The mast came down at shift change, when half the camp was eating and the other half was too tired to notice the groan of stressed alloy until it was already falling.
Ivo noticed.
He was crossing between the supply tent and the hydroponics bay when the wind caught the antenna array someone had rigged it too high, too light, braced with salvage struts that read to him as sixty-two percent aluminum, which meant they’d bend before they broke and the whole structure tilted, slow and certain as a felled tree.
Toward the fuel line.
The one Don had capped three hours ago after the leak that had nearly turned the eastern perimeter into a fireball.
Ivo ran.
He reached the mast as it hit, the top spar crumpling across the line with a shriek of tortured metal.
Sparks skittered.
The cap held.
Barely.
The mast had to come off.
Now.
Before the sparks found a seam.
He dropped to his knees beside it, hands on the spar.
Forty kilos.
Titanium-aluminum blend, good stock, digestible.
The Assay painted it in amber and rust, clean lines and a number that made his molars ache.
No time to find help.
No time to rig a lever.
He ate.
Fast.
Faster than he ever had.
He pulled the mass into himself in three hard swallows, no care for purity or proportion, just inthe spar went light in his hands and he heaved it off the line and rolled it aside, the fuel cap intact, the sparks dying in the dust.
The taste of it hit a second later.
Aluminum.
Iron.
A trace of nickel.
The Dross spiked.
DROSS: 74% PURGE OR COLLAPSE
His vision doubled.
The ground tilted.
He staggered toward the dark away from the camp, away from the lights and made it as far as the shadow of the cargo sled before his legs quit.
He hit the ground hard.
His stomach convulsed.
The first heave brought up nothing.
The second brought up bile and the taste of hot metal.
The third brought the slag.
It poured out of him in a thick, gritty stream half-liquid, dark as tar, flecked with filings that glittered in the faint starlight.
His throat burned.
His ribs seized.
He couldn’t breathe between purges, just retch and spit and retch again, the Dross bleeding out of him one brutal spasm at a time.
DROSS: 61%
His hands shook.
The slag pooled beneath him, still steaming faintly.
He gagged on the taste, on the weight of what his body was rejecting, and for a long terrible moment he thought it wouldn’t stop that he’d vomit until there was nothing left, no Melt, no control, just an empty poisoned shell.
DROSS: 47%
The heaving slowed.
His vision cleared by inches.
He could breathe again, shallow and ragged, his throat scraped raw.
He sat back.
Wiped his mouth with a shaking hand.
Looked down at the puddle of slag and filings he’d just produced, and underneath the exhaustion a cold spike drove straight through him.
Because there was no explaining this.
No cover story that made a man vomit metal.
He had to move.
Had to bury it, scrape it into the dark, get back to his tent before
“Ivo.”
He went still.
Judy stood three meters away, med kit in one hand, flashlight in the other.
The beam wasn’t on him yet.
He could still run.
“I’m fine,” he managed.
His voice came out wrecked.
“Just needed air.”
The flashlight clicked on.
The beam found him.
Found the slag.
Judy’s face did something he couldn’t read.
She crossed the distance in four strides, dropped to her knees beside him, and pressed two fingers to his throat.
Checked his pulse.
His pupils.
The tremor in his hands.
“When did it start?” she asked.
Calm.
Clinical.
The voice she used when someone was bleeding out and panic was a luxury.
“I’m fine,” he said again.
She ignored him.
Pulled a penlight from the kit and checked his eyes.
“You’re tachycardic. Shocky. Pupils responsive but sluggish.” She looked down at the puddle of slag.
“And you just vomited half a kilo of metal filings.”
He said nothing.
“How much did you eat?”
The question landed like a blade.
He stared at her.
She stared back.
Waiting.
“The mast,” he said finally.
Barely a whisper.
“It was going to ignite the fuel line.”
“So you ate it.”
“Part of it.”
“How much.”
“Enough to move it.”
Judy set the penlight down hard enough to rattle the kit, pulled a hydration pack free, and shoved it into his hands.
“Drink. All of it. Now.”
He drank.
The water tasted like ash.
She watched him.
Watched the slag.
When he’d finished the pack, she pulled out a second one.
“Again.”
He drank.
His hands had stopped shaking.
The Dross was still falling he could feel it, the toxicity bleeding down into something survivable.
The worst of it was past.
Judy sat back on her heels.
Her hands were steady.
Her voice wasn’t.
“You eat metal,” she said.
“That’s the secret. That’s the thing you’ve been hiding.”
He looked at her.
At the fury and the fear and the steadiness all tangled together in her face.
At the fact that she was still here, still kneeling in the dark beside him with slag drying on the ground between them.
“Yeah,” he said.
“How long?”
“Since the Resolute.”
“And the fevers? The blood work that didn’t make sense?”
“This is how I survive it.”
Judy was quiet for a long moment.
Then she said, very carefully, “You saved the fuel line.”
“Yeah.”
“By eating a forty-kilo mast.”
“Part of it.”
“And then you came out here to vomit slag so no one would see.”
He nodded.
She stood.
He thought for a second she was leaving but she just turned, scanning the camp.
No one was coming.
No one had noticed.
She turned back.
Looked down at him.
“I’m not going to pretend I didn’t see this,” she said quietly.
“And you are going to tell me the truth. All of it. Or I tell my mother.”
The ultimatum hung in the air between them.
He’d known this was coming since the moment her flashlight found the slag.
Hearing it said out loud was a different animal his molars found each other and held, and he made himself stop before they ached.
“Okay,” he said.
Judy blinked.
“Okay?”
“Not here. Not now. But soon.” He met her eyes.
“I’ll tell you. All of it.”
She studied him.
Looking for the lie.
She didn’t find one.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
“After the water run. You and me. Somewhere we won’t be interrupted.”
“Yeah.”
She crouched again.
Pulled a small sample vial from her kit and scraped a bit of the slag into it with a tongue depressor.
Capped it.
Slipped it into her pocket.
“Evidence?” he asked.
His voice came out flat.
“Baseline,” she said.
“If this happens again, I want to know what normal looks like for you.” She stood, offered him a hand.
“Can you walk?”
He took her hand.
Let her pull him upright.
His legs held.
“Yeah.”
“Good. Because you’re coming to the med tent. I’m running a post-purge panel, and you’re going to sit still and let me.”
He nodded.
Judy picked up her kit.
Looked at the slag one more time.
Then back at him.
“You saved the fuel line,” she said again.
Quieter.
“That’s twice in two days you’ve kept people alive with something that’s killing you.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
She didn’t wait for an answer.
Just turned and started walking toward the med tent, slow enough that he could keep up.
Ivo followed.
The slag dried behind them in the dark.
The mast lay where he’d rolled it, harmless now, the fuel line intact.
He’d bought another day.
Another night, cheap, on credit, at a rate he wouldn’t see the true cost of until tomorrow’s conversation came due.
For now the fuel line held, and so did he.