Evening comes cold. Day thirty-six by Del's count, though time blurs now—days measured in pain cycles, in the moments between blood loss and waking, in the rib's constant grinding rhythm like stone on stone.
He lies in his corner. The one nobody wants because the rubble angles wrong, presses into your spine if you shift even slightly. His broken body fits the broken space. Has been fitting it for weeks now. The stones have worn grooves that match his shoulder blades, his hip bones. A perfect mold of damage.
The woman's container sits an arm's length away. Sealed. Waiting.
Del stares at it. The water inside is dark even through the translucent material. Not brown. Deeper. The color of old blood mixed with clay. Things floating in it. Particles catching what little evening light filters down through the ruins above. Moving. Alive.
He needs to examine it first. Before diluting. Before adding blood. Before the lie.
The examination is the point. The rest is just: cover.
Reaches for the container. His hands shaking—the cut from the performance hasn't stopped bleeding, the cloth wrapped around his palm crusted dark, stiff with dried blood on the outside but wet underneath, fresh red still seeping through. Three days and it won't close. Too deep. Reopened too many times. Rot setting in, probably. The edges hot and swollen.
Tries to sit up. His left arm braced against stone. Pushes.
The broken rib shifts—that wet grinding sound, bone against something soft and wrong—and pain whites out the world completely.
Comes back slowly. Gray first. Then shapes. Then detail.
He's sitting. Barely. Leaning against the rubble wall, breathing shallow, each breath a negotiation with the thing inside his chest that shouldn't be moving.
His vision keeps graying at the edges. Black spots blooming and fading. Blooming and fading. Rhythm like heartbeat.
Opens the container finally. The seal breaks with a small sound—pop and hiss. Air escaping.
The smell hits immediately.
Not just bad. Worse. Rot-smell. Heavy. The kind that comes from water sitting somewhere dark and warm for too long. Growing things. Breeding itself into poison.
But underneath—
Del sniffs carefully. Closing his eye. Focusing.
Clay. Heavy clay - the particular kind from collapsed sectors where the old buildings used to be. Where foundations broke and dirt mixed with everything.
And the rot-smell is specific. Not metal-rot. Not artifact-rot. Just: organic. Standing water. The small-things that grow. Can't see them but they're there. The smell tells you.
This tells him something.
But he needs to know where she got it.
Can't map without location.
Makes note to ask tomorrow. When she comes back.
He looks at the water itself. Dark. Cloudy. Particles floating—some moving (things-that-swim, too small to see clearly), some dead (insects maybe, pieces of debris), some just: dirt. Clay settling slow.
This will kill her daughter.
The thought arrives simple.
Six years old. Small. Body already weak from drinking bad water for—how long? Years probably.
This much poison, even cut with clean water—
Probably dies.
Maybe lives.
I'm helping.
Can't know until tomorrow.
His hand goes to his pocket. The rock. He could trace it blind.
Will be smooth eventually. Given time.
He reaches for his hidden supply. The containers buried under loose rubble in the corner, wrapped in cloth against dust.
Four containers left. Started with eight. Down to four.
Each customer costs him clean water. Each time he dilutes, the supply shrinks.
But by the time it's gone, he'll have enough. Enough information about where things are. Which sections have what. Where the valuable sites hide.
The water is the goal. The poison-water that tells him everything. The rations are just: what they pay him to take it.
Takes one container. Opens it carefully. The seal fresh, intact. The water inside clear. No smell. No movement.
Pure.
For now.
Pours half into the woman's poison-water, watching them mix—clear meeting dark, swirling together, the boundary blurring. The poison-water lightens. From that blood-dark color to something closer to brown. Rust. Old metal.
Still cloudy. Still things floating.
But better. Less poison. Spread thinner. Maybe thin enough a body can fight it.
Maybe.
He seals it.
Six parts clean. Four parts poison.
The numbers matter. The difference between maybe-lives and definitely-dies.
His left hand is still bleeding. The cloth soaked through, dripping. He unwraps it slowly, each layer stuck to the wound, pulling. The cut underneath is deep. Red at the edges turning to purple. White showing in the center where fat pushes through. Should close. Won't close. Just: keeps opening.
Holds his palm over the container. Blood drips. One drop. Two. Five. Ten. Fifteen.
The water turns rust-colored. Clouding more. His blood mixing with the poison, with the particles, with everything wrong inside.
This is what makes it "purified." His blood. The thing that lets him survive artifact-touch when others die.
The blood is theater.
The dilution is what matters.
But they won't know that. They'll see blood and believe. Magic. Power. Transformation.
Let them.
Seals the container.
This is what he gives her tomorrow. This is what her daughter drinks.
Sets it aside.
