I look down at the bed I was working on. The soil has taken in what it was given because it is not sentimental. It’s always hungry. I crouch and put my hand there, palm flat, heat rising into my skin.
“See?” I say to Doctor Callaway, to the garden, to the red light I know is blinking somewhere even out here, to the men who might be staring at the sky and cursing the wrong god. “I told you. Blood’s good for the garden.”
BURNING HIMSELF ALIVE
I Like It Heavy - Halestorm
Bones
The first thing hunger does is make pain honest.
It strips away the buffering. The edge goes raw. Injuries that were tolerable an hour ago start to speak up, one by one, like they’ve been waiting for the right moment.
I feel everything.
The microfractures in my ribs complain when I breathe too deeply. My hand – still wrapped, still swollen – throbs with a slow, deliberate insistence that tells me the inflammation cycle is accelerating without proper fuel. The stress line along my spine sends a dull ache down my legs when I shift my weight.
None of this is surprising.
Whatissurprising is how fast my margins disappear.
I sit on the bench because standing costs calories and lying down feels like surrender. My posture is deliberate: spine straight enough to avoid compression, shoulders relaxed to save energy. I keep my breathing shallow but steady. Oxygen efficiency matters when intake doesn’t.
Across the room, Hatchet is burning himself alive.
Not literally. Yet. But every restrained movement costs him. Every pull against the cuffs, every pacing step, every clench of his jaw. He’s converting rage into heat and throwing it away. I know exactly how bad that is for him. I also know telling him would change nothing.
Honey keeps glancing at everyone like he’s trying to take attendance in a burning building. His body is already conserving – shoulders slumped, movements small – but his eyes won’t stop moving. He wants to do something. That impulse will kill him faster than hunger if he doesn’t rein it in.
Ghost is…unstable. Unsurprisingly. I don’t have a better clinical term for it. His rocking has stopped, which should be good, but the stillness that has replaced it isn’t calm. It’s brittle. Like glass under pressure. His gaze keeps slipping out of focus, then snapping back too sharp, too fast.
Snow stands with a discipline I recognise and respect. He’s conserving better than the rest of us. I’ll begrudgingly give him that. Asshole. Stillness. Controlled breathing. Minimal movement.
But when our eyes met earlier and he mouthed twelve, then corrected himself?—
That bothered me.
Snow doesn’t miscount. Which means time is already unreliable. That changes everything.
Hunger math is precise only if time is stable. Dehydration curves, glycogen depletion, muscle catabolism – those models assume you know when the clock started.
If the clock is a lie, the body becomes the only reference point.
And bodies lie under stress.
I flex my injured hand carefully, testing range of motion. Pain spikes, then settles. Not worsening yet. That’s good. But without protein, collagen synthesis will slow. Without calories, healing diverts resources. What was reversible damage yesterday becomes permanent damage tomorrow.
I don’t know when tomorrow is.
The room remains unchanged. No sound. No voice. No new instructions. But that’s intentional. They want us to fill the silence.
Hatchet’s breathing gets louder. More ragged. His tremor is no longer confined to his hands; it’s travelling up his arms, into his shoulders. Hypoglycaemia, probably. Adrenaline masking it until it can’t.
Honey notices too. He shifts closer to Hatchet’s zone, cautious of the invisible lines they told us not to cross.
“Hey,” Honey murmurs, barely audible. “You good?”
Hatchet doesn’t answer. His jaw flexes. His eyes are fixed somewhere past Honey’s head, focused on nothing and everything. That’s not good.
