She weighed almost nothing.

  It wasn’t just that she was thin, she was damn near hollow. Like someone had scooped out the person and left the frame behind. Her bones felt too light for her size, like bird bones, fragile and fraying. Her body barely sagged against my arm, like gravity had stopped bothering with her.

  Her hair had once been vibrant, fiery, like someone had dared red to be more than red. Now it was a mottled patchwork of brown, black, and extended unconsciousness. Grease clung to the strands in clumps. Dried blood, maybe. Dried something. It smelled like sweat, soil, and time.

  I had one arm across her legs, the other supporting her back, her head tucked beneath my chin. Each step was cautious, deliberate. Her limbs didn’t move right. She didn’t speak. She didn’t twitch.

  Noctis’s place wasn’t far, if you could call it a “place.” It was tucked into the edge of the residential offshoot, an area that barely qualified as livable. The Lunar Quarter was many things; cosmic, bureaucratic, deadly, but above all it wasn’t safe.

  In a city where the upper-tier neighborhoods were lawless pleasure zones ruled by cults and merc syndicates, sometimes the only safety you got was by being too pathetic to rob.

  Even so, Noc couldn’t afford to live in the gilded circles. Most people couldn’t. You either paid for protection, or you made yourself not worth the effort. Noctis had gone with the latter.

  His shack was jammed between two leaning buildings stitched together with rusted beams and lowered standards. It was spacious, for a hovel. A warped metal awning hung over the door like a limp tongue. Broken neon tubing spelled something once, now just flickering syllables and sparks. The whole structure gave the impression it was hanging on like a Honda without an oil change in six years. Like, if you didn’t acknowledge the problem, it wasn’t there.

  I shifted Veyda to one arm, carefully keeping her upright, and knocked. The sound echoed sharp against the thin wall. Something rustled inside, followed by the metallic clack of a chain being pulled taut. A single sliver of light cut through as the door cracked open, eyes peeking out through the gap.

  “Kevin?” Noctis blinked, his voice groggy and irritated. “You better be selling moon organs or passing out Gold.”

  “Not today,” I said, adjusting my grip on Veyda. “Need a place to crash. It’s a friend, found her in a den. She’s needs help.” My voice was surprisingly rough in my ears.

  He squinted at the bundle in my arms. “What is that?”

  “She’s a person.”

  “She looks like spilled soup.” He said, though he paled.

  “Her name’s Veyda.”

  “Am I supposed to know who the fuck that is?”

  “I don’t care,” I said flatly. “Either let us in, or I knock again. If I knock again, I’ll be walking through the hole in your wall.” A pause. I waited.

  Then the chain rattled, unhooked. The door swung open. Noctis sighed the sigh of a man whose patience had already been scraped clean for the week.

  “Goddammit, Kev. This better not be an act, I’m not letting any of that shit in here.”

  The inside of the shack was somehow worse than the outside. The walls were corrugated metal, salvaged sheets of armor plating, and layers of moldy cloth acting as insulation. The floor was mostly cracked tile over compacted ash. A single cot sat in the corner, buried under jackets, bottles, and what might have been a stuffed ferret in a scarf. It smelled like vinegar and stale glitter.

  I stepped in, trying not to bang Veyda’s head on the doorframe.

  “She needs help,” I said.

  Pinching his nose, he said, “she needs a resurrection clause and an exorcism.”

  “Do you have a bowl?”

  “I have a helmet.”

  “That’ll work. And some rags?”

  “Yeah. One sec.” He disappeared into the back, meaning the other half of the shack, then came back with a dented metal bowl and something that might’ve been a shirt five owners ago.

  I laid Veyda down gently on the cot. She didn’t react. Not a sound, not a flinch. Just dead weight and shallow breathing.

  “Water?” Noctis asked, already digging around for another bottle.

  “I’ve got it.”

  He tossed the bowl onto the floor with a loud clunk and handed me the rags. “There. You’re welcome. If she pukes, she’s not my problem.”

  “Thanks for the empathy, Ass-bag.”

  “No problem, Dick.”

  I dipped the rag into my canteen and began wiping the grime from her face. Layers of it came off like paint, revealing bruised skin underneath. Her cheeks were sunken. Her lips cracked. There were sores at the corners of her mouth, and her fingernails were nearly black with buildup. Her collarbones stuck out like coat hangers. Her breath came in short, erratic flutters.

  I moved the rag over her neck, her arms, checking for infection, sores, anything that looked like it might kill her faster than the retripper already was. Her skin was cold to the touch, but her pulse—barely—was still there. A flutter. A whisper.

  I reached for Noc’s small mage lamp, held it to her pupils.

  Still reactive. Slow, but there. Not that I knew the first thing about what the pupils meant. If I had to guess, something to do with some aspect of the nervous system?

  Abashedly, my illustrious and numerous failed career choices included personal trainer. My immediate knowledge of applying medicine ended somewhere between the nervous and muscular systems. Though I still remembered how to use an AED, I doubted Noc had one lying around.

