Chapter 2: The Price Tag on Friendship

Josephine's POV

The master bedroom was on power-save mode and the light was dim, so the only thing still moving in the room was the blinking lamp on the medical pod.

Marcus stood at the side of the medical pod, looking down.

Something crossed his face that I couldn't put a name to, and then it was gone.

I stood beside him and moved my eyes back to the face of the man inside the medical pod.

He lay there quietly, so still he seemed not to be present at all, and only the faint rise and fall of his chest said he was still alive.

"Eli's the same as ever. It doesn't matter whether you come or not," I said, keeping my voice as level as I could.

Marcus stared at the man on the medical pod, and his eyes went cold by degrees.

After Eli fell into the coma, Marcus had taken his place as captain. Maybe Eli's coma had something to do with Marcus.

I had thought it more times than I could count.

All these months I'd gone to the survivors who came back from that run, and their accounts matched with strange precision. Every one of them said what happened to Eli was an accident and nothing more.

The tidier it came out, the more something in it bothered me.

"Is there still no change in Eli?" Marcus finally spoke, his voice gentle. "Not even the healers? I can bring in someone higher-tier. Leave the money to me."

"I gave up," I said, flat. "A fourth-tier healer is all I can pay for, and every one of them says the same thing. The gene chains have collapsed. Keeping his vitals going is the best anyone can do."

The wounds on Eli's body had healed long ago. It was the radiation damage, the broken gene chains, that kept him from waking.

They all said there was no point burning more credits on him. That he was still breathing at all was already a miracle.

"Josie." Marcus turned a little toward me. "You've been looking after him all this time. That's a hard thing."

"You don't have to keep doing this, you know. Eli's no different from a dead man now. That vassal agreement of yours could have been voided a long time ago."

Marcus looked straight into my eyes and said the coldest thing in the calmest voice he had.

"Have you really never thought about putting my name on that agreement instead? The way Eli is now—"

"Thank you. Don't say any more." I refused him without leaving room in it.

How could he say something with no feeling in it at all, in front of two children?

I had brought the two of them in on purpose, to see whether Marcus would hold to any line at all. Clearly he would not.

I sent the children out of the room, and the anger cooled a little.

"Josie." Marcus wasn't going to let it go. "I've had feelings for you for a long time. I never told you because of Eli."

"But now he's—nobody even knows whether he's alive. Is it wrong to want one thing for myself?"

I didn't want to hear the rest of it, and I cut him off hard.

"Eli is your best friend. How can you say this to your friend's contracted ward? Do you think you can still call that friendship?"

Something in his face wavered, then set hard again.

"I don't want to betray a friendship either. But he's neither dead nor alive, and you've got two kids with you. What happens to the rest of your life?"

"I can help you. I can help you keep him going, and Mira and Milo too. We can hold this household up together."

He reached toward me, meaning to take my hand. I turned my face away and pulled it back.

"I'm not the man Eli is, but next to anyone else I'm hardly a bad choice. So why do you keep avoiding me? Why won't you let me near you?"

Marcus was getting worked up; color was rising in his face.

It wasn't the first time he'd said these things to me.

I had answered him plenty of times.

I didn't need to attach myself to him, and I didn't need any other man either. I could keep myself alive, and I could feed my family.

I had a real job in Ironhaven. The pay at the water plant wasn't much, but it covered what my family needed.

If Marcus really meant to protect me, the disgusting piece of work who came at me tonight would never have gotten anywhere near me. He didn't stop it. He liked playing the hero who arrives just in time.

He was using it, plainly, to push me into his hands.

I didn't want that. I only wanted somewhere I could live without watching my back, away from people like that.

"Seven thousand five a month at the plant. Rent takes four thousand five. That leaves three thousand. Can you carry the medical pod on that? Can you carry Mira and Milo's school fees?"

Marcus laughed, a small contemptuous sound, and ran the numbers off fast.

"You can't. You move somewhere cheaper, and cheaper buys you nothing but more trouble. Go lower in this city and that face of yours draws flies."

Housing in Ironhaven was run by the administration, rented and never sold. Miss the credits and the dome puts you outside.

