His mind replayed the crash, wondering why he’d thought it was a good idea. They’ll tear him apart. He didn’t win, he cheated. He ruined your future. His mind conjured all the reasons, remembering Troy hitting Lu, and how Lu-Lu didn’t hit back even though he could have, because Lu may look like Gideon, he may be scarred and marked and traumatized into looking even more like Gideon, but Lu would never be like him, and that was an incredible strength Adon still couldn’t wrap his mind around. Oh, right, Adon laughed to himself, thinking of how they would draw and quarter Troy when Xeri posted the video later.

He relaxed, letting the weight of his body pull him backwards. There was still that burning smell, that beef-scented cauterizing pen, but he couldn’t lift his head to see. The audience shouted directions to the med drones, banging on the nearby glass, begging Adon to stay conscious, or else going silent. Grounders weren’t horrified by death the way a Midder audience might be, but the track wasn’t the Pits, it wasn’t supposed to happen, and they didn’t like death when they didn’t expect it. It reminded them too much how close they were to the barren blizzard of the ground below, creeping in through the melting holes in Caldera’s walls, eating away at the rotting stilts, until someday the entire city collapsed in on itself, just the way Adon’s body was doing.

The stands hushed as he inhaled smoke and waited for the medics to put the fire out of his suit and a part of Adon that had been trapped by the jeering of Pit audiences screaming for his death began to heal to the rhythm of track audiences humming hopeful songs. Y was going to say he copied her to become a martyr and never let him forget it. 

A medic coated his leather boot in foam, suffocating the fire, and tried to pull him up. Adon attempted to hold his own weight when he realized his medic was just another rider who'd stopped, rolling him over the nearest safety wall, barricaded against the impending explosion of his bike with his half-a-helmet to an eruption of cheers. The rider waved, ran to his bike, and finished the race to place in the cup while Adon sank against the wall as the flames of his bike grew. When the pressure in his head eased, he pressed against the wall and stood, wobbling in place, ignoring every bell and whistle of half-healed nerve because someone was waiting. Y was waiting in the cage. He’d promised he’d come back. She had to tally his arm because Lu was waiting. He had to show Lu-Lu how many times he’d kept his promise. He had to get the chain off his competitor, to show the crowd his victory. He heard his own breath wheezing, but turned to the burning heep, leaning into the wall and toddling toward it. 

Someone called his name and he turned back, squinting into the bright spotlights trained on him, scanning the blue-and-brown clad techs running at him until he picked Phaios out among them. He was waving both hands over his head, sprinting around a burly officiant practically glowing in white, but Adon returned his gaze to the fire. He needed the chain. If he didn’t get the chain, he didn’t get the victory, and Yas would get a new cellmate, and Lu-Bird would call him a liar, and Gideon would laugh himself to death.

He scooted away from Phaios, then bent over the wall, ducking into the burning rubble with his gloved hands, and heaving himself up, staggering as Phai reached him.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” Phaios smacked the flames off Adon’s glove, surveying him, already sick with dread, muttering to them both “Lu’s gonna kill you.”

The rest of their team caught up and Adon ignored their horrified reactions as they neared, some pausing, refusing to get closer. He didn’t blame them, only waved the chain of his clear victory so they didn’t try to fight him.

Phaios caught the bike chain from waving over Adon’s head, “Adon, what are you doing? What is this?” He shook it, watching Adon’s eyes wander, unfocused, then widen, fighting consciousness. 

“I got the chain,” Adon pointed with a smile, his head lolling into Phai’s chest with half a sob, “he can’t kill me if I won.”

“You didn’t win you crash—” Phaios cut himself off, realizing two things. One, Adon was thinking about the Pits, that was why he was waving the chain. Two, Adon’s head was leaking something fast enough that it was soaking through his jumpsuit. He leaned Adon away from him, gripping his shoulders, “Doni look at me, look at me.” He took the chain kindly and placed it around Adon’s neck, ignoring the mech’s hiss because it was still hot. “You won,” Phaios nodded, suddenly scared, his voice shaking, “you won and now you have to get a check up before you go home, okay?”

“Home?” Adon looked up with a smile so angelic, it broke Phaios’ heart.

