I press my hands to the door, chipped paint rough against my bandages. The hinges creak open, I catch my breath and plant my feet, ready to face the inevitable ambush waiting for me inside--

"Eli?"

A curly-haired boy blinks at me in the dim light of the apartment. Well-nourished and clean, he sits on a leaning bed frame and stares at a cracked TV, eyes wide and empty. A mildew-infested apartment sinks around him, concave ceiling propped against leaning walls, dust loosened at every slight vibration.

"Hey, kiddo," I scan the room, every corner menacing, dark, yet empty. Flies and mouse droppings replace the shadowy foes in my imagination. Without doors, windows, even closets, the apartment serves as a prison cell. Other than the insects Eli and I are the only creatures here. I crouch to my knees, arms wide and inviting so I can protect him--no. Where I can apologize for my shitty parenting and neglect.

He springs off the bed, boots clipping the cracked laminate as he runs into my arms. His curls smell like sweat and antiseptic under my nose, his skin clammy, feverish. I bite my tongue and hold him close, tears pricking my eyelashes--I blink them away.

"You need a haircut." I lean back to brush his too-long curls from his eyes.

"Mom," he says. "Where...?"

"We can talk later. Right now we really have to go." I snatch up his bony wrist and drag him to the stairs, ready to bolt from this doomed apartment and get the hell out of town.

But Fix stands within the doorway, his massive figure swallowing the frame. A plastered grin snakes up his cheeks, silver eyes weeping with sickness. He wears a light gun around his shoulder, a spear attached to his back, and slings of light cartridges decorate the tattered shirt across his chest. One hand clutches an old-school pistol, the kind our ancestors used to shoot each other with, loaded and ready to fire. His other hand dangles as a mess of mutated skin and bone. I couldn't even sense him--he's so far from human, I couldn't hear him on the stairs.

I shove Eli behind me and reach for a weapon I don't have, my knife lost in someone's neck a few miles back, my gun thrown away out of...well, arrogance. Fix pushes the two of us into the apartment and pulls the rusty door behind him, then snaps the lock into place.

"Hello, Eden," he says. "I had a feeling I'd meet you here."

"The name is King," I say through gritted teeth. "I'm not here for pleasantries."

"I'm not either," he says. "For a moment, I wondered if you would come for him at all. Perhaps you've changed."

"You have no idea what you've done," I say.

"Maybe I don't, but that doesn't matter now, does it." He holds his gun a little higher and lines the barrel with the bandages around my stomach. A gross smile traces his black lips, he taps yellow teeth with a long green tongue, staring down at me over a skeletal nose. He lifts his double chins and nods at a warped table at the back of the apartment. "Why don't you take a seat. We'll talk."

"You know we don't have time for this."

He brushes the hammer of his pistol with his thumb. "I said, sit."

Dizzy and dehydrated, I succumb to my distasteful odds and lead him to the plywood table. I stop at a dry-rotted stool and crouch before Eli. He meets my gaze with large pupils, listless and unfocused--drugged.

I clutch his arms. "Eli? Go downstairs and wait outside. I've got an old friend there, his name is Z. Stay with him, do everything he tells you to do. Got it?"

"No," Fix says. "The kid stays here."

I glare. "My son's well-being is not under your jurisdiction."

"He's my son, too."

"Not if I have anything to say about it. Eli, go—" Fix shoves the gun into the side of my head, metal barrel cold against my curls.

I freeze. "You're going to shoot me in front of my son?"

He swallows, then jerks his head to the table. "Sit. Both of you."

The ground shakes. Subtle vibrations buzz through the laminate beneath my kneecaps. Bits of white powder rain from the ceiling onto the crooked bed. Colossus isn't known for earthquakes, the low hum in the distance can't belong to anything natural...it certainly doesn't belong to anything from Earth.

"Mom?" Eli whispers. "Don't let him hurt you."

"I won't, baby." I take his hand and rise as if the gun pressed to the side of my head isn't there, and I lead them both to the chairs. There's something wrong with Eli's gaze, strong but exhausted at the same time, like he's fighting to wake up.

Fix takes the seat opposite of us and places his weapons on the table. His light gun bangs against the bottom of the plywood, hanging around his swollen midsection. He sets his pistol a few inches away from his hand and doesn't lift a finger from the handle, and with the other, he brandishes a knife. Pathetic.

"What the fuck do you want, Fix," I start.

"I'm sick."

"I see that."

"In exchange for your head, the Elite have offered me sanctuary on Mars. A good home for Elliott, good education, a healthy environment, and a future for my son."

"And for you, a cure that probably doesn't exist," I finish for him.

"You don't know that," he says. "There's hope beyond the Gateway, Eden."

"And you're willing to sacrifice me to get it."

He shifts in his seat and brushes the palms of his hands together, crusty calluses and open sores scraping against one another. I raise the corner of my lip in disgust. "You shouldn't have come," he says and doesn't lift his eyes from the table. "I didn't want to kill you. I was going to trick them."

"I know you're lying." I fold my hands across the table, my bandaged stomach peeking beneath my ripped shirt. I shove the edges of it over my too-visible hip bones and replace my forearms across the plywood, subconscious of the fighter's physique I've lost to thirty days of constant combat, travel, and starvation. "On any other occasion, I wouldn't waste my time on you. But I do pity you. Your Corruption is unfortunate."

