Adon still had hours to complete for his basic education curriculum, so he wandered the academy, tutoring students in quiet study rooms, and giving advice about the CAPT based on what he’d seen of other students, because he definitely would have elected for a snack if he could afford it. He spent most of the day tending to stubborn greenhouse plants and hiding from students he desperately didn’t want to resent. He couldn’t look at them without seeing all the ways their parents’ money would buy them a better score, annoyed that he had to work so hard, that he could do better than them with less time, but they would still pass him on his way up. 

It was fine. He just needed to get them off the Ground. Into the Mids. They would be safe there. 

Adon ducked behind bushes and shrubs each time he heard the doors beep open, sighing and dropping to the grass as someone kicked loudly thorough, sending a ripple of cold through the warm humidity. 

Lu burst into the greenhouse with a happy dance, holding up not one, but two bonus cans of juice he’d prepared a long story about getting for free so Adon wouldn’t do that brow-wrinkle before taking one. He held up all three victory cans just in time to see the top of Adon’s head vanish behind a pastel gradient of hydrangeas. He snickered to himself and snuck quietly around the opposite direction, leaping out and colliding with a fleeing Adon. 

Adon jumped, shouted, and toppled backwards into the grass with a loud laugh when he registered it was Lu. 

Lu rolled down beside him, introducing the can playfully, setting the cold against Adon’s warm cheek, “I got two free.”

“You’re lying,” Adon laughed, hauling himself up and sitting across from Lu, taking the can. 

Lu flopped onto his back dramatically and nodded, “I’m lying.”

Adon sipped loudly, eyes sparkling, gesturing for Lu to stay quiet as a line of girls cut through the art hall outside the glass windows, blinded by the solar lights.  Adon leaned closer to Lu, daring him to lie again, “tell me another.”

Lu shrugged easily, propping himself on an elbow, “I don’t like you.”

Adon bit back his smile and said nothing, slurping the juice loudly as the red flush climbed his neck. He nudged Lu with his shoulder, then heaved himself up, pulling Lu beside him. He smiled for hours as he taught Lu to prune the blueberries. 

Lu giggled each time he saw the lingering smile tucked in the corners of Adon’s mouth. They spent hours pruning and watering until their backs hurt and they limped toward the elementary to pick up Mess, who was delighted by their protests as he used them as posts, swinging between them all the way home. 

Lu felt his loneliness melting away. Rather than looking around for chance encounters, he waited for Adon on their balcony, and always, eventually, Adon arrived. Usually with an armful of student scans, a ringing head, and, occasionally, a line of peers as stubborn as Sophia behind him. Lu could hardly intimidate all of them away, but at Adon’s desperate eyes, he tried his best and was once again reminded of his position in the Wells by the way they immediately dispersed. He’d ducked his head into the hood of his tunnel suit and waited for Adon to finish grading, quietly wondering if Adon’s ignorance of Gideon and the Flock was from overwork and how much he would care when he found out. They were all surviving, weren’t they? Adon was just trying to get out, and Lu had nowhere else to go, that was all. 

Lu followed Adon to pick up Mess every day, sometimes with a limp, sometimes in too many clothes for the weather, smiling dreamily at the bickering brothers. It seemed unreal how easily things changed and how quickly they settled again. Like a district hazard with alarms and sirens, flashing alert warnings, vaccine deliveries, quarantines or security suppressions, then the quiet, the morning returned to its routine as if it was never interrupted. He liked the warmth they shared as Mess ran over, throwing his bag at Adon and leaping onto Lu’s back like it belonged to him, like Lu belonged to them. Heis cheeks hurt from smiling so much, building muscles in his jaw he’d never used in Pa’s lonely cement house. He was shocked to see his own face changed after only a few weeks with Adon. Even Benny had smiled at him during their training and said Lu looked handsomer, healthier. He’d said it proudly, then landed an uppercut into Lu’s confused gut and reminded him to keep up his guard because Gideon was preparing to make enemies. 

“I think I need new shoes, Doni.” Mess pouted on Lu’s back, flexing his swinging legs in front of them to show off the torn soles and holey toes. 

Adon inspected the shoes, measuring Mess’ toes at the very ends of the shoes, “wow, Mess, did you grow again?”

“Did I?” Mess wriggled until Lu dropped him carefully, then ran to put his back to Adon’s, measuring the top of his head against Adon’s chest, both of them nodding at his apparent progress. “I did!”

“You did!” Adon cheered, swinging him into a headlock before Mess could jump into his usual rant about growing taller than Adon soon, unbothered by the weight on their finances and marching Mess toward home, “grow any faster and your bones will pop out!”

Mess froze in horror, “they can do that?”

“No, look,” Lu laughed beside Adon, holding out an arm and a leg, revealing several inches of his base layer as he extended, “I just got this uniform tailored three weeks ago and it’s already this small.”

Adon and Mess stared at him, nodding in agreement. 

