The legs grew stiff and the heart laboured ever harder. Kio could cope with both, but it was the lungs that started to finally slow him down. By the time they were actually causing his throat to seize up he was forced to give in. He was well away from the hanha, anyway.

Well away, and into familiar territory.

The buildings around him were generally taller than before, but blocky and packed tightly together, and the public lighting was both more sparse and less well maintained, resulting in an environment that one only got hints at in the evening darkness.

Did you come here on purpose?

He leaned up against a wall and let his lungs work out their issues without any input from him. He couldn’t control the loud wheezing noises; he lacked the energy, and just had to ride the wave.

He was sweaty, his legs hurt, his throat hurt, and his stomach was protesting at a lengthy sprint just after being filled.

What’s your big plan? You got one free ride of Ciinto Res, and you took it to the worst possible choice. So what’s the plan?

He stewed in his thoughts until he felt merely tired, then wiped his soaked head as well as he could with his sleeves, and started walking. He came upon a public fountain, and was glad to find it working. He’d never been good at following society’s rules, but vandalising a source of clean water had always seemed just plain stupid.

He drank, rinsed, and continued walking. Movement was proving to be his favourite activity.

The scant lights that had any real power to them revealed cracked concrete, and littering on the streets. There were few businesses that didn’t have to do with cheap, basic pleasures, and little traffic anyway. There was even less traffic in the back alleys that had formed largely as a side effect, rather than anything planned, and so that was where Kio took his little journey. It was familiar ground, after all. They attracted those that wanted their matters kept out of sight, those who could not afford even the project apartments, and unsupervised children and their vicious little world.

This was the Blueflower District, and it was a jungle.

The litter was even worse in the alleyways. Out on the main streets there were at least semi-regular efforts by hand, and the odd street cleaning drone before it was inevitably stolen and gutted for parts to sell. Back here… the only things that were ever removed got scavenged for having some purpose.

Even with all the ways in which his head was wrong, he remembered to be on guard. He slid back into being ready for trouble, and keeping his senses on full alert. This was primal; far more natural to him than walking among civilised people.

The homeless population was fairly thin, from what Kio could tell. He only passed by two little colonies, and one silhouette that watched him from a corner, some distance into all this. Kio watched back, and didn’t change his course, which took him within an arm’s reach of this person. It ended up being the silhouette who fell back a bit. Kio focused back forward; this was a common way to spring an ambush. But nothing came, and he found himself in a stretch where his only company was garbage, walls, and memories.

A tiny light shone above a flight of emergency stairs, beneath which Caul Turi had once ambushed him along with three other boys, when they were all around twelve. And where Kio had, in turn, ambushed Caul when he was travelling alone.

There had been a dark, sick catharsis in those impacts.

He arrived at the Corpse. It had been yet another apartment block, until some chemical reaction had gone off in the cellar. The usual theory was that someone had been trying to cook up weapons-grade plasma on the cheap. The secondary one held that a major drug lab had suffered a spectacular failure.

Whatever it was, the building had been eaten up by the kind of fire that burned concrete, leaving behind a mass of horrible, jagged stalagmites, some of them several floors in height.

Kio stopped in front of it, thinking back on all the ghost stories that had clung to the place, and the way the children dared one another to walk in. The place had haunted his nightmares.

Still weak, Kio? Still afraid?

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

He clenched his jaw and walked directly on. He took short, feeling steps, mindful of all the gaps in the melted rubble that made up the floor. It wasn’t long before the pillars of tortured concrete and metal blocked out the sight of the surrounding buildings, like a thicket.

It comes right back, doesn’t it?

His surroundings were sharp, perilous, uneven, so very strange and alien, and so dark that his mind had unlimited room to fill it with terrors.

Didn’t you grow strong? Wasn’t that the whole point? So you could strike back, live without fear? And look at you now.

He lashed out with his good hand and hit a bit of concrete. It was jagged enough to cut him a little, and the pain provided momentary distraction. He put his palm more gently against it and let himself slump a bit.

He breathed deeply, feeling the fear and everything else move through him. Then he continued on. He was halfway through anyway, and going back wasn’t any better than the other option.

It was a slow, clumsy, painful, journey, filled with bumps against the shins, the elbows, and the head. But he made it. Out on the other side he stepped back out onto low-quality but flat concrete. There was even light, shining above the main entrance of an apartment block.

“Kio?”

His body went through a start, but recognition came a moment later. She was standing next to the entrance, with an air of having endured a tiring day. Thinking about it, Kio felt she must be about forty, but she did look a bit older.

“Della?”

The woman scratched her unruly hair.

“I haven’t seen you in a while, and I hadn’t seen you in a while before that. I tried calling out to you, but you didn’t answer.”

Kio didn’t have an immediate reply.

Ignore them. They are beneath you, and have nothing to offer. Walk the higher path, and leave them to their darkness.

He cleared his throat.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. What’s been going on with you?”

He hung in yet another awkward silence, then bought a bit more time by slow-walking towards her.

“I… uh, left the planet for a bit.”

“Oh, really? I remember you bringing that up now and then, back when you were little. And you came back?”

Obviously, you idiot!

“Yeah, Della,” he said gently. “The war… you know.”

“Yes. I’m hoping it’s done with Yvenna. The city doesn’t need more chaos. It hasn’t been good for anyone except doctors and defence lawyers.”

She examined him, with those tired but rather sharp eyes.

“Kio, I have to say… you don’t look good.”

He looked away from her gaze, unable to bear it. He shook his head, though he wasn’t sure what he meant by it.

“Where is Kalvin?”

“He is…” Della cleared some phlegm from her throat. “He is on the other side of the city these days, in a work program.” She smiled a little. “Were you hoping to play with his blocks again?”

Kio felt an irrational desire to get angry at that. Possibly because when he didn’t give in to it, all that was left to him was feeling sad.

“Why are you outside here, Della?”

She lifted her hand and took a drag from a plastic smoker.

“Don’t want the smell in the apartment. What about you? What are you doing?”

Another silence.

“I don’t know. Just sort of… wandering.”

“Do you have work?”

“No,” he told her.

“Hm. Any plans at all.”

“No.”

She had herself another drag. He still wasn’t really looking at her, but he thought he detected a certain fidgeting before her next words, as if Della were worried about the reaction. He braced himself.

“And how is your mother?”

Kio inhaled.

“I haven’t talked to her in… in some time.”

“Right.”

Della sighed.

“You know, Kio, you could be a handful when you were staying over. But I still always hoped for the best for you.”

Kio just stewed in more silence. Della cleared her throat.

“Those couple of times I saw you in the streets, you were with a girl. What was up with that?”

Yes, Kio. What was up with that?

“She died,” he said.

The sound of crunching bone returned to his ears yet again.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Kio.”

He finally looked at Della again, and saw that she meant it.

“Te…” He cleared his throat to get some strength back into it. “Tell Kalvin hello.”

“I will. Maybe…”

It was Della’s turn to hesitate.

“Maybe you could stop by sometime, for a light meal?”

Kio shifted his jacket a bit, and felt the half a bread bun that was the entirety of his food supply.

“Maybe. Goodbye, Della.”

“Take care of yourself, Kio.”

He went back to walking.