  He watched me from a chair made of four other broken chairs. He sipped something foul-smelling out of a cracked cup and didn’t blink.

  “So?” he said eventually.

  “She’s still in there. Barely.”

  “You gonna play nurse, Kev?”

  “You gonna help?” I raised a brow.

  He shrugged. “I’m not helping you with your crack whore, dude.” His presumption pissed me off a little, but I let it slide. He’d been there for me.

  “Her name is Veyda,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “She fought with me. She mattered.”

  “Sure,” Noctis muttered.

  I ignored him. I pulled another rag, rinsed it, and began to clean her hands. Every movement slow. Careful. Like if I moved too fast, I’d break her completely.

  There was a part of me though, I felt it resonate to my own problem. I knew it like looking in the mirror, I knew she was already broken.

  I finished cleaning her, hoping she’d come to with some rest. It broke my heart, but I could feel the itch, the yearning firing up. I asked to use the backroom to wash up, there was a broken drain pipe back there. He agreed and I left Veyda wrapped in her filthy garb.

  Someone had set up some kind of platform to stand over. I had bought an mini-inn generator. It would manifest a few different things, and installing it was as simple as mounting it and connecting the wires to a separate panel. At the panel, you could change it between a few options. Noctis and I had been sharing it, but when he kicked me out, I took the card required to operate it. At the time, I hadn’t realized I still had the card, so I laughed my ass off when I finally saw it sitting in my inventory. It was the little things in this clone life that made it all worth it.

  Regardless, I turned the shower module on, and like magic the shower was there. It was cramped by the wall, which changed the overall shape of the single person amenity but was still functional. I went to the side of the shower, filled the reservoir with hot water and entered. I dropped my gear into my inventory and took a gloriously hot shower. I couldn’t stop shaking, so I kept the heat up. It did nothing to stop my quaking body, which, I now saw, were withdrawal symptoms.

  Was it this bad? Had I really gone this far? This was my temple…

  I stared at my hands, willing them still. They just shook harder. Like they missed the poison more than I missed myself.

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  A few hours passed. Maybe more. Noctis had disappeared somewhere in the shack, probably trying not to “catch whatever she had.” I sat near the cot, back against the wall, picking absently at a callus on my palm. I’d stopped shaking, mostly. The itch was still there. Coiled. Watching.

  She stirred. Barely. Just a small, uneven breath, followed by a fluttering twitch of her fingers. Her head lolled to the side. One eye opened. Then the other.

  She didn’t speak right away. Just blinked at the ceiling like it was trying to tell her something.

  "You're safe," I said, voice low. "My friend Noctis is… adjacent."

  No response. Not even a flinch. I grew worried, eventually her lips moved.

  "...couched," she whispered.

  Her voice sounded like ash trying to remember it had once been fire.

  "I know," I said. "Been there. It’s like hearing the world underwater."

  She nodded, or maybe her neck gave out. Her eyes never fully tracked. She wasn’t here. Not all the way. She kept speaking. Quiet. Slurred. But I caught the words.

  "Did Elsewhither again. Just a little. Thought I could… visit the good days. Ended up stuck in the wrong one. Had a kid there. Think her name was Rinna."

  I didn’t interrupt. If I did, she’d stop. Or worse, look right through me.

  "I mixed it with Recall Dust. Bad batch, maybe. Then tried a Driftmire drop to take the edge off, but it just... it just sank me." Her words floated, half-dream, half-confession. “They said I dropped a level. My muscles feel like cooked string.”

  “That’s the Drift. Eats XP when you’re low. It thinks you’re a background prop, tries removing character attributes.”

  She blinked at me. Once. Twice.

  “You ever take Elsewhither?” she asked.

  “Once. Didn’t need to again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I got to see what would’ve happened if I never came here. I already watched him live my life.” I paused. “He’s been good at it.”

  Veyda closed her eyes. Not passed out, just tired of seeing.

  “Thanks,” she murmured. “For pulling me out.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” I said, dragging the rag back over her forehead. “You’re still there, in it, but we’ll get you out.”

  Veyda had drifted in and out for hours, caught somewhere between fever dreams and the kind of silence only addicts understood. Being couched, half lucid, half not, kept her anchored but just barely.

  When Noctis finally slouched through the doorway, a thin veil of gray light trailing in behind him, she was just starting to sit up. Her elbows trembled under her weight.

  “Look who decided to join the land of the paying-rent,” he said, closing the door with his foot.

  Veyda squinted. Her voice grated like stones against glass. “Is the eyeliner a side effect or was your face always this punchable?”

  Noctis raised both hands, mock-wounded. “Oh, she’s spicy. I like her.”

  “Don’t.” She blinked at him, then groaned as she slid back into the cot. “Why do you smell like moldy regret?”

  “Street tempura,” he said, holding up a greasy paper sack. “Want some?”

  “Only if I can choke on it.” Her face looked suddenly green, as though the thought of eating was unimaginable.

