Even then, Reed must have suspected him a fiend.
“Nate.” It was a soft, wistful sound. “There has to be another way.”
Alden came out, barefoot and hot as a live wire, his eyes wild and his limbs shaky. “What is this? House calls?” He stumbled into Nate and Reed and blinked like they were the ones who were at fault.
“A train crashed,” Nate said.
“Did it land on your face?” Alden pulled his robe tighter around him. “You look a fright.”
Reed scowled and drew Nate close. “He needs help.”
Alden squinted for a long, silent moment and then laughed. “Of course he does. Come inside, Natey.”
Reed’s grip tightened.
“I just got a hundred people out of a flaming train car,” Nate snapped, shrugging Reed off and pushing Alden away as he passed. He ignored the pained sound of Reed calling his name. “I can manage on my own!”
Nate slammed the door shut behind him, leaving Reed and Alden out on the sidewalk and the smoke and horror out of sight. He stumbled into the washroom and splashed cold water on his face until the water ran red, pink, clear.
The crank-light over the wash basin sputtered. His hands shook as he filled them with dingy water from the rain barrel on the roof. Charred flesh and strangled screams lingered in his throat, and it wasn’t until he sank to the floor and began to cry that he tasted anything else.
CHAPTER FIVE
Three hours later, Nate’s head still pounded. He sat on the floor in Alden’s room and massaged the bone around his ears, willing away the throbbing pain.
Alden hunched over his cluttered desk, scrawling out figures in shorthand code so complex that Nate had never figured it out. He frowned at his work, his forehead resting in one hand and lips pressed together in a tense line. His writing took up all the space in the margin of one of Fran’s dusty old storybooks.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” he asked without looking at Nate. “You shouldn’t stay here long.”
“I can’t go yet.” Nate frowned, unsettled by what sounded like a warning. And even stranger, like sincerity. “I don’t think I’d make it. I feel like I spent the night in a waste trench.”
Alden’s gaze snapped up. “Already?”
“No. I mean from this.” Nate ran his fingers over the tight, even stitches Alden had given him with surprising expertise after catching Nate trying to manage it himself. The pokey ends of the plasticky thread itched.
“Good.” Alden turned his attention back to the paper under his fingers.
“Everyone thinks the Breakers blew up the railway. It had to be them, right?”
“I’m working, Nate.” Alden sounded different. Tired in a way Nate couldn’t place.
It was probably from being clear-eyed after a chem-fueled morning.
Nate tried to stay quiet, but his thoughts rattled around in his head, dancing to the beat of the throbbing ache there. “Reed and Sparks saw them too. At the wreck.”
“Saw who?”
“The Breakers.”
Alden’s pen stopped moving. “Nowthatsounds like a tall tale.”
“Sparks said they wore fine clothes.”
“I’m told people from Gathos City wear fine clothes too.”
“No, she was sure. They had food with them. And medicine.”
“Medicine.” Alden hummed. He set his pen down and loosened his braid. “Did anyone follow you here?”
