As their aether bike ate up the distance between the Appalachian Tower and Old Atlanta, the world around them roared louder with the noise of the refugee district.

  Noise rolled out from between the stacked concrete blocks and prefab walls, a constant low roar compared to the dead hush of Atlanta’s ruins. Kids shouted in three different languages as they chased a rag-ball down the alley. Vendors barked over each other, calling out the day’s dishes and prices. Someone argued about a busted water filter at full volume. Somewhere else, a radio crackled with a Tower highlight reel, the commentator’s voice rising as some climber pulled off something spectacular.

  Cal shifted his grip on the strap of his pack and kept walking.

  The district clung to the edge of the Tower city like barnacles on a hull—too close to be ignored, too poor to be welcomed in. Rows of container homes and cheap concrete units leaned into each other along narrow streets. Laundry flapped over their heads, strung between windows on fraying lines: shirts gone thin at the seams, mismatched socks, a little girl’s dress dyed a bright, stubborn blue.

  The air smelled of frying oil and boiled broth and too many people living too close together, threaded through with the faint ozone tang of distant aether tech.

  Jordan wove through the crowd a half-step ahead, moving like he was born to it, always finding the gaps.

  “Home sweet industrial slum,” he said over his shoulder. “Tell me you missed it.”

  Cal adjusted the pack again, feeling the drag of the dead aether pack shell and the day’s junk.

  “Missed the part where we get elbowed every five seconds,” he said.

  A woman brushing past muttered something sharp in Spanish and flicked a glance at his pack—measuring, weighing. He angled his body out of instinct, keeping the zipper close to his hand.

  Steam rose from giant pots near the food stalls by the main walkway. Mr. Hsu stood over his, ladling soup into plastic bowls as fast as his hands could pass them. He caught sight of Cal and Jordan and lifted his chin in greeting, but didn’t stop working. Behind him, Mrs. Hsu sat on a crate, fingers flying as she sorted through a box of scavenged electronics someone had brought earlier.

  Cal’s stomach growled at the smell of broth and noodles, but the strap on his shoulder felt heavier than hunger.

  Every step toward the apartment tightened something in his chest.

  Their place was on the third floor of a narrow block, squeezed between a stairwell and a cracked exterior wall. The stairwell smelled of mold and cleaning solution. Cal’s legs ached as he climbed, the pack pulling at the muscles between his shoulder blades.

  At their door, he shifted the weight again and rapped twice with his knuckles.

  The lock clicked almost immediately.

  Sammy pulled the door open and threw himself forward in the same motion.

  “You’re late,” his little brother said, accusing him on principle even as he wrapped his arms around Cal’s waist. “I thought you fell in a hole.”

  “Almost did,” Jordan said, slipping past them into the apartment. “Your brother saved my life. Again. You should be very impressed.”

  Sammy rolled his eyes but grinned. “I am always impressed with Cal. You’re optional.”

  Jordan clutched at his chest. “Wounded. Mortally.”

  “Move,” Cal said, nudging them both gently inside so he could close and latch the door.

  The apartment was one room pretending to be three. A curtain stretched across a wire that divided the sleeping area from the main space. A tiny kitchenette lined one wall, its burner plates older than Sammy. The table in the middle had a permanent tilt to it, no matter which way you turned it.

  It still felt like a palace compared to some of the stacked tin boxes outside.

  Cal shrugged the pack off with a soft groan and dropped it onto the table. The legs creaked in protest.

  “Careful with that,” his mother said from the stove.

  She stood with one hand on the counter for balance, wooden spoon in the other as she stirred a pot of something thin and pale. Strands of gray threaded through her dark hair now, more than there had been a few months ago. When she turned, the light from the tiny window caught faint, unnatural glints beneath the skin of her neck—threads of aether-scar tissue, like ghost veins.

  She smiled anyway.

  “You boys look like you wrestled the city,” she said. “Did the buildings hit back?”

  “Only a little,” Jordan said, shrugging off his own lighter pack.

  “Only a lot,” Cal corrected under his breath.

  Her eyes lingered on him a second longer than on Jordan, cataloguing the lines of strain in his shoulders, the way he favored his left leg when he shifted his weight. She didn’t comment. She never did anymore.

  They cleared the table of yesterday’s dishes and today’s mail—two printed notices from the landlord, one red, one a paler yellow that meant you still had time to be worried but not enough to stop. Cal stacked the papers with a practiced flick and set them aside.

  Then he unzipped the pack and tipped it gently.

  The day’s haul spilled out in a clatter of plastic and metal.

