Mela, if I was remembering her name right, was heavy. Now, I wasn’t going to be the idiot to tell her that, but my straining face and trembling muscles as I dragged her up the stairs were dead giveaways.

  Then again, I wasn’t sure how much of that came down to her weight and how much was due to the abysmal state of my body. I still had several fractured ribs and plenty of bruises. One whole side of my face felt like it was on fire. I’d managed to get through the day at work easily enough, since all the boxes were pretty light. But hauling an adult up a flight of stairs? A whole different proposition.

  It also didn’t help that the person I was trying to save was fighting me. Not very hard or very effectively, but she kept moaning and trying to squirm away. This was in spite of the fact that I could see the growing red patch on her tacky pink shirt.

  Something, probably a knife, had gone right through her Pink Kittens jacket and into her side. Her face had clearly been worked over hard by someone’s fists. She also had a massive gash starting from her hip all down her left leg, and I saw the way she winced whenever she failed to keep her weight off the limb.

  “Dunno where ya takin’ me ya stupid shit but my guys will fuckin’ kill ya,” she slurred viciously. “Think ya can take advantage of me? Huh? Huh?!”

  I fought down the sudden urge to laugh in that wheezy, hysterical way people use when they realize they’re fucked.

  “I’m not taking advantage of you. I’m trying to save your life. To repay a favor, remember? You saved my ass here just… fuck, was it only a day ago?”

  I almost dropped my burden when she turned her head to look at me. Her eyes were way too close. They stared at me for a few seconds, blinking blearily, then went wide with recognition.

  “Wait, kid? What are you doing?”

  “Hauling your ass up the stairs to my apartment. Want me to stop?” I sassed, hard, because what else was I supposed to do? I had a definite feeling someone was on our heels, and if they caught up, they were going to catch me with my proverbial pants down.

  “Heh, trust me kid. If you wanted to get laid, there’s easier ways,” Mela teased.

  “Do you want to get dropped?” I said through gritted teeth, pulling us up the last few stairs and stumbling down the hallway. “Because that’s how you get dropped. I don’t make it a habit to save gangers bleeding out on my doorstep.”

  I chose that moment to trip and squish both our faces against my front door.

  “Your pickup technique needs work,” she groaned when I pulled us back. “But I’ll give you points for eagerness.”

  “Fuck damn it, these last few days want to kill me. Kill me, I say,” I growled.

  Using my nifty cybernetic eyes, I sent an ‘open’ request to the doors. They hissed and started to move instantly, but got stuck a mere centimeter in. I growled again, shifted our weight around, and got the doors moving with a kick.

  “You have a potty mouth on ya don’t ya kid? Parents didn’t teach ya that’s rude?”

  I froze for a second, but recovered quickly and dragged the bleeding woman into my humble home. As the doors closed behind us with a hiss, I let out a breath of relief.

  Safe. In a loose interpretation of the word.

  “Nope. Dead parents. Very tragic. The whole slum kid shtick, you know?” I tried to say the words flippantly, but they stung. My mother was the reason I usually tried not to curse or use too much slang. She always insisted on raising me like I was a tiny little corpo just waiting to claim my legacy.

  “Shit. Well. Sorry,” the brute of a woman muttered, a little quieter than before.

  I didn’t reply, but I didn’t take her in the direction of my bed either. People who insulted my mother did not get to bleed over the one piece of good furniture I owned.

  I eventually managed to get Mela situated on the floor of my bathroom section. It was a tiny bit moldy, sure, but I did a good job of scrubbing it semi-regularly, and it definitely wasn’t as bad as that blasted mirror.

  “Give me a second,” I muttered, more for my benefit than hers, as I grabbed my first aid kit. My trembling fingers fumbled with the zipper. When I pulled the kit open, I almost spilled everything all over the floor.

  “Sheesh, kid, don’t be that nervous. I don’t bite. Won’t even ravage you, either,” she taunted, hand pressing her blood-soaked shirt against her wound.

  “Yes, yes. Either take that off or pull it away from the wound, please. Unless you want to bleed out.”

  To my surprise, she complied. Who knew that all it took for her to shut up was the threat of bleeding to death?

  When she finally pulled away all the fabric with a pained wince, I got my first look at the worst of her wounds. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, really. The edges of the wound were relatively smooth, and I didn’t think it was too deep. It was bleeding like a fucker, though.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Right. Right.” I nodded. “No biggie. Large stab wounds. I can handle those.”

  Ignoring her look of more than mild disbelief, I grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol and applied it liberally to a swab made of some fluffy synthetic material. To her credit, she didn’t flinch when I started to disinfect the wound. Even when the swab got soaked in blood and I started just splashing generous amounts of the alcohol on the area, she stayed still.

  Once that was done, I grabbed one of the more valuable items in the kit. It didn’t look like anything special. Just a small, unmarked jar of powder. But as soon as I sprinkled some over the wound, the gushing flow of blood slowed down, then stopped altogether.

  “Now that’s interesting,” the woman mumbled as I moved on to her leg.

  I had to do a bit of convincing and put up with a lot of complaining, but eventually, she positioned her leg so I could get a good look at the jagged gash. This time, I was able to use a swab instead of just flooding everything in alcohol. Then I applied the powder there as well.