His vision graying worse. The black spots merging, spreading. Like ink in water.
Lies back down. The movement sending the rib grinding again, that wet wrong sound, and he has to stop breathing entirely for a moment, just: frozen, waiting for the pain to decide.
Decides yes. This time.
Breathing again. Shallow. Controlled.
Closes his eye—the right one, the working one. The left swollen shut for days now, hot, rotting probably.
Doesn't sleep.
Can't.
Just: lies there in the dark, listening to the settlement sounds. Coughing. Crying. Someone arguing. Someone fucking. The normal sounds of surviving.
His hand in his pocket. Thumb on the ninth mark.
Fresh. Sharp.
---
Morning breaks gray and cold. Day thirty-seven. The light filtering down through the ruins above is weak, diffused, like it's traveling through water to reach the Silt Quarters.
Del wakes to footsteps. Not multiple people. Just: one person. Walking fast. Determined.
Opens his eye.
The woman.
Early—sun barely up, most people still sleeping or pretending to sleep. But she's here, moving through the dim morning like she couldn't wait, like waiting another hour would shatter something inside her she's holding together by force alone.
Stops a few feet away. Doesn't come closer. Hasn't come closer than a few feet since their first meeting. Keeps that distance like it's protection.
Her face is different from yesterday.
Yesterday she was shaking. Breaking. Barely together. Hands trembling, voice cracking, eyes wet.
Today her jaw is locked. Set so tight Del can see the muscles bunching at the hinge, tendons standing out in her neck like rope under tension. Her shoulders squared, pulled back. The trembling gone. Replaced with something harder. Brittle.
Like she's compressed herself into this shape through pure will and can't let go or she'll shatter completely.
"Is it ready?" she asks.
Voice flat. Controlled. But underneath—something vibrating. Barely contained.
Del gestures to the container. Sealed. Sitting where he left it. The water inside rust-colored from his blood, cloudy, wrong-looking.
She picks it up immediately. Her hands steady now. No shaking. Grips it tight enough her knuckles go white.
Looks at it for a long moment. The rust-colored water. The seal. The container's worn surface.
Her throat works. Swallowing. Once. Twice. Like she's forcing something down. Fear maybe. Or hope. Or both.
"My daughter got worse last night," she says.
Not looking at Del. Looking at the container. Like if she looks at him she'll have to see whatever's in his face and she can't handle that.
"Worse how?" Del asks.
Voice rough. Barely functional. But the question necessary. Symptoms tell him things. Tell him what kind of poison. How bad. How long she's been drinking it.
The woman's jaw tightens. "Fever. High fever. Higher than—higher than I've ever felt on anyone. Her skin was burning. I touched her forehead and it was like touching hot stone. This heat just—coming off her."
She stops. Breathes. Controlled. Deliberate.
"And the gut-sick. Everything coming back up. Water. Food. All of it. She couldn't keep anything down. Just—" Her voice cracks slightly. She catches it. Forces it level. "Just kept bringing it back up. Over and over. Until there was nothing left. Until it was just yellow bile. And then blood."
Del doesn't respond. Just: listens. Filing it away.
Gut-sick. Bad. The kind that comes from drinking poison-water for weeks. Months maybe. The body trying to reject it but can't because there's nothing else to drink.
The clean water might help. Might be enough her body can start fighting instead of just: losing.
Or might not.
"The water we had before," the woman continues. Voice harder now. Angry. "The water I was giving her. It stopped working. Or maybe—" Pause. "Maybe it was never working. Maybe it was killing her all along. Just slow."
She looks at Del finally. Her eyes meeting his one working eye.
Brown eyes. Dark. Bloodshot. Exhausted. But something burning underneath. Not hope. Something harder than hope. Need. The kind that's past begging. Past pleading. The kind that's decided something and won't be moved.
"This has to work," she says.
Not asking. Stating fact. A thing she's decided is true because if it's not true then everything ends.
Del says nothing.
"Will it work?" she asks.
Same question as yesterday.
Del gave silence yesterday.
Gives silence now.
Just: looks at her. At the container. Back to her.
The silence stretches. Taut. Like cord pulled tight. Ready to snap.
The woman's breathing visible. Fast. Shallow. The control fraying.
"I paid you," she says. Voice harder. Sharper. "Two rations. That's everything I had. Everything. I don't have more. I can't—there's nothing left."
Still Del says nothing.
Her hands tighten on the container. Shaking slightly now. The control slipping.
"Please," she says finally.
The word quiet. Broken. The hardness cracking just for a moment.
Then she catches it. Pulls it back. Locks it down.
"Fine," she says. Voice flat again. "Fine."
Turns. Walks away. Fast.
The container gripped in both hands like she's strangling it.