Eli and I had meant to move somewhere better. The credits on this place hadn't been renewed, the healers had eaten almost everything I had saved, and staying on here was a luxury I couldn't really carry.

And rent was due in a week.

Marcus knew all of it, and he had picked this exact week to want an answer out of me. There was nothing subtle about a man robbing a house that was already burning.

I was sick with disappointment in him, and I threw it back at him. "So what? I should take your advice and put your name on the agreement?"

Marcus looked away and was quiet for a moment, then spoke anyway.

"Josie, I do care about you, and I do want to help the three of you. I can take Eli's place and be the one who shelters you."

I let out a small laugh. How could he stand at Eli's podside and say something that respectable-sounding?

His brother was hanging between life and death. Instead of finding a way to help, he was pressing me to put his name on that agreement.

I hadn't meant to lose my temper, but I couldn't sit through any more of what he'd done tonight.

"Marcus, you shouldn't be saying any of this in front of Eli," I said, cold. "I don't respect this version of you, and I will never take him."

He plainly didn't like the sound of that, and the anger got away from him.

"What are you, some untouchable white narcissus? Out here the only rule is a fair trade."

"You're a water purifier. What do you do besides make water? The only reason Eli kept you was your face."

"He's out cold. I step in and protect you, and in exchange you sign a vassal agreement with me. Where's the unfairness in that?"

There it was, what he'd been holding back. The mask came off his face, and what had been underneath it wasn't pretty.

Looking at the man in front of me, I felt as though I had never known him at all.

His warmth, his generosity, the way he was always ready to lend a hand — when had all of it turned into arithmetic?

I didn't know what to say to him. My throat felt stopped up, as if the air itself had gone bad. I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

I let out a slow breath and finally worked up the nerve to ask it.

"The roster for that day's field run. Who signed it?"

He blinked, thrown.

"What roster?"

"The Dead Silence run. The field roster. Who signed it."

His breathing broke for half a beat, then he got it back under control.

"The roster's set by the team. Same way every time. Why are you asking?"

"The four who came back alive — I went to each of them on their own."

"Their answers came out like lines already written for them. Perfect. Suspiciously perfect."

I watched his mouth and said it without wavering.

His mouth worked. The explanation came out thin. "What does that prove."

"Half an hour before we moved out, someone slipped into dispatch," I said, very calm. "Who can get into dispatch during a shift?"

"I'm the deputy captain. What's wrong with checking a duty roster?"

Marcus's neck went stiff and color pushed up into his face.

"Eli wasn't on that roster to begin with. Was he."

I narrowed my eyes a little and waited for his answer.

Marcus rubbed his nose, brushing off dust that wasn't there.

"It was a hard run. It needed extra hands."

"You know how short we are."

An airtight answer, and true besides.

But when he brought Eli back, his face hadn't been right.

He said it was the med canisters running out, no treatment in time.

Every time Eli went out, he checked the gear over and over. He said it was his responsibility to the people standing beside him.

Something in it was plainly wrong, and there are still things I haven't sorted out.

I watched the light pulse on the medical pod and said, quietly, "You should go."

"You're really not going to think about it?" That was the last thing he said.

Years of friendship, and this was where it ended. All that was left was a deep and heavy grief.

Marcus left. His boots went down the corridor heavy, the outer door banged shut, and then everything went quiet.

I thought of a line from a book I'd read before the bombs. Everyone runs after his own advantage; everyone chases wealth.

At nineteen I thought it was the most cynical sentence ever written. At thirty-nine I thought it was simply accurate.

I had still underestimated how complicated people are. I'd thought Marcus was good to me because he was a good man. In the end he tore the mask off and showed exactly what he'd been after all along.

Whatever you call friendship, it doesn't weigh much against a body someone still has a use for.

I opened the door and went out.

Milo was waiting outside. He didn't say anything; he walked straight to the medical pod, checked both stabilizer ports, peeled the old sterile pads off and pressed new ones on.

Mira came over and stood at my side, looking up at my face.

"Is Uncle Marcus gone?" she asked, quiet.

I nodded.

She thought about it. "Is he coming back?"

I bent down and put my hand on the top of her head. "I don't know," I said, slowly.

I knew. He'd be back.

Probably soon.