  My heart ached through every second of it.

  The alcohol wasn’t that expensive, but the powder was. It was Glim’s own product, some kind of super coagulant that stopped even heavy bleeding in seconds. It couldn’t do shit for internal wounds, but so long as your leakage was on the outside, you could slap the powder on and be good to go for a while. Sure, the wound could reopen if you moved around too much, but still… the powder was way better than nothing. I had barely eaten for two months just to be able to afford it.

  “Where’d you get something like that, kid? You wouldn’t happen to have a MaxDoc as well, would you?”

  I didn’t say anything. I just stared at her.

  “Okay, okay,” she mumbled. “No need for that particular look.”

  “I don’t have a particular look. You just asked a street kid orphan if he has expensive healing aids.”

  “And I’m sorry, ‘kay? Don’t be a grump.”

  I just sighed as I pushed myself up from the awkward kneeling position I was in and staggered towards my bed. I remembered just in time to wash up first. A ton of scrubbing later, I still felt kind of icky, but I collapsed onto my bed anyway.

  It was hard to believe how little time had actually passed. Since I’d found her, dragged her in, and did basic first aid, maybe fifteen minutes had gone by. Still, I felt like I’d run a marathon.

  “I guess this means that I paid off that favor now?” I asked wearily.

  “I guess. Do something else nice for me and I might feel compelled to thank you instead.”

  I groaned. “Any special reason you’re being all insufferable?”

  “Any special reason you’re being a quippy brat when you know I can fold you in half?” she shot back, though I could tell she was just being playful.

  Probably. Maybe.

  Perhaps I should tone it down a bit?

  I figured being honest wouldn’t hurt. “I talk too much when I’m scared or stressed out.”

  “Funny. I try to be clever and flirty when I’m scared or stressed out.”

  “Oh.” Yay for my amazing vocabulary! “What happened?”

  “Fucking Zerx happened. I have no idea who shit in their breakfast this morning, but they ambushed us not far from here. They got me good. And they had, like, twice our numbers, so I ran. I didn’t get too far, but I almost made it home before you found me.” A long pause ensued. Then… “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Literally the least I could do after yesterday.”

  “Not a lot of people would bother, even if I did save their ass.”

  “Maybe.”

  We lapsed into a bout of silence while I grappled with fresh fear. Zerx weren’t supposed to be in my part of town. They shared a border with the Pink Kittens, sure, but they stuck to their stretch of the slum hell, and our local rulers stuck to theirs.

  They weren’t as big as the Kittens, either. Ferocious, angry, and utterly prepared to fuck up your day, but definitely not on the level of one of the biggest gangs around. They had aspirations to reach that level, though. For years, they’d been recruiting aggressively. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised they’d come out to play at the first opportunity.

  Another thought swept through me, one I’d been trying to ignore since those kids told me the Reapers were finished.

  This is my fault, isn’t it? I stole all that shit. Whoever owned it is coming out to play because they want their product back, and the entire slums are paying for it.

  For a moment, I almost felt crushed under the weight of fear and guilt. It didn’t take long for me to sweep at least some of those emotions under a rug, though.

  I wasn’t the one who made the mystery patron of the Reapers lash out. It wasn’t me killing people out in the streets. All I ever wanted was to carve a tiny little bit of normalcy and stability for myself. Did I intend to do it at such a huge cost to everyone else? No.

  But now that it had happened, I wasn’t going to waste time feeling guilty about it.

  I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I might even get killed when and if I got swept up in the gang nonsense. Still, I refused to feel torn up over the deaths of a bunch of people who probably deserved whatever they got anyway.

  Mela shifted on the bathroom floor. “You know, kid —”

  A loud bang on my door cut her off. Both of us immediately tried to stand up. I got to my feet, but she wheezed in pain and fell back down as the sudden movement reopened her stab wound.

  “Open up! I don’t give a shit who you are! If you’ve got that bitch in there we’re going to tear you apart you fucker!”

  More banging, more slurs, and more promises of violence.

  I looked at Mela with wide eyes. "How do they know you're in here?" I whispered.

  “Not sure, but —”

  “Open up you fucker! You’re gonna regret ever fucking with us when we get our fucking hands on you!”

  “— probably the blood. I was bleeding all over the place.”

  “I didn’t think about that. Why didn’t I think about that?”

  “Well, you could’ve cleaned up if we had more time, but with how quickly they caught us? You woulda had to leave me be if you wanted to avoid them, kid. And I’m kinda glad you didn’t.”

  She shot me a wide grin, but it was unnaturally wide. It resembled a grimace more than a jolly expression.

  I could hear multiple voices in the hallway at that point, several of which were discussing how to break down my door. That wouldn’t be easy. It was a solid door, for the slums. Still, I also knew that if they were truly determined, there was little I could do to stop them. They would get at us eventually, and I had no idea what to do.

  Mela tried again to stand up. Putting the entirety of her weight on her back, she managed to slide up the wall until she was on her feet.

  “We’ll be fine, kid,” she gasped. Seeing the expression on my face, she gave a low, harsh chuckle. “Don’t look like that! Now, can you come over and help me move a few things around?”

  I did as she asked. Wasn’t sure what else to do. Still, I was far from confident we had any chance of making it out unscathed.

  Or at all.