“Home to Lu,” Phai nodded, sniffling, gripping the side of Adon’s head that was missing the chunk of helmet and vowing to sue the company for their MIPs claims. “Don’t you want to get a check up so you can go home?” Phaios nodded, guiding Adon toward the medics holding the stretcher while the stands roiled above them.

“I’m okay,” Adon straightened momentarily, itching his brow, unable to see the blood pouring over it. “It wasn’t supposed to be that bad.” He was lying. 

Phaios knew it, looking him over, hovering, ready to catch Adon who was laughing at the bright red smear he left across his sleeve. He was unsure where to start, what to do, comforting a trapped animal in order to free it. 

Then Dunnel was there with all his experience, elbowing past and snapping in Adon’s face, “let’s go, kiddo, you’re smoked, pummeled, you looked fine-grained enough to squish into a paper weight, but if we go now, we’ll have your revived before anyone misses you, understood?”

Adon let out a high giggle, then pitched sideways. 

Phaios caught him, helping Dunnel flop Adon onto his own back and running toward the garage. He wasn’t going to be the reason between them twice. He wasn’t going to be the thing that broke Lu-Lu twice. Here was his redemption, and he raced it down the track with a speed that had onlookers questioning his career choices. If he’d been born in the Mids, he might have been an athlete instead of a game rider. 

Nearly there, his decade of smoking caught up and Phaios fell hard to his knees. Lu would hate him, he would hate himself, everything would stay the same.

"I'll take," Tutor stepped in, equally breathless, pulling Adon easily by the wrist and hoisting him up, jogging the rest of the way to the garage, past the gawking mechanics, to their med center, dropping Adon into the Med-Pod Phaios had fired up earlier. “Barricades!” He barked at his returning techs, the entire team scrambling, dropping what was left of the bike in a pile as they followed orders to close up shop. The barricades routine was for unexpected victories, for sec-off raids and impromptu district shut-downs. They’d never used them. 

As Tutor strapped Adon into the seat, linking the sticky nodes to their laser-lit spots, he realized the machine was waiting because the kid knew, the kid had planned, and still, Tutor couldn’t figure out the whole plan. To lose? But he’d been right there at the finish! He wrestled the rags of his rider’s jumpsuit off with the scissors Phaios handed him, holding Adon with shaking hands, and Tutor understood this was not a set-up or a bribe, the kid was not some unknown to Phaios, and it wasn’t a coincidence Y had stopped in. He was saving the Well’s motherfucking Finder and none of them thought to inform him, to give him a chance to back out. 

He strapped the neural net over the Finder’s head, still unsure his name, still refusing to call him a liar, and paused once to wipe the blood, but there was too much, and it was everywhere, and Tutor might pass out if he stood there too long. He let his anger fuel him through the rest of the machine calibration, pushing other thoughts about losing a good rider, about cornering Phaios with a hot winch for answers, and about what he would do with those answers. The kid was his team, and his team was his. Phaios was technically still his. He shooed Phai out ahead of him, “he’s done, get out, get it running.”

Phaios tripped over the pod step while Tutor reached up and eased the hatch closed, then stepped back to watch, surprised Phai knew the information to key in, clapping his shoulder hard when he hesitated, “deep breath, do it right.”

It was such a familiar complaint for Phai, one he’d heard through helmet comms for years from Tutor, every jump lead-up, deep breath, do it right. When the analysis screen loaded into the personal information, Phaios keyed in Adon’s information, nearly throwing up as his comms dinged in his pocket and he imagined it was Lu. Tutor reached around him to slide his fingerprint into the approval slot, confirming it was team-use, and it was close enough to a hug that Phaios fell into him. Tutor patted his shoulder with a heavy sigh as the machine whirred, a low hum, a metallic echo, and a million old-world-boiler clanks and groans, and they stared in wincing disbelief as the processing screen began running its diagnostics and a long line of past repairs raced up the screen, all past metrics, repaired bone, tissue, regrows, all of the issue codes that would normally begin with a district code for the corresponding Med-Pod, and therefore assigned med-crew, instead began with P.

Tutor furrowed his brow, confused.

