Sinjin pulled away from stagnancy; he was the first—and possibly only one of the two—to break the ice.

“Man, I miss the NHS.” He laughed into his arms again, pumping up and down with the pumps attached. “UK always stumps all. Doesn’t Italy have free healthcare for citizens as well?”

His lightheartedness was somehow warm. It soothed Cosima but could only defrost so much. In the cold light of day—a tasteful salad day where she was clean from cosmic judgment—she would’ve agreed and hailed their home continent as if they were loyalists. They’d laugh about it, too.

But her blood ran cold; she questioned her loyalty to following along with the bit and her goal. She was halfway into a half-baked nod and bare-bones quip, but her cogs stopped spinning, and her posture spun down to a stop in a full-lying position.

The nurse’s words battered her into introspection. She could feel fallen hair strands under her head, wisps of hair once a rich brown tainting a hard pillow. The sheets weren’t clean; her sickliness spread to them in every way possible. She didn’t even feel fit in her own clothes.

No eyes. Scrawny arms. Scrawny legs. Jagged nails. Crooked teeth. Many other impurities.

She ticked off each itinerary box for yet another course into misery—it was easy yet tedious. Whenever she bedded down, sleep didn’t even need to take her for the mocking dreams to poke at her brain. They bore and tore into her as a bed of roses unfurled into one of thorns, nailing her into a reality barren of fabrications.

All her planning the previous day felt like talk rot at the drop of a hat.

“Let’s talk.” His words—among all others ringing in and outside the tent—had a familiar ring. She had to release everything from under her hat. It was a binding contract that persisted and a sometimes hidden gift that would never stop giving. “I know you’re in a bind.”

Eye redness or not, there was no escaping such a dire yet supportive look. So she huffed and admitted her iced inner workings to her crutch.

“Right, uh…”

“Buh, buh, buh. Eye contact—”

“Shut up.” She took his advice. “I don’t… I don’t even have eyes—I just realized the whole contact thing makes no sense.”

Silence. The far cry of a child from a nearby tent sounded.

Cosima drew her thin knees into herself, drawing a blank on how to further the conversation. It was a sorry sight, not even being able to look the person closest to her in the face after her comment. Despite the familiar face, she wished to drop out of his sight and sink into the floor below her.

“But you can still see.”

Cosima hid her face in her knees, staring into the darkness. She let out a muffled groan, “What?”

“We both aren’t sure how… but you can still see. We ended up in some weird explosion accident on that road, but we were some of the few to get in contact with an explosion.”

Cosima loosened her balled-up figure.

“But we lived. We didn’t die. We lived. We’re blessed…”

She looked towards Sinjin, who stared at her with focused eyes.

“The same goes for five years ago when the radiation hit. About a billion died or something. We’re alive.” Sinjin tapped against the side of the bed with a small smile. “I keep telling you that we should be thankful for the lives we live. Could be worse, honestly. Life is crap, but we’re still here.”

She couldn’t deny the truth of his statement. The reality was that they were alive. Just barely, but they could still breathe. The wails of many tents sounded. The consoling voices of anxious doctors reverberated around the hospital complex. She knew many patients died under hospital care daily, manifesting a deadly odor in her nostrils.

But they weren’t dead.

That doesn’t…

It didn’t mean that ambition shouldn’t exist.

“Look, I get that. I really do—”

“I hope so—”

“But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to improve our situation—”

“I know tha—”

“You should know that just as much as me—”

“Are you annoyed that I—”

“Of course I am.” Cosima leaned forward weakly. She spoke quickly and dryly to stress her point. “Sin, permanent fix or not, you don’t just deny help like that.”

“The car, your phone, the faulty stove at home—”

“If you didn’t want to pay for it, I would—”

“Dear, leave the finances to me,” Sinjin said, sternness lacing his voice. His soft smile faded. He held a finger up to prevent her from talking over him. “It’s basic economics, ain’t it? That procedure would have a long waiting time, and it’s expensive as hell due to the high demand for it. I could be wrong, though. I took Econ at a standard level in my IB thingy—”

“But you’re lucky it’s so accessible.” Cosima stopped him from rambling. She clutched her sheets with the nails she hated. “You can easily fix your body and be more productive in your work—”

“I want our spending to benefit the both of us, not just me.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

The crying in the background filled the silence. Cosima tried to find the words to question her boyfriend’s logic. What confused her was how he denied it with little hesitation or reconsideration.