"You aren't far behind." He nods to the sores on my shoulders. "That doesn't look like it's from a new dose."

"It is, and it's already going away." Eli shifts in his seat beside me to stare out a window that isn't there. "I'm not willing to forgive you for this, but out of respect for our past friendship, I am willing to offer you a deal."

Fix leans back and crosses his arms over his broad chest, unaware that something snakes under the surface, like worms crawling beneath his skin.

"Come with me back to the Aurelian," I say, opening my arms to feign an invitation. "I can give you a few acres to farm and live out your days in peace. I've arranged for a transport at the edge of Colossus, we can leave right now before they get here."

"I used to rule over your country, I’m not going back as a prisoner.”

"You're not my prisoner," I tell him. "No one disrespected your decision to leave the throne when you got sick. It's traditional, I'll have to do it myself one day."

"Yes, but they find it curious that you were the one to take it."

"I promise you," I say with a scowl. "They don't question it."

He clicks his tongue. "I can't take you up on that offer."

"Fix, be reasonable."

"There's nothing left for me here." He places scaly fingers across his sternum. "There's nothing left for us here. This is a wasteland." He opens his arms to the room. "That." He points to the ceiling as if to gesture to another world. "Is our future. Mars has given us an opportunity to heal and to start over, I can't let something like that go."

I chew on the inside of my cheek, biting back the urge to smash in his face.

"Listen," he says. "I'm sorry I got you into this. If it's any consolation, I am doing it for Eli." I roll my eyes. "He's not safe here with you. You're dangerous, Eden, and you know that."

Oh, you son of a...

The air shakes, dust rising from the floor as the skyscraper trembles. Something cracks in the distance, the windowless room leaving it to our imaginations, perhaps a falling building or the snap of a light gun. But Colossus stays silent, a patient victim awaiting a fate it doesn't deserve.

Eli tugs my arm. "Mom, we need to go."

"Yeah, you're right. We're leaving." I pull him from the chair--something I've never had to do before. He stumbles and catches himself on the edge of the table, small hands shaking as sweat pools on his forehead. When he fights for his balance and looks to me for help, the corners of my vision turn red.

"You're lucky Eli is here," I say as I wrap my arms around my son and help him up. "Otherwise I'd kill you, but he sees enough violence already. I hope Colossus buries you, Fix."

"Eden, sit down."

"Call me that one more fucking time I dare you!" I shove my finger at his fat chest, then turn to Eli. "Let's go before I change my mind."

Fix fumbles with his gun, the click of the hammer echoing around the room, but I don't let it stop me. I guard Eli with my slim frame and walk him to the door.

"Can you run?" I whisper. He blinks too many times and wrings his hands, brows furrowed as he focuses on keeping one foot in front of the other.

"I-I don't know," Eli says.

The screech of a metal chair leg against the tile puts a pang inside my teeth. Fix stands behind us to give commands we'll never follow. "I said, sit down!"

"Do yourself a favor and put that bullet through your own head," I say, then bend to whisper in Eli's ear. "It's alright, he won't shoot, and even if he does you know those old bullets can't hurt me."

"If you don't listen I'll--"

"Fix," Eli says, a tremble in his voice. "Shut up, you're crazy."

"I'm the one who's trying to save your life, Eli!" He screams at our backs and pounds his fist against the table. "Your mother doesn't care about you. She's going to abandon you like she always does."

"Just ignore him," I whisper. Eli swallows and nods, then looks back at me with watery eyes.

"She doesn't love you, Elliott, she can't," Fix says. "If only you knew the things she's done."

"That's not true," I say over my shoulder.

"Eli, come back to me, please!" he says, voice broken and cracked. "Your mother has a bounty, you know that, right? Why do you think that is? You're not safe here! You're not safe with her!"

I reach for the door and yank it open, it bangs against the wall, the handle shattering the yellowed sheetrock. Fix fumbles his stupid pistol behind us, bullets pinging against the table as he drops them in his panic. But something about it doesn't sound right. That snap is much too loud for a small magazine, the slide is far too slow, that round clicking into place...

That's not his pistol. That's not a regular bullet.

The room fills with a bright yellow beam, the reflection blinding against the moldy laminate floor. Blood rushes through my ears, a dense cloud overtakes my vision, the room falls away. A low hum rattles the cracked plates on the leaning counters in the kitchen. A high-pitched whine rings through the air. The apartment heats up until my skin burns, despite the dry desert climate, the walls sweat.

Someone screams in my voice but it doesn't sound like me, rough and full of panic. Elliot, get down! it says, the words distant, like listening through a thick wall. I throw myself on top of him and slam him to the ground, the crack of his chin against the tile audible enough to resonate through my own jaw. I curl myself around his tiny frame, snatch up his hands, and fold them underneath his chest. He gasps for the breath I knocked out of him, tiny spine rising and falling beneath me, spit lining the edges of his mouth pressed to the tile.

White fills the space around me and turns my vision to blue splotches and red fireworks. My blood freezes in my veins despite the heat. The apartment fades; the moldy floor falls away, my ears fill with that constant high-pitched ring. Something rips the breath from my lungs, it reaches between the broken fragments of my ribcage to sink its claws into my heart, then punches through my sternum.

A thousand rays of light tear through my skin.