His head ached with the stuffy pressure of a building headache, and walking over here had exhausted him. Without Remedy, he’d soon grow too ill to hide it from Reed. And Alden was right: he was putting them all at risk.
Alden opened the curtain to the next room, where the lights Nate had wired cast a warm, familiar light. “Learn to negotiate better, for one.”
“What?” Nate asked, scraping tears from his lashes with his dirty hands.
“You’re more than a GEM. As it much as it pains me to admit, your tinkering isn’t worthless.” Alden gestured tightly. “I have things to do. Come get your dose so I can go on with my evening. And next time you come, bring tech and propose a plan to make yourself useful every time you come here.”
Nate took an unsteady, disbelieving step. “You’re not going to try to feed?”
“Force you?”
“No—I— ”
“You try my patience. Get yourfixand get back to your Reed,” Alden said, so acidic that Nate hurried like he’d been pushed. He held the curtain aside, back rigid, as Nate passed through into a room he no longer felt welcome in. . .
A muffled knock at the bedroom door startled Nate from his memory. Legs momentarily weak with a rush of unreasonable fear, he scrambled off the floor and knocked back softly, careful not to wake Fran, who snored in her bed. “Alden?”
Alden let out a muted sigh. “We appear to be under siege.”
Nate unlocked the door and peered out, more concerned with his alarm system failing than he was about Alden’s veiled warnings the evening before. Shadows flickered at the front window, outside the range of the trip wires and alarm circuits.
Alden handed him a stun gun.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Nate asked, squinting in the dark. Through the blinds and flimsy curtains, torchlight danced. The streets were full of people.
“If someone breaks the door in, shoot them with the stun gun.” Alden leaned against the front counter, his nightgown clinging like a shroud. He held a polished wooden stick the length of his arm. Nate had never seen anything like it, and Alden didn’t look like he knew what to do with it.
“What’s happening?”
“Who knows. An overabundance of speed-chem. A stampede toward the nearest rain barrel. The Breakers. A parade. I don’t pretend to understand the whims of our neighbors.”
But he did. Alden had an uncanny way of knowing exactly what people needed when they came to him with wordless hunger. He watched the window warily, his fingers clenched tight around the wood.
“Why won’t the A-Vols stop them?” Nate asked.
Alden made a low, displeased sound. “The A-Vols have no reason to stop a riot. It appears others have been incentivizing their loyalty.”
“The Breakers?”
“I didn’t wake you up for a midnight chat.” Tension clipped Alden’s words.
If the crowd outside decided to raid Alden’s shop, the alarm system and the stun gun and Alden’s stick weren’t going to save them. But the late hour dulled Nate’s senses. It had to be close to dawn, and finally, his body was ready to sleep.
Little by little, the crowd outside thinned. Here and there, Nate made out the shapes of baskets and bags in people’s arms. “It’s food they’re after,” he realized, fear and concern mingling in the dark. “They’re hungry.”
Hunger was nothing new in the Withers, but this was different. A chaotic, desperate need.
Alden didn’t move. “Of course they are.”
Nate thought of Pixel and knew that Brick, Sparks, and Reed would sooner starve than let her hunger like that. That theywouldstarve for her. A pang of grief hollowed him out. He should have been with them, doing something to help. But there was no sense in wishing now. Tomorrow, he’d figure out how to get tech over to them. It was more than nothing.
The night stretched on, the streets slowly quieting, until Nate could only hear the steady tick of a clock on the wall and not the rustle of hurried footsteps outside. In the absence of immediate danger, he swayed with sleepiness, nearly dropping the stun gun he was reasonably certain didn’t work.
“Sit down,” Alden said.
Nate wobbled across the room and sat at his feet, resting his head against Alden’s legs.
He couldn’t recall falling asleep, but woke in his bed and wondered if it had all been a dream—until he saw the hollow pinch of exhaustion around Alden’s eyes.