  Dead consoles and cracked casings. Tangled cords. The sleek corpse of the portable battery he’d picked up on the lower level. The cracked shell of the Gen-1 aether pack hit the table with a heavy thud, its once-sleek lines interrupted by the spiderweb of a fracture.

  Sammy’s eyes went wide.

  “Whoa,” he breathed, reaching out.

  “Careful,” Cal said, catching his wrist before he could prod the damaged connectors. “It’s dead, but anything that came out of a Tower gets respect.”

  Sammy wrinkled his nose. “It just looks like a backpack that lost a fight.”

  “Accurate,” Jordan said.

  They sorted the junk into piles: completely worthless, maybe-sellable, and Mrs. Hsu’s special pile—things she liked to take apart for the copper or the casing. Jordan did it with his usual cheer, whistling under his breath, flicking bits of plastic into the dead pile with unnecessary flair.

  “Okay,” he announced after a few minutes, hands on his hips. “We’ve got…three kilos of nostalgia that might buy us a loaf of bread if we find the right old-world collector, five of pure trash, and one beautiful, damaged hunk of history.”He slapped the aether pack shell, the thunk punctuating his claim, “Tell me that doesn’t scream ‘bonus’ on the price.”

  Cal picked it up and weighed it.

  “The shell’s intact,” he conceded. “The alloys are good, and buyers like having something they can tell stories about. ‘Recovered from the attempted New Atlanta rebuild’ plays well in the markets.”

  “See?” Jordan said. “We’ll get a good run soon. A couple more days like this, and we’ll be living large. Maybe even two bowls of soup per person.”

  He said it as a joke, but the optimism underneath was real.

  Cal met his eyes for half a second.

  He tried to arrange his face into something that matched, but the expression wouldn’t stick.

  Jordan’s grin faltered as he read it anyway.

  “Hey,” he said, voice gentling. “It’s something, right? We didn’t come back empty.”

  “Yeah,” Cal said. “It’s something.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He set the aether shell down a little more carefully than was necessary.

  While his mother ladled soup into bowls and Jordan started on the worst of the broken plastic with a pair of wire cutters, Cal did the math.

  He didn’t need pen and paper anymore. The numbers lived behind his eyes, always waiting.

  Rent first. Always rent first. The landlord had raised it last month, citing tower-proximity demand and “maintenance costs” no one had seen. That was…he added the figure, felt it settle in his chest.

  Food next. Even with Mr. Hsu’s discounts, even with Sammy’s habit of pretending he wasn’t hungry so someone else could eat more, the cost of rice and noodles and a little meat when they could get it had crept up.

  Utilities: power rations, water allotment, and the tiny extra fee if you wanted more than four hours of light in the evenings.

  Then the big one. Medicine.

  He saw the number as clearly as if the clinic’s invoice were hovering above the table. The last round of treatments, his mother’s doctor had convinced him to try—“might slow the spread, even if we can’t reverse it”—had wiped out everything they’d managed to save in six months.

  Aether cancer didn’t care about bank balances. The clinic did.

  Add Sammy’s school supplies to the list, too. The kid’s handwriting had been scratched halfway off his only notebook from last term. If Cal didn’t get him a new one, he’d keep using it anyway, pretending it was fine.

  The day’s haul—if Mrs. Hsu gave them a fair price for the pack shell—might put a thin dent in food and utilities. It didn’t touch the rest.

  He could feel the numbers stacking over his head, layer on layer, brick on brick.

  He was keeping up. Just. Balanced on his toes so he could breathe.

  It still climbed.

  “Cal?” his mother said.

  He blinked and realized he’d been staring at the chipped tabletop without seeing it.

  “Soup’s ready,” she said. “Before it decides to evaporate on us.”

  He wiped his palms on his pants and went to help her carry the bowls.

  They ate sitting around the table, knees bumping.

  The soup was thin, flavored mostly by salt and whatever bones Mrs. Hsu had been willing to sell cheap that morning. Sammy still attacked it like it was a feast, slurping noodles and making exaggerated satisfied noises until their mother laughed.

  “So,” she said, once they’d all had a few bites, “did you find anything cool today?”

  Sammy perked up, leaning forward. “Jordan almost fell through a floor,” he blurted.

  “That’s not cool,” she said, frowning.

  “It would’ve been a very memorable splat,” Jordan said.

  She gave him a look that could have stripped paint.

  He lifted his hands. “Kidding. Mostly. Cal had it handled.”

