“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.
