“You mean on these cylinders?” I looked at the hulking black things, the heat radiating off them like a warning I could feel even through the suit.
“Yeah. A few at the back need patching up.”
“So we have to get right up close?” Just the thought made my skin itch inside the suit.
Hayden grimaced behind his visor. “Yup. Hotter and sweatier than monitor duty.”
We arrived at another set of double doors. Hayden gestured for me to stay back, then moved into the storage chamber and grabbed hold of a portable platform which held several canisters. He muscled the whole thing out of the chamber, pushing it beside the nearest furnace. Then he unlatched a gate in theplatform’s railing and stepped through, pausing to nod me in after him.
A moment later we were both on the platform, crammed together in close quarters, the heat almost unbearable.
“Here.” Hayden flicked a glance my way, voice muffled but clear enough. “We’ll use the sealant from those canisters. You’ll see where the walls need it… mostly where they look dry and cracked.”
He pressed the central button on the control panel. The platform’s lift jerked beneath our feet and began to rise, bringing us nearly face to face with the cylinder’s scorched surface. The air was thick, sticky with heat and fumes.
“Up close and personal with a furnace,” I murmured. “Just what I was hoping for.”
Hayden huffed as he passed me a canister. “At least it’s not complicated… Just hot.”
“That’s reassuring.”
He gave me a sideways look, unreadable. “Depends on your threshold.”
I snorted, then tried to focus on the task, mimicking his movements as we sprayed thick black sealant along the battered wall. It didn’t take long for the monotony to get to me. My mind wandered—back to Miranda’s conversation, and inevitably, to Hayden himself. Maybe the heat was loosening my tongue.
“So,” I said, breaking the silence, “you came here alone?”
Hayden didn’t answer right away. He worked the valve in his hand, careful and methodical, as if the wall deserved all his focus.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “Just me. No family to lose.”
I shot him a sidelong look. His posture never shifted, the hard lines of his shoulders closed off. Whatever else he carried, he wasn’toffering it up.
“But you weren’t always alone,” I ventured, keeping my voice neutral.
He paused, then, with a short, almost dismissive shrug: “Had a crew. Ran a ship—seafarers, full-time. On the water more often than not.”
His grip on the canister tightened fractionally. For a moment, I thought that was all he’d give.
“What happened?” I asked, softer.
He kept his eyes on the metal, voice flat and spare. “Nomads hit us. Middle of the night. I made it out. The rest didn’t.”
The words hung there, stripped bare. For a second, something seemed to flicker behind the visor—a crack in the armor?—but gone quickly.
“You were close?” I said, gentle.
He didn’t look at me. “Closest thing I had.”
The machinery’s low drone swallowed whatever else might have been said. Whatever he’d lost, he kept buried deep. I didn’t press further. There was more than enough heat and pressure between us already.
But as I returned to my patch, the air between us felt different. Heavy with what he’d revealed and all he hadn’t.
SIXTEEN
Work tookover for the rest of the day. We finished spraying the last of the eroded cylinders, and by the time we’d dumped the white suits back in the restrooms and made it to the station, my arms and back felt wrung out. Our payout of 135 coins barely seemed worth mentioning, but I was too exhausted to care at that moment.
“I’m going to need a long, cold shower when I get in,” I mumbled as we waited on the platform for the shuttle.
