Ch. 57

They slept light, woke before the sun. When Carolina rolled over, Xander had already washed and dressed, hair still damp, boots laced tight and double-knotted like habit. She propped herself on an elbow, eyed the ink and old splatter on his hands, the careful way he pocketed a blade and closed the sheath with his thumb. He noticed her, grinned crooked, and tossed a shirt to where she sprawled across the blankets.

She pulled it on, tried to ignore how the cotton still smelled vaguely of the cleaning solvent Xander used for everything that wasn’t alive. They had fifty-three minutes before the new shipment hit the market, and the plan was simple: Get in, get the goods, get out before anyone with a badge or a grudge got curious.

Lyra trailed them as far as the stairwell, hissing reminders at Carolina’s back: Don’t talk to strangers, keep your face down, remember the code if you get grabbed. Carolina gave a tight, deadpan salute. Xander waited till the girl vanished, then said, “She’s more paranoid than me.”

“She has reason,” Carolina replied.

They took the alley route, hopping broken fence posts and ducking past third-story plankways that trembled with the movement of their neighbors. The market sprawled over what used to be a parking lot, its tar surface scored and pockmarked with stains. At first, it was quiet enough to be almost sleepy, but as the hour aged, vendors unrolled tarp roofs and the buyer’s din ratcheted up, a stew of bargaining voices and the yapping of dogs.

Xander walked with his hand open, loose at his thigh. Carolina shadowed him, scanning high and low. They sidestepped a fistfight at the bread stand, dodged a shakedown near the oil drums. When they finally spotted the trader, he was exactly where Morgan had said—by the loading bay with two goons and a green plastic crate.

The negotiation was fast, ugly, and just loud enough to catch the wrong ears. Carolina was halfway through counting the vials when the man behind the goons smiled too wide, and Xander’s fist found his face.

Everything went liquid. Carolina swept up the crate, ducked the arm that came at her, slammed an elbow to the goon’s throat. She and Xander backed out together, covering each other's angles, a mess of adrenaline and swearing as they barrelled through the open air and up a flight of concrete stairs. Carolina barely felt the graze of a bullet, the nick at her ribs, until they were blocks away, crouched behind a gutted out vending machine and laughing.

“Efficiency,” Xander said, his left eye swelling.

She smeared blood from her side, then gave him a look. “Next time, we negotiate with fewer teeth.”

He leaned in, and she let him trace the cut. Close-range, she saw the flecks of gold in his eyes, the new scar slicing through his eyebrow. “I’ll practice my polite voice,” he said.

“You don’t have one,” she shot back.

He shrugged, smiled like maybe he could invent one on the spot.

They made their way home with the crate between them, both silent now, feeling the weight of it. At the base of their building, Carolina stopped, heart still racing. “You good?” she asked, gesturing to his bruised face.

“Better than the other guy.” He tried to sound cocky, but there was concern under it, a rawness that hadn’t faded since the last time one of them hadn’t come back.

Carolina thought of all the mornings the twins from upstairs had woken to a different sibling, of the stories she’d invented to tuck the little ones back to sleep—how every world ended, but you could always build a new one from the ruins. She reached out, wiped a fleck of dried blood from the corner of his mouth.

“Next time we run, let’s run somewhere good,” she said.

He touched her wrist, thumb soft against her pulse. “Promise.”

Inside, the house was humming—Lyra and Finch patching a window, Wynn arguing with a soldering iron and losing. Carolina and Xander set the crate on the table, called everyone in.

The thing about emergencies, she’d learned, was that they never allowed you to be alone. Not in the real way. The room swelled with bodies, every one of them bruised or bent, all of them circling the new hope in its plastic box. Finch was the first to pop it open, rat-trap fingers untwisting the seal. The medicine was inside, real this time, not sugar. The relief was so sharp it almost stung.

Carolina looked over at Xander, caught him watching her, his smile smaller than usual, but steadier.

They’d done it. No, not saved the world—just bought it another day. It was enough.

*

Later, when the house had quieted, Carolina found Xander on the roof, eyes narrowed against the wind. She sat beside him, knees pulled to her chest. He offered a flask, and she took a swig, letting the warmth settle.

“What now?” she asked, voice thin.

He considered. “Tomorrow, we get up. Same as always.”

She nodded, and he slung an arm over her shoulder, heavy and solid, like the world itself getting a little easier to hold up.

Below them, the city glowed, a field of bright specks and broken hymns. Above, the sunrise started to leak through, soft and gold, ugly-beautiful, the kind of thing you didn’t dare believe in until it arrived.

Carolina leaned into his warmth, closed her eyes, and allowed herself—just once, just for now—to imagine it lasting.