On Monday, Alex went back to his bench at Sam's, and it turned out he was good at his job.
Sam had him on the Hunter radios now. The wall crews dropped them off after the night shift, with mud in the grilles and the smell of the wall on them. Cold stone, gun oil and old rain.
You held one to your ear and pressed the test key, and a healthy one whined on one clean note. A dying one wobbled, way up high, past where most people could hear.
Alex could hear it fine.
He told Sam he had a "feeling" about which parts were going bad. He was right eleven times in a row, and now a crate of radios sat by his bench with ALEX on it in Sam's writing, underlined twice.
***
On Tuesday, a Hunter off the east crew came in for her radio. Shaved head, Rank Two patch on her sleeve.
Every kid in Qasra knew the ranks from the café screens. Rank One was a new Hunter with a blade on the wall. Rank Four was as high as anyone on the East Wall ever got. A Rank Two had been out past the lights and come back.
She leaned on the counter and watched Alex close the case.
"Your boy's quick," she told Sam. She turned to Alex. "You ever think about the intake? You've got the hands for it."
"I fix phones," Alex said.
"So did I."
It was Tuesday, too, when the hunger came back.
In his head, Alex called it the motor. It ran all the time now, like an engine left on in a parked car. It was quieter than before, but by the afternoon he knew where Sam's cooler was without turning his head.
Alex took one packet from the cooler while Sam was out for lunch. He meant to cook it properly, on the hot plate in the back room.
The meat went into the pan dark red and wet, and the smell came up off it, iron and fat and a wild smell underneath. He took the pan off the heat with the middle still raw and ate it at the sink with his fingers. Red juice ran down to his wrist.
He licked the wrist. He nearly licked the pan.
'What am I doing? I'm eating like an animal...'
He washed the pan twice and propped the back door open to clear the smell. In the corner of his eye, the feeding bar ticked up.
36%
***
On Wednesday, he carried the rent to the agent's office in an envelope, both months of it, in full. The extra radio work had covered it.
The woman behind the glass counted the bills twice and peered at him over the top of them.
"Mr. Walker. I had you on the list."
"Which list?"
"The one for people who don't pay."
She stamped the receipt and told him well done.
On the way home, Alex bought a second chair from the junk shop by the tram stop. He set it across the table from his old chair and stood there grinning at the two of them.
Tuesday's packet bought him two days. On Thursday morning, he took another packet and moved the ice around to hide the gap.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
A week ago he'd read the Medical Service page.
--Medical Service--
You must report to your district clinic within 72 hours.
Seventy-two hours had run out six days ago. Every morning he checked the page, and every morning nobody had come to the door.
***
On Thursday afternoon, Sam was at the counter with the cash book.
"Before this week," he said, "you did one radio in two years, and you cried."
"I didn't cry!"
Sam brought two glasses of tea and looked at him for a long time.
"Smile," he said. "You've been talking all week like you've got a new filling."
So Alex smiled a little, with his mouth shut. Sam waited.
Alex showed him. Both canines were longer than the teeth beside them and sharp at the tips. The gums around them were still sore and pink.
Sam didn't step back. He turned the door sign to CLOSED and sat on the stool across from Alex.
That scared Alex more than anything Sam could have said. Sam had never once closed early. He'd stayed open the day the south sirens went.
"When?"
"A week. A bit more."
"You went to a clinic?"
"No."
"Good. Don't."
Sam rubbed his face with both hands.
"My cousin's boy," he said. "At nineteen he changed. Teeth, eyes, all of it, in a month. Nobody in the family even knew we had a lineage. He asked me about it first. Hypothetically, he said. Like it was a friend of his."
"What did he do?"
"He walked into the clinic and declared it, because it seemed honest. Thirty days in the Annex. He came out with a card and no job. His building held a meeting about him. A meeting, Alex. With chairs."
Alex thought of the lit window in the Annex, and the man in the paper gown with his hands on the glass.
"Is that what this is?" Sam asked.
"I don't know what it is," Alex said.
Sam nodded. He held up one finger.
"Until you know more, you talk with your lip down. And you do it better than that. You look like you're hiding a piece of candy."
A second finger.
"You stay away from the pharmacy when the nurse is in. She reports. She's a nice woman. She'll report you and bring you a cake."
His eyes went to the cooler under the bench. He'd noticed it was lighter.
"And you eat here, in the back, where I can see what you're eating. Somebody has been into my salvage, and I would like it to be you."
"It's me," Alex said.
"Good. Now I can stop counting."
Instead of thanking him, Alex picked up the radio and pressed the test key.
It came up clean.
***
Sam went home soon after. Alex stayed to sweep the back room, and when the street had gone quiet, he stepped out into the yard.
All week he'd held his lip down and carried crates like they were heavy. Out here, nobody was watching.
The yard wall was over three meters high, with broken glass set along the top. Beyond it was the flat roof of the tire shop.
Alex bent his knees and jumped from standing.
He cleared the glass with room to spare and landed in a crouch on wet tar paper, both hands flat. The whole street lay below him, the roofs and antennas and the wall lights beyond.
The high jump record at the Residence had been one meter sixty. The boy who set it got his photo pinned up in the dining hall for three years.
'That was nearly twice that. From standing! In work boots!'
His heart was pounding. He jumped down into the yard and back up, four more times, faster each time, until his thighs finally burned.
***
The Rank Two came back for her radio on Friday.
While Sam wrote the ticket, the lamp over the register caught her eyes, and they threw the light back. Both of them shone flat, pale gold, like a cat's eyes on a dark road.
She blinked, and the shine was gone. She paid, winked at Alex and left. Alex was still staring at the door.
"It's the Course," Sam said without looking up. "The Hunter injections. They all come out of the third one with some change. There's one on the east gate who can't feel the cold. Nobody sends them to the Annex for it. The Service writes 'conditioning variance' on a form and goes to lunch."
"Does anyone test them?"
"Who would test them? They're the ones who'd come and get you."
Sam's pen stopped. He'd seen Alex's face.
"No."
"I didn't say anything."
"You said it with your whole head. They do a medical, Alex. They take blood."
Alex had thought it through. He would sign up for the Hunter intake. The medical was for provisionals, the new recruits, before a single injection. If he got through it clean, anything strange about him afterward would look like the Course had done it. It would stop being his problem and become theirs.
"And if you don't get through it?" Sam asked.
Alex didn't have an answer, and Sam knew he didn't.
Alex watched Sam add it up. The Annex on one side. On the other, a boy he couldn't keep in a back room forever.
The Authority's October poster hung in the shop window. Sam never took it down.
PROVISIONAL INTAKE. HOLD THE LINE. Applications close Saturday.
***
Alex did it on Saturday night, on his phone, at the table with two chairs.
The form had eleven screens. Name. District. Date of birth. Next of kin... he put the shop's number, because it was the only one he knew by heart.
He reached the screen he'd been waiting for.
'Here we go. Boss fight.'
--Provisional Intake--
In the last ninety days, have you experienced any sudden change in strength, eyesight, hearing, appetite, body temperature or dentition?
YES / NO
'Dentition. Teeth. They mean teeth... so what do I tick?'
He ticked No.
At the end, the form wanted his name again, typed, in place of a signature. Alex stared at the empty box.
He didn't make one up. He typed the name his parents gave him.
And he sent it.