Of all the screams Welton had awoken to, this was one of the less pleasant.

Like many of the others he'd experienced, it was about him, or something he'd done, or hadn't done, or - most often - had done wrong. According to the screamer, at least. Though unusually, this one wasn't directed purely at him. In fact, to his delight, the real intended recipient of the scream was someone else.

The someone else was Rakkel. Rakkel had already awoken, along with most likely everyone else on the same floor who'd still been asleep, and was blearily trying to reason with the screamer on the subject of why it was in fact okay - despite the hostel's few explicitly stated rules - that he, Welton, was here in this room, using a bunk, and even technically sleeping in the same bed as Rakkel, although it was on the relevance of this last point that Rakkel seemed to be gaining some ground.

What surprised Welton the most was that the sleepy little woman from the front booth had this much lung capacity, or even this much energy. She hadn't made that impression on him earlier. She hadn't made much of an impression at all. That's what he mostly remembered - she'd seemed to have barely even been there. The booth had needed a body, and she technically qualified, and that was her total presence. She'd been asleep when they arrived, and she'd fallen asleep as soon as they'd left, and the time in between hadn't seemed to make much of a difference.

What surprised Welton the second most was her eyes: Now that she'd opened them, they turned out to be fiery red. He knew the look; he'd seen it in the bio mod facility brochures, where it came advertised as part of a package deal for a cheap strength-enhancing bio mod that he'd glanced at briefly before flipping ahead to the stuff that actually interested him. There'd been a few combo deals, pairing excitingly unnatural eye colorations with various physical enhancements. He couldn't imagine anyone wanting anything so pedestrian.

But apparently, he'd found their target market, and it was sleepy little hostel owners.

"I'll pay for him, if you'd like," Rakkel was trying to tell the woman, now that they'd moved on from the subject of whether sharing a bunk with someone constituted "sleeping with them" at any level beyond the most absolutely literal.

"But I told you," she screamed back, "no couples! It was the first thing I said! The first thing! And what do you do? You sneak him in here! In the dead of night! When you thought I wouldn't notice!"

"I didn't sneak him in here. I dragged him in here because he was passed out drunk."

It occurred to Welton that he was probably supposed to have a hangover at this point. He wondered idly why he didn't. He'd been looking forward to it, in a perverse sort of way. He'd never had one before, and he'd always wondered what they were like.

Probably for the best, he thought. He wouldn't want to have his very first hangover with all this screaming going on. It'd quite ruin the experience.

"Excuse me," he said, then "Bleagh. Ugh. Agh."

The woman stopped screaming to stare at him. Her mouth, when shut, squeezed into a tiny line, as if conserving all of its wide-open-ness for the next bit of shouting.

"Sorry," he started to say, "my mouth tastes like dried vomit," but halfway through he started gagging again.

Rakkel hung down over the edge of the bunk to stare at him as well.

"You okay down there?" xe said.

"Agth. Gaggghcgthg. Guggghhh."

"Get out!" shrieked the woman. "Both of you get out! Get out get out get out!" She dragged Rakkel down from the bunk and shoved xir heavily through the door. Rakkel went flying. Welton heard a crash and a squeak of pain.

"Ouuuuuuuut!" She grabbed Welton as well.

"I'm getting, I'm getting!" he stammered through his own choking. She ignored his attempts to stand peacefully and threw him out the door as well. He slammed headfirst into the wall on the opposite side of the hallway.

"Ow," he cried, raising his hands to his face, "by node!" He felt blood between his fingers.

"Out! Out! Out!" The woman began to stomp towards them.

Rakkel, who'd already scrambled to xir feet, ran for the stairs. Welton came close behind, still covering his face.

"Out! Out! Out! Out! Out!" The woman, at least, for all her enhanced strength, didn't run very fast.

All around, curious hostel-goers stuck their heads out of rooms and watched.

"Looks like someone's crying 'wee wee wee' all the way home," quipped one. Welton shot them a glare as he ran past.

Together, Rakkel and Welton stumbled their way down seven flights of stairs. They paused for breath on the fourth, only to find that the woman was still chasing them. She chased them through the building's tiny front hall, out the door, across the courtyard, and through the gate, and looked like she had half a mind to chase them down the street as well.