How didn’t he freeze up?

“But… But seeing you get better benefits me as well.”

“I know, I know—”

“Then why—”

“I’ll take the treatment later down the line, but not now. There’s just too much on the plate right now.”

The crying in the background slowed to a stop.

“Right…”

“Also, I think the nurse managed to speed up the healing process through some heat stuff. It’s why I’m not feeling cold. I feel pretty cozy, honestly.”

“Heat? My towel was pretty warm, too.”

“Yeah, so even if the cysts will still be there, the burst ones are healing at a good pace. I think that’s as much of a procedure as I need as of now.”

“I see.” Cosima lay back on her bed, looking at the tent’s ceiling. “Ok then.”

Getting your body to a better form is probably the most important thing, in my opinion.

“I’m just glad you’re here and alive,” Sinjin said, clearing his throat.

Despite the chilliness, Cosima felt warm herself. “Glad you’re here and alive too.”

They fell into a comfortable silence. People who stood for nothing tended to fall for anything—she always confronted that thought out of the many degenerative ones. The previous day, she and Sinjin added animals to their DNA; they tapped the tip of the iceberg of Harmonization Culture. As she looked at a thinking Sinjin—the scars of harmonization riddling his back—she reminded herself that he awakened his new DNA and sprouted the tortoise shell.

Was she still in her shell? She held resolve the previous day. But she hadn’t even awakened. Had she even progressed?

Was she still on the shelf?

“Sin?” She stilled her self-questioning. She noticed him blink back into reality. “Can I ask you something?”

“You don’t have to ask for permission, remember? Give me the full monty.”

Whenever Sinjin initiated these talks, both had to lay everything from their minds onto the table. Spilling secrets was prime for understanding one another to the fullest—’the full monty’, as Sinjin would say.

She coughed and spoke as full-throatily as possible: “Do you think… Do you think that I should try and get the cure?”

Sinjin’s cogs spun again.

“Please”—she shuffled herself, looking directly at him as he wanted—”be honest with me.”

The cogs kept spinning; she was patient.

They stopped, a puff of wind being the first thing to come out of his mouth.

“I did suggest that we do what we did yesterday. That is… something I can’t deny.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting his reddened eyes at her while maintaining contact. “I do want you to get better, obviously. I can’t stop you from wanting that. However, as I’ve said many times, you’re fine the way you are—”

“Sorry to cut you, but no. It’s not fine—”

“And I get that—I get it completely.” His voice rose a tad. The softness on his face from his previous statement faded quickly. “But do you really think you can get your hands on something millions and millions of people would quite literally kill for?”

“But—”

“Come on, dear. You heard about Skid Row, right? One transformed murderer holds a cure, and the whole place goes to absolute hell.”

“That’s completely different to what you planned yesterday. Remember? ‘Pacifistic route’? You said we weren’t going for humans—”

“No, but you see, this would be the same thing. Animal populations have suffered due to this as well. Any animal with a cure is not safe. Any plants with a cure aren’t safe, though more hidden depending on location—”

“If you really think about it, then by your logic, we’ll most likely see the cure in humans, isn’t that right?” She noticed the weary shock on his face, an odd spark of victory coursing through her. “Because we’re on top of the food chain, and humans do most of the harmonization if I’m not wrong.”

Sinjin kept silent and processed the information. She’d push on.

“So we just give up here? After only a day? I gave this a bit of thought yesterday. It would mean that if we don’t act now, we miss out on our pacifist options.” Cosima patted her duvet rougher than she could manage or expect. “I have—I need to do this, please.”

It all felt like one big industry. Cosima performed research, planning, and anticipation—processes she held near and dear to her in her former job. Both industries were vastly different, but from what she knew, both required her to dirty her hands, for better or worse.

But the sudden surge of untapped confidence got to her head, and she only then noticed the dirtied look of defeat on Sinjin’s face. She saw a limit and didn’t intend to cross it.

“Sorry… Sorry, Sin—I didn’t mean to raise my voice,” Cosima said sheepishly, buckling down into her bed. His face was cold; it made her shiver under the weight.

