha with them more often than not and never following a predictable routine. She worked on the machine, and Juniper hummed songs to herself in her bunk or followed a winding, repetitive path around the room.
Wary of Agatha’s warnings, Nate only explored as far as the waste trench behind a curtain. He didn’t go near the still.
But Pixel did. And he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have had to tell her to. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the working parts of the still. The tubes and wires and intricate glass pipes and nozzles.
Agatha wore a pair of shiny glasses while she worked. The two lenses were mismatched and fastened together at the middle. Distorted by the lens, one eye bulged garishly. She climbed up onto the still, nimble in soft shoes, twisting valves and adjusting gauges. Nate watched her as best he could without hovering over her shoulder like he wanted to. Whenever she glanced at him, he closed his eyes.
Pixel followed Agatha like a shadow.
“What does that p
art do?” she asked, walking her fingertips along a black tube hanging from a hook.
“These carry the blood. So they’re changed out between sessions. I boil them. Do you know why?”
“Because ‘boiling water makes it clean so it won’t make you shit yourself,’” Pixel said, quoting Brick so uncannily Nate had to press his face into the blankets to muffle a laugh.
“It’s a little like that.” Agatha chuckled.
Even in all her terrible glory, Agatha couldn’t resist Pixel’s charm or the persistence of her curiosity. Agatha had no way of knowing how well Pixel absorbed information—what a natural-born Tinkerer she was turning out to be.
As he drifted in and out of a light, restless sleep, Nate listened to every quiet word Agatha spoke to Pixel. “The steam catches here,” Agatha was saying. “And condensation forms here.”
“And it comes out at the bottom there?” Pixel pointed to a tiny spigot at the bottom of the massive still.
“A small, highly concentrated amount. Yes.”
“The magic,” Pixel said solemnly.
“It only takes a little of our blood to make chem,” Juniper said, butting in again. She’d interrupted every few moments, as if eager to show Pixel how much she knew about Agatha and the Breakers.
Pixel stood out of the way, keeping her hands behind her back as Agatha coaxed a few drops of dark liquid into a clear beaker from the spigot. Unlike Alden’s Diffuser, Agatha’s machine didn’t work with a mask. Nate didn’t understand the specifics, but it made sense. Feeding another was one thing—this was feeding on a mass scale. Even the concentrated byproduct couldn’t be as powerful as what the Diffuser was capable of when used for more than a few counts.
With a small Diffuser, Nate had saved Reed’s life, brought him back from a wound that would have dragged him into the stillness. Agatha’s chem was stronger than typical street-chem, but it probably couldn’t heal. It just made helpless fiends out of anyone who got a taste of what GEM blood was capable of.
“Your machine makes the stuff that makes us better too?” Pixel asked, hopping from one foot to the other.
“It does. The method is quite similar. It’s one of Gathos City’s best-kept secrets,” Agatha murmured. “Remedy isn’t that complicated once you know it contains the serum of anyone who wasn’t developed from modified cells.”
Pixel had always argued when Nate explained that they weren’t magical. She asked now with a small, unhappy sound, “From what?”
“Let me think how to explain it to you. Do you know how a plant grows from a seed?”
“It starts out really little and gets bigger,” Pixel said.
“Precisely. You and I were grown from different seeds than other people. And we were planted in a different kind of soil than other people.”
“Not in somebody’s belly?” Pixel asked.
Agatha laughed. “No, not in somebody’s belly.”
Nate’s thoughts drifted to his mother. It had never occurred to him that she hadn’t carried him in her womb. It didn’t matter. She’d been his mother all the same. Inarguably and wholly. He remembered her like a song, always talking. Unless she was lost in thought. Then she’d looked so sad. He couldn’t recall the exact shade of her eyes or her hair, but his heart recalled the feeling of her. Safety in her arms. Wanting to make her smile.
Now, in the dank, stale room, he’d give anything to see her again. He wondered what she’d think about him getting himself into a mess as bad as the one she’d given her life to free him from.
Agatha was still talking about the distillation machine. Every few minutes, Juniper chirped about how brilliant and wonderful Agatha was. Nate rolled to face away from them and listened.
“How can enough come out of us for all those people out there?” Pixel asked.
“Oh, I don’t need much to cook chem. That’s how special we are. Don’t ever forget how special you are, little one.”
“I want to know how to do the things you do when I’m bigger,” Pixel said.
Nate frowned at the wall. Someone had etched small lines into the concrete. Pixel was clever, and she’d done exactly as he’d said by asking Agatha all about her machines. But her wonder sounded sincere.
Of course she’d want to be like Agatha, building great things.
Better than fixing broken tickers.
He drifted off again and yelped when Agatha rolled him over and placed a cold metal circle against his chest. Tubes ran from the metal to her ears. Nate braced himself for pain, but nothing happened.