Phaios chewed his lip, staring at the line of all that Adon had endured because of him. Because he’d tricked Lu into thinking the transaction wouldn’t work. Because Benny’d held a knife to his throat so long, he’d forgotten he’d always been the sacrifice first. But they were kids then, right? They were kids. They were all kids. He’d sent a kid to that place, because he wanted to be free. He’d thrown Benny’s knife at Adon, and never even considered that it would hit Lu. “P, for Pits,” Phaios spat his confession, low and seething with self-hatred. 

Tutor’s arm fell and they stood there, side by side in front of the screen, realizing all the vulnerabilities of the Ground. For Tutor, a body, even a breakable one, was still better than what Vice had for him, but Adon’s long list of regrown teeth and delayed care, the story he was imagining from the shifting list that now ran red letters up the screen, too fast to read anything but the repeated undocumented. He’d escaped. He’d escaped the Pits the way Tutor had escaped Vice, desperate, clawing, and undocumented, and there was a unity in that. 

Phaios stared numbly, all his guilt scrolling by, laughing at him for thinking he was forgivable. He watched the horror of the pits flash across the screen, understood what Gideon could do to a body, what the Conductor could do to a mind. People weren’t supposed to endure that much. They were supposed to break. Phaios looked down to see Adrien taking the heavy bike chain coiled in his hand, letting go and staring as more of Adon’s private medical history flashed in diagnostic jargon. Did Lu know—more recent notes flickered, dark blue, too hard to read, a privacy coding from Midder Med-Pods, of course Lu knew. Phaios faced all his protective pride, everything that wanted to step between them, to cut his losses and his guilt and shove Adon back into the depths, away from Lu-Lu, away from his friend he’d saved, away from his guilt he’d swallowed but was puking up instead. Fine, if this was the weight of forgiveness, fine. He’d keep the Finder too. He’d let his phone burn a hole in his pocket and tell Lu to wait, just wait, keep waiting, and he would make sure to deliver Adon himself. 

Phaios realized the mechs and crew techs had gathered around them, staring open-mouthed as the screen processed all the new errors the Upper doctors controlling it were probably cursing over, or running to fix, or bragging to colleagues. None of them knew what it meant, but living in the Mids had changed his understanding of what was personal: personal was what you didn’t say yourself. And Adon hadn’t said they could all stare at his deathwish, even if he’d dragged them into it himself. 

Phaios crossed his arms, turned to face them, and fell lighting into the pod, covering most of the screen, “it’s going to be a long night.” He hadn’t connected all the pieces yet, but Doni didn’t do dumb plans, not usually, though perhaps Lu was an exception, because Phaios had no doubt this was something to do with the incessant ding of his comms and Lu’s little pink icon bouncing in his peripheral, where he refused to look, refused to connect. He was between them again. He could call Lu, drag him down, point to the pod and say you’re in love with a monster, now stop it. But Lu would cry and the barricades were down, and Phaios realized he was panicking. 

“Drones up,” Tutor barked, the groupo startling, “we need eyes, something’s happening, listen.” 

They all paused, registering the rumble just beyond the steady whirr and clank of the Med-Pod. 

“Is he dead?” Nika came striding in, five tablets in her arms, cybernet glasses perched on her nose, one ear piece dangling around her neck, the other in her ear, clearly all comms disregarded as she stomped toward the pod, the entire Duster crew jumping at her presence and moving out of her way. 

“Kayla,” Tutor snapped, “bridge doors, go, Orión, join her, check fridge, check bikes, if there’s too much, come back. The rest of you, drones up and out, window perches only, no doors a body can fit through, got it? I want eyes, I want ears, I want to know how long we’re going to be stuck down here.” His crew jumped to motion, drone pilots trading controllers to match rigs while their mechs improvised a way to use one of the draft windows as a take-off and landing platform without hurting their expensive equipment.

Nika reached the pod just as the clanking shifted, a new round of beeping monitors and flashing lights from behind the dark tinted panel of the hatch while the screen shifted to a progress bar that did not load, “if he dies in there, I’m going to kill him.”

Lu will kill him first, Phaios almost said, then began pacing. He felt full of syrup, something thick and heavy and scared. Lu would kill Adon first, then Y, then was it Phai’s turn? Or were there more people between them still? He didn’t know his place in Adon’s life except at the guilty periphery, like the icon still bouncing in his comms.