By the end of the week, his head spun every time he stood up. He tried to focus on his tinkering and not the way his body weakened like a fraying wire.
Satisfied with the security system and lights, he set to work on the ticker system. He crammed into a gap in the interior wall, trying to find the old information system cables that transmitted to anyone with a ticker and a live wire.
Transmissions came from all over—official notices and alerts from Gathos City, gossip and serialized stories from locals broadcasting with salvaged equipment. A few dogged broadcasters gave regular reports on incoming food deliveries from Gathos City and pockets of violence within the Withers. And once in a while, the Breakers put out recruitment calls, promising anyone clever and quick a better job than the workhouses could offer.
Nate didn’t care about any of that. The gang needed a working ticker so Reed could gauge the relative safety of scavenging on any given night.
It took Nate an hour, but he finally found the cable and gathered enough slack to lower it down the wall to the ticker they’d set up on a rickety shelf. He climbed out of the space and took an uneven step, breathing hard and sneezing from the loose plaster and mildewed insulation in the wall.
He sat cross-legged on the floor and carefully connected the ticker to the wire. It flared to life in his hands. Words scrolled by, almost too fast for him to read.
Reward for GEMs. Safety guaranteed.
“You ought to go rinse off before you finish that up,” Reed said at his shoulder.
Startled, Nate dropped the ticker to the ground. He grimaced at the fine dusting of pale pink all over his skin and clothes. “You’re right,” he said, scratching his itchy neck. “Next time, I’m wearing something over my face. I think I breathed in a decade of dust.”
“I’ll go with you,” Reed said. “Sparks says I’m clear to get this mess clean with water, instead of getting wiped down like a babe.” He grabbed a bath sheet from the corner of his bunk and pushed his bare feet into his boots.
They took a slow pace up the stairwell. It smelled like dirt and piss.
Reed walked with a hitch, more careful than pained now that he’d healed up decently. Nate, sneezing and breaking into short fits of coughing, lagged behind.
“There’s a family up near the roof growing a few pots of herbs,” Reed said when Nate stopped and held the rail to catch his breath. “Sparks saw it. I don’t know how they manage it.”
“Seeds are hard to come by. But you can grow in water and gravel, if you know what you’re doing.” Bernice had kept a little herb garden on her windowsill. The leaves had been weak and pale, but they’d tasted better than anything her food vouchers were good for.
“You should see if there’s something that could clear that cough up,” Reed said.
Nate recalled being ill once as a child, and the rancid taste of bottled cough medicine. With the memory came a brief rush of images—his mother’s expansive greenhouse full of dark-green vines, a fountain that gurgled clear water, a window stretching from floor to ceiling, and the silver pillars of Gathos City crowding the view.
“Did you ever live anywhere but here?” he asked, dazed by the sharp memory.
“Are you trying to change the subject?”
“I’d have better tactics if I meant to do that,” Nate said with a faint smile, climbing the stairs again. It seemed like ages ago that he’d brought home peaches to make Reed smile.
Reed walked beside him, staying close. “I’ve always lived on this end of the island. When I left my mother, I didn’t go far.”
Nate wasn’t sure if Reed meantfaras in distance orfaras in trade. The idea of Reed prostituting himself as his mother had was too foreign, too impossible to consider. Unsettled by the ugly thought, Nate slipped his hand into Reed’s.
Reed stilled for a breath and kept walking, squeezing Nate’s hand. “I can tell you’ve been all over the Withers,” he said. “The way you talk, there’s something different about you.”
The sound of running water and laughter washed down the stairwell as a door opened and slammed shut the floor above them. Reed stopped walking and shifted to face Nate, standing a stair below so that they were almost eye-to-eye.
“Must be from my aunt,” Nate said. “She raised me. She came here from Gathos City before they closed the gates.”
“I bet she had good stories.” Reed let go of Nate’s hand to reach past his ear and loosen the tie that held Nate’s hair out of his face. It swept forward, sticky against his face.
“Nowyou’retrying to distractme,” Nate said, shaky, caught in the snap of goose bumps along his skin. He leaned into the brush of Reed’s fingers.
“I wish I could,” Reed said. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips to Nate’s.
Nate froze, struck still by the tenderness of it. Reed’s knuckles brushed against his ribs with a halting touch that tickled.
It was so chaste and honest and careful.
And Nate was going to sneeze.
