[cont. from the previous chapter due to character limit]

They worked in silence as the scorching sun made its slow journey across the sky. Robert managed to pull himself away from the microchip only when he heard Nikolai’s voice for the first time since the earlier breakdown.

“Why do you only have one arm?”

Robert looked down in shock to see the rest of the gang also staring at Nikolai wide-eyed. The kid was looking at the empty sleeve of Ehud’s t-shirt with a polite smile. Ehud didn’t seem insulted or uncomfortable with the question, but instead inspected his shoulder as if only now realising he lacked a limb.

“Oh, this? My brother and I sneaked into the Southern mine at off hours. Turns out, the automatic carts continue working. And they are fast.” He turned to face Nikolai with a wicked smile. “Heard it too late, tripped, and HI-YAH!” He mimed chopping at his shoulder, then flailed and gestured wildly while vocalising the blood fountaining from his shoulder. 

“Oh no.” Nikolai responded in a weak voice. He looked weirdly in awe.

“Yeah, well. Luckily I blacked out almost immediately.” Ehud grinned. Then he leaned in sharply towards him. “My brother though?” And he chopped hard at his neck and rolled his eyes back while sticking out his tongue.

Awe in Nikolai’s face changed into horror and he pushed himself away, hands on his mouth.

Ehud loved the attention. “Uh-huh. They say he died instantly. The cart detected the collision and sent an alarm, so nothing else ran over me. The techs found me bleeding out and rushed me to the hospital in a tracked car.”

Pep and Tzarif returned to their game, though they looked mildly uncomfortable with the topic. It’s been almost a year, and they weren’t close friends with Ehud or Isaiah, his younger brother, before that accident, so afterwards nobody really pried this story out of him. But being his neighbours and classmates, they knew the gist of it.

Finally, Nikolai pulled his hands down from his mouth and whispered dramatically: “Did they not find your arm?”

Ehud blinked, a confused smile on his lips. “Wha?”

“Your arm. To reattach it.”

Ehud looked around at the others in the gang and met equally blank faces. “Nah, man, you can’t reattach an arm once it is cut off.”

“Yes, you can.” Nikolai nodded enthusiastically. “You have to keep it in stasis, like with the food, and then there is this surgical suite, and it has assisting software that monitors all the levels to make sure every nerve gets weaved back to its counterpart correctly, and I’ve watched this video of how they reattached this man’s leg, and-” He stopped to take a wheezy breath before continuing with the sudden outburst.

“What the fuck.” Gatien murmured with an amused smirk. He met Robert’s eyes and shook his head in disbelief.

“Yeah, we don’t have this stuff at Port.” Ace tried to stop the sudden avalanche of words, but Nikolai completely ignored him. So Ace frowned and tried to wave his hand in front of the kid’s face, which made him flinch but not stop talking. “Come on, nobody cares!”

“Ace? Shut your hole.” Robert showed his friend a rude gesture. “Let the boy get it out.”

Ace glared back at him but didn’t try to interdict anymore. 

The conversation between Nikolai and Ehud continued for another half an hour. Robert thought it was what his mom wanted from him. At least, now there were two people the weird kid agreed to talk to.

Then it all went to shit.

“Oi, Solder! That your new brother?” A group of older kids approached them, led by Pulp.

Robert pushed his project away and hung his feet off the side of the concrete block. “He’s not my brother, Pup. Also, none of your business. Fuck off.”

Ace, Tzarif and Pep immediately scooted closer to the block. Pep glared up and hissed. “Dude, why do you keep doing this when we are the first in line to get our asses whooped?!”

To not seem like he was hiding behind his friends, Robert jumped down to the ground and positioned himself between his gang and Pulp. Gatien, who was technically the tallest and the strongest in the gang, stayed where he was. Ugh, thanks.

“I’ve heard your momma is so fed up with you, she decided to exchange you for a new kid.” Pulp was high again, but so were other kids around him, both boys and girls. Robert didn’t care how he looked in their eyes, but a group of girls from the year above his class was also watching the confrontation, and he didn’t mind to show off.

“Talking from experience?” Robert straightened and smirked. He squeezed the soldering pen in his pocket a bit tighter. 

Pulp snorted. “You wish. My sisters were made the natural way. Speaking of, they are crybabies just like that wimp.”

“I would also be crying every day if you were my brother.” Robert made a dramatic wince towards the watching girls, who giggled at that. “Actually, that’s exactly why Nikolai cried earlier! I said he’ll have to be friends with you!“

“That’s not true.” Nikolai said with a pout. Damn, this guy was never silent when it was actually useful.

Pulp reached for Robert’s shoulder and grabbed it before he had a chance to duck away. He was smiling dangerously. “You know, Solder, we’ve been talking here that it’s been some time since you were put back in your place. You think being able to assemble tech makes you somehow better than the rest of us?”

Rob tried to figure out an escape plan. He could probably push himself away, but if Pulp ripped his t-shirt open, his mom would scream his head off. “That’s just how my face looks, man. You, for instance, would still look dumb, even if you were smart.”

“Yeah, poop shower it is.” And Pulp took Robert into a headlock. In surprise, he pulled the soldering pen out of his pocket, but immediately lost his grip and dropped it. Fuck. ‘Poop shower’ was a leak in the sewer pipes at the southern base of the hill. The stream itself was thin but the pressure was quite strong, and Pulp’s and his friends’ favourite activity was to grab an unfortunate kid and push their face under the stream of poop water and maybe even force them to open their mouth. Robert never got this treatment before and he intended it to stay this way. 

There was whooping and hollering around him, as someone else grabbed Rob’s legs and raised him in the air. He tried to kick and wiggle free, not caring about looking cool anymore, but Pulp’s arms were just too strong.

“Let him go, dickhead!” Gatien shouted from his elevated position.

“This fuck is so heavy!” someone cackled nearby.

“Stop this!” This was Pep.

“You volunteer in his place?”

“Look, that little wimp wants to join too-”

And then Pulp let out a throat-ripping scream and released his hold on Robert’s neck. Rob fell face first to the ground, hitting his chin painfully, but still managed to kick away the guy who was holding his feet. 

As he turned around, he could finally see that Nikolai crawled forward from where he had been sitting, picked up the soldering pen and then stabbed it a whole 5 centimetres deep into Pulp’s thigh. He was still holding on to the handle with both hands, and his face was full of determination. 

They were now in more trouble than a poop shower could ever be. But as Robert met Nikolai’s eyes for just a moment, he knew his mom was right. Nikolai and he were friends.