“I’m listening to your heart and your lungs.” Agatha pulled the tubes from her ears. “And I don’t like what I’m hearing. Juniper! Dear, it’s your turn.”
“Again?”
Nate wondered if he misheard her reluctance. She’d been so eager—willing to kill. Why not willing to submit to the machine as well?
“Once the runners have this last shipment on hand, you’ll have plenty of time to rest and get your strength back. And Valerie will return to us in two days. I’ll build up our stock of Remedy.”
Unable to look away from what he knew would happen next, Nate sat up, holding on to the bunk for balance.
“Are we going to use up Remedy faster because of him?” Juniper asked, casting Nate a hateful look.
“We only need a fraction more. And you’ll have plenty of time off now that Nate’s here.” Agatha reached for the tube and the pronged tip.
Juniper turned her head and closed her eyes.
Nate wondered how the hierarchy worked—why Juniper was so submissive. It sickened him to consider that even among GEMs, some sought power at any cost. They should have been helping each other live. And thrive.
“If the violence moves closer to the shore,” Agatha said, “I’ll take you up for a walk. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“Yes,” Juniper whispered.
Pixel scampered down from the bunk above and hid behind him. At some point, she’d taken a stained towel and rolled it into the lumpy shape of a rag doll. “I don’t like the hurting,” she said.
Nate couldn’t help wondering aloud, despite Agatha’s threats. “I thought there’d be more of us down here. More GEMs.”
“There are more, but they’re in hiding. I cycle them in and out of use for their safety.” Agatha stroked Juniper’s forehead once before she pierced her hip with the prongs, her expression cool and steady as Juniper shoved her hand over her mouth to stifle a cry. “Were something to happen here, or to me, it would be too much of a risk to have all of our brothers and sisters in one place.”
“Why would people want to hurt us?” Pixel asked.
“These people are unpredictable. They’ll hurt us. Hurt each other. The Withers won’t settle until the gates open.”
There it was again.
The gates.
He wondered what Alden would say—what Fran would think about the gates opening again after decades spent locked away from the friends she’d known in the towers. He wondered if Sparks would find beautiful things and if Brick would look for honest work.
It pained him too much to think of Reed. The space where he’d held Reed in his heart was a ragged bruise of guilt, fear, and love.
Agatha held her metal tool to Juniper’s chest and listened, but she had her eyes on Nate. He resisted the strong urge to look away. “I can see your gears working, Nathan. What do the gates mean to you? Would you return to Gathos City if you could?”
“Everyone I knew is gone,” Nate said. “And I know better than to go back there.”
“Good,” she said.
“How do you know the gates will open?” Nate watched the diffuser in the still become a whizzing blur, pink with Juniper’s blood. He’d seen something like it once—sugar spun into a cloud. Sticky and good, the memory at odds with this dark place.
“The date’s been set for yea
rs. Since the beginning, really. Did you think they’d leave all this land to ruin forever?”
“We didn’t know. No one really knows.”
“Of course not.” Agatha’s breath huffed. “Knowledge is a powerful thing. There’s a reason the Withers has been left in the dark, cut off from the information grid.”
“Information grid?” Nate straightened, delighted by the notion of forbidden tech. “Like tickers?”
“Stop thinking on it. It’s no matter to you.”
“He can’t help it,” Juniper said, faint and woozy. “He’s a Tinkerer. It’s his calling.”
“A Tinkerer?” Agatha’s voice sharpened. “Funny, it seems like you would have mentioned that by now. What, with all this lovely tech at your disposal.”
A traitorous flush heated Nate’s cheeks. “It’s nothing compared to what you do. I don’t understand Gathos City tech.”
“But you’d like to, wouldn’t you? You think you can know what I know? What I’ve spent a lifetime learning?” Her breath whistled like the steam in the still.
“No, I’d never—”
She slapped him once. The sound of it struck him before the sting and the heat. “You’ll never know a fraction of what I know. What I’ve seen.”
Nate touched his sore cheek, shocked at how quickly her anger had risen and how quickly she composed herself. He couldn’t remember her from his childhood in the city, but there was still something familiar about the way she watched him, as if she’d always been there, hovering over him in his sleep.
He shivered. “I understand.”
He didn’t understand anything.
Agatha’s lips curled into a faint, thoughtful smile. “Were you one of the Tinkerers at the train wreck?”
Wary of her flaring anger, Nate lowered his gaze. “Yes.”
“I sent trappers after you. After all three of you.”
“Why would you do that?” He thought about Dresden and his daughter—wondered if they were dead—or worse, separated and sold off by trappers.
She came closer again, satisfaction gleaming in her eyes. “Because it’s up to me who looks like a hero and who looks like a villain. I couldn’t have unknown players out there rescuing the enemies of the Withers.” Her laugh was quick and unamused. “I nearly had you killed, but lucky for both of us, I ended up with a trapper with his neck snapped instead. Where have you found so many vicious associates?”
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