  Noctis shrugged and dropped the bag onto a shelf that tilted ominously under its weight. “Your choice, buttercup.”

  I sat near the edge of the cot, trying to suppress a grin. Watching these two go at it was like watching two wet cats try to fight in a sack.

  Veyda gave me a look then, half-lidded, slow, but focused.

  “You... dragged me out?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Didn’t think you’d walk out yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t have.” She looked down at her arms, then turned her hand over like she didn’t recognize it. “Still don’t know why you’d bother.”

  Noctis snorted. “He’s got a thing for fixing broken toys. You should see his last project. Real tearjerker.”

  “Eat a dick,” I muttered, but I was only half listening.

  Something was off.

  The air felt... sharp. Not cold. Just present in a way air wasn’t supposed to be. Every breath felt like a whisper brushing my insides.

  Veyda rolled her eyes. “Well, sorry to ruin your project timeline. Guess I’ll just lie here until my organs revolt.”

  “You sure you’re done puking hallucinations?” Noctis asked, referencing her near comatose rambling. “Or are you gonna start narrating the furniture again?”

  “Only if it tries to sing at me,” she said, frowning. “Wait… is that humming?”

  “It’s the ceiling fan,” I said automatically. But it wasn’t. There was no fan, we were in a hovel of haphazardly stacked rubble that resembled a house. The thought of real amenities in a place like this was absurd. I blinked. Rubbed my temples. My skin felt tight, like it didn’t quite fit.

  Veyda turned her head toward me, narrowing her eyes. “You good?”

  I opened my mouth to answer but the words slid sideways. The cot shifted beneath me even though I hadn’t moved.

  “Kev?” Noctis asked, voice more cautious now. “You’re doing that thing with your face again.”

  “What thing?”

  “The not-being-here thing. You’re looking past us like you’re watching subtitles for another show.” I swallowed. My tongue felt like sawdust.

  The shadows along the walls had grown deeper. The corners of the room felt distant, like they were trying to slip out of reality. And the light… The light wasn’t right. There was no moon, not here, not under the corrugated metal and tarp roof. Even still, moonlight reflected off the metal beams in ways that defied light. It behaved like water and light had a baby.

  The light congealed. Swirled. Played and danced in ways all too sentient. Looking to the source of the light, it led back to myself. Then the shakes started, in earnest. I was drifting.

  The woods were thick. Too thick. Branches whipped across his snout, scraping past coarse fur, leaving traces of scent and blood. The prey was close.

  The scent filled his head. Fear, thick and sour, clung to every leaf. It carried undercurrents—adrenaline, old meat, and the faint, unmistakable twinge of loosening bowels. The human was terrified. It made the meat sweeter. Sweat followed like a veil, acrid and high with salt, pouring off the runner in waves.

  The brush snapped and popped underfoot, but he didn’t care. The noise meant nothing. The sound that mattered, the heartbeat, was thunder in his ears. A low, panicked rhythm like a dying machine’s motor. He could hear it faltering. Missing beats. Starting to fail. The prey was tired.

  He moved low, weaving between trunks slick with dew and sap. Every step placed with purpose, every breath sucked through sharp teeth and curled tongue. His paws hit the ground lightly, quietly, almost silent, his claws biting into soil and root. The moonlight above flickered behind the leaves like it was trying to cheer him on. Closer.

  The runner stumbled.

  The heartbeat faltered again. The fear spiked. The air reeked of it. He could smell the moment the prey knew it was over. He lunged.

  There was no hesitation. No thought. The leap was clean, practiced, perfect. His claws found the back, his weight drove the prey into the earth. A scream burst like steam from crushed lungs, but he didn’t hear it. All he heard was the pounding drum in his ears and the crack of ribs breaking like twigs. He struck once. Just once. The heart caved under tooth and jaw. Warm blood exploded into his mouth. Thick. Alive. Filling.

  But even as he bit down again, deeper this time, something inside him pulled. Not physically. Emotionally. A scream but not belonging to the prey.

  His own.

  Deep. Muffled. Trapped behind teeth he couldn’t control. Somewhere behind the monster, he wailed. Not in victory but in grief.

  The scent that clung to the broken body beneath him, the scent he hadn’t let himself process, was familiar. Not just as a person, but as pack. The prey had been his own father.

  My eyes snapped open.

  The cot’s legs were inches from my face. I was on the floor, drenched in sweat, breath ragged and shallow. My hands shook, not with rage, but with residual hunger. The kind that had nothing to do with food. I sat up slowly. The world was too loud. The shack seemed to creak and hum with phantom echoes.

  My parched mouth told me what I needed, water. My mouth was sand and ash and charcoal. I cupped my hands and willed a pull from my inventory. Cool liquid shimmered into existence, and I drank greedily, pouring another handful before the first had finished sliding down his throat.

  I didn’t stop until the shakes started to fade. Somewhere, between gulps, I realized just how much I regretted selling my enchanted waterskin. I leaned back against the wall. My heart was still racing.

  It wasn’t my memory. I know that, but it had felt like it.