Lu’s mother took the stand, but he didn’t recognize her until she stated her ID and relation to the accused. Her voice sounded different over the microphone than it did over spotty comms. She’d only ever answered twice, and the first was an accident becasue she hadn’t known it was him, the second was when she said his name in that unrecognizeable accent and finally told him his ID code. 

He blinked away from her, glancing around the court hall, trying not to stare, and caught Benny watching him teary-eyed while Gideon winked at the woman in the witness booth. She held her chin resolute as she recounted a horrific relationship and stuttered irritably through an experience that could only be assault and worse, and Lu understood why she hated him. He cried empty tears of self-hatred and disgust for every moment he’d worked for Gideon’s proud laugh, for every time he’d cursed her quietly for not answering, for each birthday he’d deserved to spend miserable and alone. 

The woman left without looking at him and Lu felt nothing but Phaios’ hand gripping his shoulder. 

The prosecution clicked through close-up images of Lu’s body, bruises from the night when Phaios had watched from a corner and done nothing. He’d documented, Lu realized from the angle, and for a moment, even as he leaned against him, Lu genuinely hated Phaios as the court hall gasped and the online viewers slammed their reaction buttons and Lu was made entirely of pity and shame. The album of photos continued through his bleeding tattoo, broken fingers, signet ring-impressions on his cheek, shoulder, side, Pa laughing as Sias knocked him out. Over and over, the same scene was depicted in stills and shorts, different clothes, different backgrounds, the same fists, the same broken child, and Lu was horrified to see how young he looked, how vulnerable, how many times it had happened—how often he’d borne Gideon’s fist, hoping it came with approval. Benny wept as Lu stared numbly at Gideon, fresh out of tears. 

“If he can do this to his son, what can he do to debtors?” The prosecutor announced loudly. 

Lu shrank away from the jury’s pitying gaze, all of them wielding the same sympathy. He felt pathetic, broken and unfixable, a helpless victim as they turned to Pa in unified hatred. But it was a lie, he wasn’t just a victim, he wanted to yell what he’d done to Adon at them, wanted them to glare at him too, because he was not innocent. He’d wanted to be like Gideon. He’d wanted to take over the Flock. He’d wanted to fight Sias! No…. He’d never wanted to fight Sias. 

He drank the water Phaios offered him and slumped in his chair, understanding Gideon’s power then, to control the board and predict the game, to demand ripped out hearts and convince the uncles they were happier that way. He saw the final picture of his bruised and swollen body, unconscious and newly tattooed, then stood and left. 

Lu staggered out of the booth, sliding the curtain quietly back into place, and wandered toward the bathroom, because he didn’t know where else to go and he couldn’t breathe. He pounded his chest, narrowing his eyes at his reflection in passing window panes, ordering himself to just inhale, just breathe, but his chest only contracted. 

“I’m sorry Lu-Lu,” Photos ducked under Lu’s arm, shouldering some of his weight to keep him upright as he fought for balance. 

“I didn’t know.” Lu choked and the tears came. He turned, sobbing into Phai’s shoulder until he could breathe again, “I never… I never learned to protect anything. Even myself.” There was no way to know if he’d protected Adon or simply fed him to the Flock now, if his trick had been genius or naive. “I just wanted to save him,” Lu’s knees buckled. He looked to Phaios for reassurance, but saw only doubt. There were too many questions. If he’d really sold Adon’s debt to the Flock, then he would be working for Gideon. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t anywhere that Lu could find him, and that meant he was somewhere Lu couldn’t reach, safe. Adon, who’s pride was earned from enduring the cold, had survived, had reached for the warm sun beside his fruit trees and unfurling leaves, and escaped. 

Phaios led Lu down the long hall adjacent to the court hall and Lu watched through the tall glass, memorizing Sias’ boredom, Gideon’s unphased smirk, Benny’s guilt, all of them following the Conductor’s play, moving where he’d told them to go. It wasn’t an end to the game, just another move on the board as the judge sentenced Gideon to ten years and the jury objected but the online viewers agreed because they were not hurtable by the Quartet, they were only tuning in for entertainment. The room broke into a defiant uproar as Phaios dragged Lu away, guiding him to a bustling Arcade club, then past the Broken Bridge to an off-grid club, where they could whine freely about the Asylum and rant about injustice and corruption and how easy it was to bribe a judge until they passed out beneath the vibrating table and let the music consume them. 