They kept running until the hostel was out of sight.

At last, they stopped for breath again.

"Good morning," said Rakkel to Welton between pants. "Hope you slept well."

"I'm so, so, so sorry-" he began to say, then saw Rakkel was grinning wildly.

"You know," xe said, "I'd been wondering how I was going to pay for my bed. Isn't it nice how these problems sometimes just go away on their own?"

He grinned tentatively back at xir. "You offered to pay for me, though," he said.

"Yes, well, I might or might not be getting five thousand credits today for doing nothing. That'd cover two of us, right?"

"You what?"

Xe stood up and stretched out against the wall of the building they'd hid behind. Xe was totally naked, Welton realized.

He checked himself. No, he still had on all of his clothing, including his jacket. His memories of the previous night were still fuzzy, though the events so far this morning had covered the gist of it. The vomit stains remaining on his shirt confirmed one of the parts he'd hoped wasn't true.

"Are you going to put some clothes on?" he asked.

"Don't think so. Not until I get a chance to wash them properly. Speaking of which, if I were you, I'd take those off as well."

"But then I'd be naked," he said.

"And cleaner," said Rakkel. "It's not exactly cold out, anyway. Some sunshine would do you good."

"Yeah," he said, "but my fur is shorter than yours." And it's a good thing for you, too, he didn't add, that your breasts are so small.

"So? At least take off the jacket. You'll get blood on it."

He felt his nose again. It wasn't bleeding as much as he'd first thought, but it was bleeding.

"Good grief. If the end of my nose weren't already so flat," he said, "it would be flatter now. I think that woman had a muscle enhancement mod."

"Did she? No wonder she could throw me like that." Rakkel pulled a handkerchief out of xir messenger bag and handed it to Welton.

"Thanks," he said. He held it against his nose.

"And now that we're both awake, and we're not running for our lives, and neither of us is a babbling drunk," said Rakkel, "do you mind telling me what you were doing here?"

"I don't know," he said. "Ugh. I was stupid. I met someone in the market, see, and we went and had a meal together, and I scared them off, and I realized I'd done the same thing twice. Scared them off, scared you off. Over AR devices, of all the stupid, lousy things. And then I thought I'd drink my sorrows away, the way they always do in books..."

"You didn't scare me off," said Rakkel.

"Didn't I?"

"I was mad because that Salmidon guy irritated me, and I wasn't sure I liked how I'd talked to him, and I thought he had my AR device for good. Or was going to break it. I kinda took it out on you, but you didn't really deserve it."

"I didn't?"

"Nah. I mean, even last night I thought maybe you did. How drunk were you that you thought it was a good idea to come and stalk me?"

"Really drunk," he said, wincing. "Really, really drunk. I guess. I mean, I've never actually been drunk before. I thought it'd be fun, like the smoke dens."

"There's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it," said Rakkel.

"See, this is the sort of thing my parents never explained to me," he said, bitterly. "I bet everyone else's parents teach you how to get drunk the right way. They don't just go on and on about the 'evils of liquor' or whatever. Never mind their expensive wine cellars."

Rakkel's parents had, in fact, taught xir how to get drunk the right way. Xe said nothing.

"Anyway," said Welton, "I'm sorry I'm so terrible."

"You're not," said Rakkel. "Honestly. You've done nothing but try to be friendly and helpful since I met you, and I appreciate it." Although I should really tell you, xe didn't add, that I'm not a girl. You obviously have a crush on me, right?

"'Try' being the operative word," he said. "I put you in an uncomfortable situation with the AR device, and I got you kicked out of your hostel, and now I've gotten blood all over your handkerchief."

"But you helped me find the hostel in the first place, and Salmidon did fix the device just like he said he would. As for the handkerchief, that's kinda what they're for, you know?"

"For blood?"

"You know what I mean."

"I can wash it at Doople's," he said. "I should probably head over there right now, in fact. He might be worried about me."

"Uh... mind if I tag along? I could buy breakfast from him." He probably has a terminal, too, xe thought, so I can check if that shark woman's decided to actually give me free money or not.

"Sure," he said. "Absolutely. Of course!"