I drink it anyway.
Days blur.
Odd jobs. Temporary labor. Whatever lets me lift heavy things and break light ones. Warehouse loading. Fuel cell hauling. For two days, I’m even a bouncer at a club that blasts music so loud I can feel it in my teeth.
I toss a guy out by his spine for trying to grope the dancer-bots.
Boss fires me before the body even hits the pavement.
“Too much liability,” he says. “And you broke the synth rail.”
I shrug. “It was already cracked.”
“Youripped it out of the floor.”
I leave without arguing. That’s growth, I think.
Or exhaustion.
The nights are worse.
That’s when the silence creeps in. No battlefield noise. No orders. No boots pounding dirt beside mine. No Alaina yelling at me from across the apartment about the price of diapers and why the hell did I leave the fridge open again.
Just me.
And the ghosts.
I dream of her.
Every night.
Sometimes she’s laughing, and it splits me in half. Sometimes she’s screaming, and I wake up with blood in my mouth and no idea where it came from.
One night, I dream I’m holding the baby—our baby—and he looks up at me with those golden eyes and asks, “Why didn’t you stay?”
I wake up biting my hand, trying not to scream.
Larek doesn’t mention the bloodstain on the couch. Just flips the cushion over.
I don’t message her.
Not once.
Because if she wanted me, she’d come.
I told her where I go when I don’t know who I am. I left the trail wide open. Gave her the last sliver of my damn pride and saidfind me.
But she hasn’t.
So I wait.
And I rot.
And I pretend like I’m okay because the alternative is punching holes in walls and getting tossed in holding again.
“She’ll come around,” Larek says, passing me another drink. “Or she won’t. Either way, you need to eat something that’s not fermented.”
“Food’s for people with hope,” I mutter.