Lu woke to lo-fi music and dreamy pastel lights. He swore he saw Junior at the bar, but when he blinked again, there was no one but the large man in a floral suit quietly setting bottles of water by sleeping heads and humming along with the song in a soothing bass. Lu yawned and stretched and silenced the purple warning flash of his district band. He would return to a quarantine, a vaccine waiting for him in his med-box. There was a time he would have avoided it, but he simply pulled his mask over his face and stepped over snoring bodies, leaving the water behind. He bought his own at a transport hub, then texted Phaios to ask why he didn’t wake him when he left, though he already knew the answer. Phaios had practice at the track, or worse, a race, and if he’d woken Lu, Lu would have punched him on accident, then on purpose. He’d never been a morning person.

His head pounded as he heaved himself into the elevator, trudging through Navy, where he found a pristinely rebuilt elementary school, too hungover to process all he’d learned at the trial the day before. He stared blankly at the space where cones and caution tape had been, looking for the cratered evidence of cracks and attacks the judge had waived in court, but the school was clean, unshaken, not even a memorial to remember the picture’s he’d seen of tiny bodies laid out in a row. 

He did not linger near the entrance, where memories competed for his attention, but shuffled through the maze of burnt and abandoned detours, crowded with discarded trash bags, rusting appliances, and old-world tech none of them knew how to use anymore. Lu followed the nav system in his helmet past the school to the nearest rail station out of the Wells without glancing at the Academy or the cafe or the ramen cart or any of the places Adon once occupied. Only in trying to avoid so many places did Lu realize how slowly the Wells changed and, by contrast, how quickly the Mids was built and rebuilt.

He wondered if Adon was okay at the top, picturing him lazily asleep in a sunbeam, talking quietly to a row of stubborn trees, headphones on, a breeze through his hair. Lu sat down on a moldy carpet in the middle of an ancient corridor to draw it. 

Obsession, he realized, scowling at the shake of his hungover hands. He was obsessed. But Adon was someone worthy of adoration, he reasoned to himself. And besides, he was broken. He’d given away his heart and it made sense to long for it from a distance. It made sense to remain alone, obsessed, and half-crazy, avoiding apology texts from Phaios asking if he was okay and the art assignment deadlines from a hounding professor who’d expected more. 

It all made sense. Except that Adon was gone. 

Lu jumped at a nearby shout, pocketing his phone without saving the ugly doodle and swallowing his nausea as he stood. He leaned against the wall until his vision steadied, then pushed himself down the road. He rounded the corner of the corridor to find some of Gideon’s younger Flock members, new kids Lu had never known, mostly Ores’ friends, taunting a skinny kid, five on one. They held out teasing knives, laughing cruelly while the kid swung his bag at them, rattling food cans inside causing them to hesitate as he lunged the clobbering bag at anyone who got within reach. But the kid was cornered and the Grounders snickered, pushing him against a brick wall, one of them howling about a broken finger while the others laughed at him. 

Lu nearly shuffled past them, grimacing apologetically at the boy because Adon had made him promise to stay alive, and two on five wouldn’t be much better. He stopped at a flash of hair, a familiar shout, blinking twice. He realized that he was looking at a fourteen-year-old Messenger Caldera, gnashing teeth and scrambling away from flipping blades. 

“Hey!” Lu shouted, wishing for the lighter he’d tossed, or anything with Pa’s insignia that might intimidate them, sliding his fancy watch over his fist instead, his voice rough-sounding from the alcohol still dripping out of his system, “leave him alone.” He cocked his head, surprised by his own steadiness, the dark threat he’d managed, yesterday’s rage slowly climbing out of his gut, excited for a fight. He’d learned too much about Gideon, about himself, about all the ways his reality was a lie, a few knocks to the head seemed healthy, and a fight against those who glorified all the Gideons seemed fair. 

They rounded on Lu together, with various iterations of traitor, but they recognized him and did not take his bait for a fight, shouldering drunkenly past him with whoops and hollers, prowling the next hall for a new target. Lu scoffed irritably, still he could not escape Gideon’s reputation, his unwanted birthright, he could never be a victim in the Wells, an innocent Midder unwelcomed and lost, always, he was Gideon’s son first. He recalled his mother refusing to look at him, her stoic anger, and justified all of it, hating every part of himself connected to Gideon. 

