After two days of recovery, Adon’s fever finally broke and he was surrounded by warm dogs content to sleep beside him, whining quietly and glaring at any rambunctious creature who might think to jump on their injured friend, barking away a curious cat and several cold rabbits who’d gotten curiously close. Deciding he was capably guarded, Y headed back to X, leaving Adon to refuel his furnace, but stocking him up on instant foods, securing the storage room barricade, and filling his bike before she left, just in case. She texted him every few hours, but several of the messages were actually written by X, who’d taken over her worried watch over her phone in order to bribe her into much-needed sleep of her own. 

Adon rolled over after confirming with Y’s comms that he was still alive and fine and please stop waking him up every two hours because his whole body still hurt. He rolled over to see a knife set beside his phone after a particularly painful cramp, and smiled. It wasn’t the new Pen-Ten knife, but the old one Y had trained him with in the pits, a keepsake more than a tool. He turned it over and stumbled through a lunge before remembering his side was still ripped and raw, then added it to the grave-brick box of chains. He plugged in his phone, ignoring the messages from Arty and scrolling through Mess and Aphy’s public Platform updates, wondering how they would feel if he left a knife by their beds. Probably not loved. Scared. Normal people felt scared. 

He sighed around his bed of snoring dogs and purring cats, transferring funds to an anonymous Asylum credit account to pay Aphro and Mess’ fees and cover their unit rent and a few other auto-payments, including an AIE System, though he didn’t know what that was. He hovered over Arty’s messages then, calculating budgets and jobs in his head, weighing them against his healing side then flopping onto his back without responding. He thought of all the ways he might love Aphy or Mess, but found himself circling the same conclusion: do not contaminate. 

Aphy had been right, he would only hurt them, could only disappoint them after years of no contact and then what, half a pinky and a missing ear? Broken toes and nerve-damaged arms? A scared face they’d once called pretty—all that lost potential, replaced by a dozen others smarter than him. He belonged to the cold Ground now, where Lu had pushed him. 

Adon gripped a fist, watching the T-I-L-L—D-EA-T-H letters crease and stretch over his knuckles. It had been Y’s idea, and death had mocked them every day since, laughing each time their cell was unlocked, squealing with glee at every pinching tile as they were led to the pits, one by one. Adon rubbed his numb pinky between his other fingers, counting all the ways he could never return to the warm person he’d once been, too broken and scarred, no longer educated enough to do anything more than survive alone. 

He tossed his phone out of reach where he couldn’t tempt himself and hugged his arms around a particularly lazy dog who didn’t move much as he stared at the rafters.

Lu had survived, Adon scoffed bitterly to his wandering mind as it conjured that miserable face trying to smile for introductions beside Phaios. Several of the dogs huffed at Adon for tossing and turning and he apologized, patting heads beseechingly as his phone buzzed new comms too far away to silence without stretching. The head of the Quartet’s Diamond family was tired of waiting for Adon to appear or agree to a meeting, and pitched the job offer over text in a non-stop barrage of one-liner messages. 

Adon grumbled and reached for his phone, struggling not to pull the tape still holding his skin together. He should have gone to a med-pod, but they didn’t have them on the Ground. He pulled his phone closer with scrambling fingertips until he caught it and silenced the irritating noise, rolling his eyes because he thought Arty was smarter than sending a job over trackable networks––

Adon opened the message and skimmed over a long explanation about some ARC program getting in the way of Quartet recruitment numbers. Arty wanted Adon to get rid of it before Gideon could. He didn’t say in words, but Adon understood that if Gideon got out of the Charity House early, if the Conductor continued to break Quartet rules for him, there would be a bloody war between the four families. Arty wanted the brownie points for fixing a problem Gideon couldn’t, a problem he might as well say Gideon had caused. That caught Adon’s attention as he scrolled through the self-aggrandizing monologue. He paused at the picture, scrolled back up, re-read the message a second then third time, and finally replied with a simple thumbs-up emoji to the photo attachment, rejecting the credit transfer. He only took payment after the job, so he didn’t have to deal with angry Grounders yelling about cheaters, only impatient ones who didn’t know his reputation. 

Adon snuggled deeper into his pile of dogs and blankets, zooming in on the photo of his target leading a trade-skills workshop full of ex-cons at an outdated ARC facility somewhere on the Ground. Lu’s hair was long, Adon hadn’t noticed at the track. He smiled cruelly at the photo, tossing his phone away a second time. Till death, Lu had promised, and Adon was so tired of surviving alone. 

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