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Chapter 12 – Decision time

作者: Dakota Quinn
last update 公開日: 2026-04-30 08:34:57
Maya sits on the edge of the bed, careful this time, deliberate.

Dex shifts beside her, rolling slightly toward her, his hand brushing her hip in that automatic, unthinking way that used to feel like belonging.

She stills.

The memory overlays instantly: the note, the missing supplies, the careful handwriting explaining a decision that didn’t include her.

She doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t lean in. She just… exists in the contact long enough to confirm that it no longer holds the same meaning.

Th
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  • Dead Weight   Chapter 88 — What LUS knows about the signal

    Maya waits until the base settles.Not sleeps. The base does not sleep anymore. It mutters and shifts, scrapes a chair across VIBE's floor, eases a container door shut so it won't carry.But it settles. That will do.She locks the office door and sets two pages on the desk. On the left, the transcript she pulled off the encrypted channel last night. On the right, the circled list. She sits, folds her hands, and looks at neither of them for a moment."All right," she says.LUS does not respond, because LUS has the timing of a cat and the ethics of a government form."I know you're there."I am always here."Deeply comforting. Not the point." She taps the left page. "The channel. Talk to me about the verbs."Because the verbs are what kept her up. The transcript does not read like history. It reads like a Tuesday. Recover. Reacquire. Account for. Someone, somewhere, is still filing reports about a job the

  • Dead Weight   Chapter 87 — The government communications

    The morning after Torres heals in front of her, Maya goes to the circled page before she checks the ration board.That tells her more than she wants it to.Food is simple. Food is numbers, intake, output, storage loss, theft risk, expiry dates, and the reliable cruelty of arithmetic. Food does not close a deep wound over twenty minutes while Marcus Webb holds one hand on someone’s shoulder and everyone involved pretends the laws of medicine are simply being shy.The page waits in the drawer.THINGS ABOUT MARCUS’S GROUP. Ten items circled in pencil.Maya stares at them.Outside, the base is already moving.Inside the south container lane, Torres is carrying a crate of folded blankets like she did not bleed onto concrete yesterday morning with her ribs sticking out. Her jacket is clean now. Her face is normal. Her stride is normal. Everything about her is aggressively, insultingly normal.Maya watches from the op

  • Dead Weight   Chapter 86 — Ten items

    Routine patrols are lies people tell themselves with route maps.Maya knows this.She still writes routine patrol on the board because the alternatives are worse. Words like risk sweep and possible contact sound too honest for breakfast, and nobody needs honesty before powdered eggs.The run is small. Warehouse district, two streets beyond the new container wall, checking three storage units Molly marked for tools and sealed paint. Maya takes Eli, Marcus, and three of Marcus’s people whose names she has finally learned and immediately regrets because knowing names makes danger personal.The morning is cold. The dead are thin on the ground.The first unit is empty. The second gives up a crate of hinges, two crowbars, and a box of screws that makes Carol’s absence feel spiritually present.By the third unit, Maya is almost relaxed. That is when the shelf comes down.It happens fast and stupidly, the way inju

  • Dead Weight   Chapter 85 — Improved behavior

    The problem with Dex behaving well is that Maya has no idea where to put it.Bad behavior has categories. Lying, hoarding, romantic cowardice, and theft with stationery all have drawers, labels, and precedent.Consistent usefulness, however, is a nightmare filing situation.Dex has been at the base for two weeks, and for two weeks he has done exactly what she assigned him. He does not do it loudly or bravely, and he does not perform usefulness in the exhausting manner of men trying to assemble redemption from visible effort and eye contact.He simply does the tasks properly.If she tells him to clean the drainage channel, he cleans the whole drainage channel, including the clogged corner by the old bus stop where leaves, mud, and one deeply unfortunate shoe have formed a small republic.If she gives him inventory sorting, he sorts by expiry date.Correctly.If Molly asks for scrap carried to VIBE, he carries scrap to VIBE and d

  • Dead Weight   Chapter 84 — VIBE check

    Marcus appears beside container fourteen carrying a mattress by himself. His shirt is damp again, because the universe has grown petty and specific. He drops the mattress inside, straightens, and catches Maya looking.Not staring. Looking. There is a legal distinction.His mouth curves.Not smug. Worse. Knowing.Maya raises an eyebrow like she has absolutely no interest in being perceived. Marcus leans one shoulder against the container frame.“Commander.”“Webb.”“Nice street.”“I built it to keep out trouble.”“And yet here I am.”“That was implied.”His smile deepens.For half a second, the noise of the lane dims around them as if the world has politely turned the volume down so Maya can make several poor internal choices in peace.The pull is there.Named now. Unwelcome, but named.Marcus is not

  • Dead Weight   Chapter 83 — Rooms. Priority Privacy

    The first rooms go to families.Not because anyone votes on it. Because Maya says, “Families first,” in the tone that suggests democracy can wait outside with wet shoes.No one argues.The three children from Marcus’s group are placed together with the two adults they keep orbiting, one woman named Sally with a scar across her chin and one broad man called Ivan who has been pretending not to panic every time the smallest child wanders more than six feet away.Nora and Ben get the next one. They may not be mother and son, but they arrived like a package deal and that’s how they exist now.Ben stands in the doorway of the container room, twelve years old and trying very hard not to look twelve, clutching Gerald to his chest. Gerald’s condition may have improved. Slightly.“It has a lock,” he says.Nora’s hand tightens on his shoulder.“It does,” Maya says.Ben nod

  • Dead Weight   Chapter 64 — Things About Marcus’s Group

    Integration was going well.This was suspicious. Maya had expected friction. Elbows. Whispered loyalties. Someone using the phrase “our people” in a way that made her want to assign latrine duty by bloodline.There was some of that, obviously. Humans remained committed t

  • Dead Weight   Chapter 63 – Things that makes other things live

    Maya is updating the board when someone calls from the outer lot, “There’s a woman out here with bees.”Maya puts the chalk down.Of course there is. The apocalypse has developed range.She goes to look.A woman from Marcus’s group is assembling a hive stand from timbe

  • Dead Weight   Chapter 62 – Heavy Lifting

    The list on the board is not in Maya’s handwriting.This is noted by several people and mentioned to none of them, because the base has developed functional instincts about which observations improve the morning and which ones generate paperwork.Pete reads the list at 5:47 a.

  • Dead Weight   Chapter 61 — The merger negotiations

    Negotiations took two sessions, because Maya believed in mercy but not enough to waste an afternoon.The first session was outside the perimeter, at a folding table Carol described as “structurally emotional.” The second was inside the loading bay, because it rained and Maya re

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