He might have turned himself inside out and launched off a jumper platform if it weren’t for Adon’s promise till death. That, and the itching half-formed thought, too painful to fully comprehend just yet, that she’d left him there, knowing what kind of person Gideon was, she’d still left him behind. All the horrors of the trial poured into his sloshing brain and Lu struggled to dam them up, stooping to help Mess gather the spilled cans of peaches and beans, to ask about Adon, to finally know—

But Mess wore three shirts, all of them scrappy with holes. His haircut was crooked and his eyes were swollen. Lu dumped the gathered cans into Mess’ open bag with a smile, chewing his lip and debating which to ask first. 

Mess zipped his bag, wiped his nose on his elbow, then pulled his mask back into place and shoved Lu away from him, hard. Mess stomped past him with the old district alert necklace flashing purple, wrapped three times around his wrist, catching his breath and shaking out his strained shoulders.

“Mess,” Lu croaked, confused, “it’s me.” 

Mess halted, turning with a glare so sharp, Lu instinctually stepped away. 

“What did you do?” Mess stomped back toward Lu, screaming and wiping his eyes, “WE WERE ALMOST HAPPY!” Mess grabbed Lu’s collar like he wanted to hit him, but he only straightened it and let go with a sarcastic bow, “don’t ever fucking talk to me again.” Mess whipped up his hood with a quiet traitor lobbed at Lu, then caught the passing rail car tram with all the ease of a practiced Grounder, and disappeared down the dark track tunnel. 

Lu reached for him, like he might pull Mess back to safety, but he was already gone, his own grip on the outside bar of the railcar the only thing stopping him from being added to the jumper statistics. A station Sec-Off reported the free-rider to his coms, but Lu and the Sec-Off both knew Mess wouldn’t be there by the next station, the Grounders never were. 

Lu’s gut cramped in dread and leftover alcohol as that final accusation of traitor stuck to his coat. He stepped into the elevator, still moving through jilted and uncertain thoughts of the previous day’s shocking court revelations and flashed his ID band over the censor at the Mid-gate while scrolling  frantically through Caldera ID profiles. There were too many Adonises, too many Aphrodites and Messengers and Calderas, none of them his. 

☆

Lu couldn’t get Mess’ glare out of his head. Adon had gotten a scholarship, a full Agriculture stipend and everything, even the Conductor couldn’t touch the formal Asylum grants. But Lu had also just sat through Gideon’s trial, heard all the ways he’d been naive, all the power Gideon had taken from the Wells. But… the Flock would bother anyone, he reasoned, his own traitorous mind scoffing at him: and why would Messenger be loitering in Ground corridors, hmm?

Before he knew it, Lu was drawing all his forbidden fears instead of adoring hopes: Adon as a Grounder, wearing Mess’ hateful expression, a ghost haunting every corner, bitter and angry. But if Adon had gotten stuck in Lu’s dumb trap, the Flock would own him, he would be findable. Lu was, as far as Grounders and the Wells were concerned, the inheritor of the Flock, a Quartet affiliate, known as the Conductor’s friend, though he’d only seen him from a distance. Where was there to hide? No, there must be another reason. He was mistaken, it wasn’t Mess. He knew that wasn’t true, he looked too much like Adon, it was painful. Maybe he was there by accident, lots of Midder kids played fish in the Wells until they got scared enough to stay above the Mid-Gate.

Lu turned endless possibilities over until his unconscious filled the holes with nightmares. He searched for Mess, he walked through unfamiliar halls, looking for Mess or Adon, but always there was nothing. Not even shadows, not even breadcrumbs. There was only the loneliness Lu filled with paper and the sound of his brush dragging paint until something like Adon looked back at him, and when he ran out of hobby-funds, he returned to the quiet shush of his new stylus over his tablet screen. Adon had once read a book about ancient travels out loud during a storm, trying to put Mess to sleep. It only worked on Lu, because Mess knew it was a textbook and whined until Adon returned to the weird animal stories Mess had been infatuated with. The textbook had talked about diving into the sea, before it was quite so vast, but still just endless, and how ancient adventurers had tanks that held air for them as they explored. His obsession with Adon was like an air tank—if he let it run out, he would drown. 

Even at twenty-three, Lu had not yet escaped his childish fears of drowning in the Wells when the rains started.

☆☆☆