“Giant,” Adon shook his head sadly, waiting for Mess to play along. 

“You’re gonna be a freak!” Lu announced proudly, several passersby snorting as they stepped around the boys. 

Adon slapped a hand to his mouth, covering his smile, shrugging helplessly at Lu’s dropped jaw. “I’m sorry. Mess, you can’t… Messenger, you can’t just say….” Adon couldn’t scold him without the giggles escaping, 

“It’s fine,” Lu blinked, accepting his fate. 

Mess frowned, balancing on his tiptoes and whispering into Adon’s ear. 

Lu pulled his uniform back into place, reminded by their closeness that he was the outsider. 

Adon ruffled Mess’ hair with a chuckle, “it means your clothes got measured and cut to fit you exactly perfect, just for you. His bones grew this much in three weeks,” Adon lifted Lu’s arm so Mess could see the difference, tapping his wrist, “this is where the sleeve was before.”

“Ohhh,” Mess marveled, investigating Lu’s pants.

Lu blushed, but left his wrist awkwardly in Adon’s hand. They stumbled forward at a loud rail crash, common on the Ground, nonexistent in the rest of Caldera, jolted forward by the crowd crating to see what happened or running away before the Sec-Offs arrived and Lu relaxed beside them as they continued toward Indigo, the warmth returned. 

“What about you, Doni?” Mess skipped ahead, teashing. “What happened to you? Why is Aphy taller?”

Adon’s smile tensed, his brow creasing before his face smoothed, “well, we have different dads, so that will impact height. And some of the older vacs made you shorter,” he shrugged. “Don’t be mean when you’re taller than me, okay?” He ran into Mess lightly with his shoulder. 

Mess bounced off Adon, “I won’t,” he ran into Lu, then back into Adon, harder, “I’ll fight anyone who messes with you!” Mess barked like a yipping dog until Adon was bent over in laughter. 

Lu followed along, amused, searching for the differences between them now that he knew they were half-siblings, but they looked too similar. Not in physical features, but in their waving gestures, identical giggles, and shared smiles as they turned to him, waiting for Lu to catch up. Lu thought of his own brother and sister, but knew nothing about them. A shared father, but they lived with Heranika in a warm house, with neighbors and aunties and loud holidays. Lu only saw them on their birthdays, when Pa insisted on ridiculous parties and Lu hovered at the edges because calling Heranika anything close to mom felt blasphemous. 

Lu had tried to be a big brother to them once, but Korinthia had yelled that she was the eldest, pushed him away from Orestes, and Lu hadn’t seen them again until the next year, when any sense of responsibility or care had dried up. He didn’t like them, but he’d liked the idea of family, so he let Ores destroy his toys and steal his clothes and listened to Korin rant about becoming a princess of the Wells like Sophia Silver and detail everything she liked about her crush on someone named X, and waited for the warmth to come. But always, their birthdays ended and they all returned to their places and Lu was left alone to wander the pillared cement hall of Pa’s cold house alone. 

It would be Ores’ birthday again soon, older than Mess by several years, though Lu had no idea how many exactly. He wondered if he and Ores would begin to look alike soon. 

Lu retied the top of his hair out of his face like he’d shown Mess to do and jogged to keep up with Adon and Mess, waving away the pinch in his chest with a genuine smile at them waiting for him at the handrail cart. Adon only let Lu use his private car pass if they were racing a hazard alert. He said everything came with a price and Lu didn’t know where the money for the pass came from, and neither of them wanted to ask, so on peaceful days, Adon made them pump a handrail for the exercise. Lu had hated the waste of time at first, but the rhythm and their nonsense songs to keep time quickly charmed him and he found the squawking melodies lingering in his mind as he fell asleep most nights. 

Lu took over the rail when Adon’s breath grew ragged, keeping Mess locked between his arms at the bar, helmets knocking once as he heaved the car the last few feet to the platform where someone was already waiting with a wave. Lu swung Mess up on his back then turned to reach for their bags so the waiting person could hop on, grabbing Adon’s hand closed around the strap of his bag on accident. Lu pulled his hand away with a mumbled apology, but a bleary-eyed Adon only smiled, swung three bags over his shoulder, and slid his hand into Lu’s with an easy smile.

Mess giggled, spurring Lu forward with a giddy bounce, but Lu could only feel his hand, warm in Adon’s. He chewed his cheek, his smile widening as Adon helped Mess out of his helmet, clipping it onto his collection of bags as they navigated the crowded corridors, alerts flashing more rainy-season warnings of corrosive acid-rains and death-toll counters from the flooding of the Wells, already orange, warning above-expectation, as if the rest of Caldera cared, as if once it reached a desperate red, the Uppers would send aid. They sent the rains, falling in endless sheets of gathered water collected and processed for drinking in the industrial district, or else dumped into the Wells where people weren’t supposed to live but who had nowhere else to go.