“No. No…” Sinjin nipped his forehead, his hairless face furrowing as he adjusted his face-down posture on the bed. “I raised my voice, too. I’ve been a mess lately. Sorry—”

“No, it’s fine…” A wave of relief washed over her as his face softened; she swore it was hate that left his face. Or it was a figment of her imagination—a defect in her sight. “I shouldn’t have overstepped—”

“At least we can still have arguments.” He smiled a sentimental smile, speaking softly and tiredly. “That’s some normalcy, at least. So, no worries there.”

“Oh,” she said, falling into silence after attempting to muster a helpful response.

His cogs turned—they were slower than the speed at which their small argument had turned on a dime. However—at the drop of a dime—he spoke up through pursed lips.

“If it’s worth it to you, then… I won’t stop you.” He snapped a finger into the air before she could speak. He wore a frown, and she understood why. “That doesn’t mean I don’t like what we’re getting into. I’ll keep shaking my head, but if you know what you’re getting yourself into, I’ll help.”

“Thank you. Thank you…” Cosima said quickly, quieter than she wanted because of her dry throat and Sinjin’s equally dry expression. It was in her best interest not to see his twisted face again if she pushed her luck.

His frown deepened. He began focusing his energy on swinging his arm back and forth over the edge of the bed. He kept his eyes on Cosima.

“I’m assuming you’ll be using—uh—Theta’s advice and all that?”

“Yeah,” Cosima answered. “I read the group chat a bit in the car. He has a lot of damn connections in this field, so maybe he can lead me somewhere.”

Sinjin’s arm halted. He blew out a breath and nodded.

“I see…” Cold air blew through the tent’s entrance. “Right.”

He nodded towards the two phones on the stand between them.

“We need to argue more, maybe for tomorrow when our minds are clear from all this rubbish today,” he suggested. “The more we argue, the more I’ll understand you.”

“That’s true. Yep—oh.” She registered Sinjin’s gesture, reaching for his Huawei phone with a shaky arm and lifting it away from the stand. She threw it backwards onto the bed, the device switching on and showing the default splash of colors on the lock screen. She’d seen his phone many times. But the default wallpaper reminded her of what used to be in place of it, making her fingers grow limp and cold.

She didn’t think she was delusional. But—if she squinted and continued to be gullible enough to fall for her brain’s frigid tricks—she could almost see her prime self on the phone’s canvas.

“You know my password, don’t you?”

Reality flashed into her sockets once more that night, breaking her away from falsity. She jolted at Sinjin’s words and nodded. She replied, “Yeah—Yeah, I do. Just tired—”

“You’re probably hungry, too. When the nurse comes back, I’ll ask if we could get some food.” He glared at her. “I will make you eat—”

“I know, sheesh.” She couldn’t roll her eyes.

“You better. Now call your parents.” He shuffled in his bed, digging his face into the sheets. His voice came out muffled. “Tell them that we’re ok.”

She kept her sights on him, watching his stiff body lay quietly. If she could kiss him, she would. But she believed she wasn’t in the right state to give him that act of affection. She loved him, though. Even if her parents weren’t aware of their predicament, he stressed the importance of telling them, much to her reluctance.

He cared greatly. But she always thought there was a capacity—a limit to how much he could withstand and carry. The thought of him bursting plagued her mind the most.

So she’d take great care.

She noticed several missed WhatsApp calls from Theta on Sinjin’s lock screen feed. They were notifications from an hour ago.

Oh yeah, we missed that thing.

She referred back to Sinjin, who idled within his personal space with the pumps still attached to him.

If he checked the phones a while back, he may know about the notifs. He probably wants nothing to do with it.

Without trying to entertain the thought further, she wearily unlocked the phone with slow fingers and adjusted herself into the bed. She pulled the thin duvet up as she navigated the phone; the cold bit at her, even when there was barely any meat to chew. It was just bone.

I hope this is all worth it. Please be.

Beyond the tent, sirens blared.

It was bone-chilling to think of the potential failure. It was bone-chilling to think of the pain she’d have to go through. It was bone-chilling to think she was against Sinjin in their current views.

But, by some miracle—if she could keep dreaming up a world where things went her way—she’d succeed, achieve her desired self, and turn herself back into a star.

After all—in this world that did her wrong—every coin had two sides.