  Cal shrugged one shoulder. “Nothing worth bragging about,” he said. “Just old junk. One early Tower battery shell. It’s cracked, but we can sell the casing.”

  Sammy looked disappointed for a second, then covered it by tipping his bowl to drink the last of the broth.

  His mother’s gaze flicked between the two of them.

  “You boys are doing enough,” she said. “More than enough.”

  Her voice was light, almost teasing, but Cal heard the strain under it. He saw it in the way she held herself too straight in her chair, refusing to lean back because it made it harder to stand up again.

  “We’re fine,” she added. “We have food, a roof over our head, and we have each other. That’s more than a lot of people out there.”

  Cal’s spoon slowed.

  In his head, the numbers rearranged themselves into a different shape: not bills, but time. The weeks the doctor had cautiously suggested the treatments might buy. The months are ticking down until the landlord runs out of patience with partial payments. The deadline Sammy had before school stopped pretending not to notice the fees were late.

  His mother caught his eye.

  “Hey,” she said. “I see that look. Don’t you do that. Worry can’t buy us anything either.”

  He forced a smile.

  “I’m just tired,” he said. “Long day.”

  “Then eat,” she said. “You’ll be no good to anyone if you fall over from hunger. Even mighty climbers have to fuel up, right, Sam?”

  Sammy’s head snapped up. “He’s not a climber,” he protested. “He’s a scavenger. That’s different.”

  “Scavengers are cooler,” Jordan said. “Climbers walk into a Tower that already knows what’s coming. We walk into buildings that have forgotten their own layouts from fifteen years ago. Much more suspense.”

  Sammy snorted soup through his nose and coughed, laughing.

  Their mother smiled, and for a moment the lines around her eyes smoothed, the glints beneath her skin less obvious.

  Cal held his spoon above his bowl and thought, It’s not enough.

  He swallowed the thought with the next mouthful.

  After dinner, they cleared the table. Sammy washed; Jordan dried; Cal stowed the dishes back on their crooked shelf. Their mother insisted on helping, then had to grip the counter hard when a wave of dizziness hit her.

  “Sit,” Cal said immediately.

  “I’m fine,” she said through her teeth.

  He moved closer, ready to catch her if she swayed.

  For a second, the defiance in her gaze met the worry in his and almost burned it away.

  Then her knees trembled.

  She let him guide her to the worn couch against the wall.

  Sammy watched from the sink, hands still submerged in soapy water, eyes too wide.

  Jordan saw it too. He tossed the last plate onto the rack a little harder than he needed to, then clapped his hands together, forcing brightness into his voice.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m going to run this stuff down to Mrs. Hsu before she closes up. See if I can charm her into forgetting what time it is and paying us today instead of tomorrow.”

  “You don’t need to—” Cal started.

  “Please,” Jordan said. “You think I want to be here when your mom starts telling embarrassing stories about baby Cal and his blanket?”

  She huffed a laugh. “I have material for days,” she said.

  “Exactly,” Jordan said. “I’m preserving my mystique.”

  Then his expression shifted, just a fraction.

  “Don’t stay up all night doing numbers again,” he added, quieter. “Your brain’s not a calculator. It’ll break like the rest of this junk if you push it too hard.”

  Cal snorted. “Look who’s giving safety lectures.”

  “Hypocrisy is my most charming trait,” Jordan said. “Ask anyone.”

  He opened the door. The hallway noise pressed in around the edges.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, like a promise. “We’ll get a better run. Maybe hit the old hospital wing on Ninth. I heard a crew talking about backing off on it. Too close to the aether hot spots.”

  “That’s supposed to convince me?” Cal said.

  “It’s supposed to convince you there’s good scrap,” Jordan replied. He hesitated, then added, “And it’s supposed to remind you that we don’t have to be stupid to be broke. Tower’s not the only way to die for money.”

  Their eyes met.

  “So we stick with salvage,” Jordan said. “We keep our heads down. We don’t go chasing glory up some alien staircase. That’s how we win this game.”

  Cal opened his mouth. No came to his lips first. Then Yes. Then Maybe. “I’ll think about tomorrow,” he said instead.

  Jordan made a face. “You think too much.”

  Then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.

  The apartment seemed smaller without him there, the noise from outside muffled to a low, constant hum.

  Later, when the dishes were dry and stacked, and the last of the soup scraped from the pot, Sammy crawled under the blanket on the narrow bed they shared behind the curtain.

  “I’m not tired,” he insisted.

  “You’re yawning,” Cal said.

  “I’m bored, not tired,” Sammy said. He burrowed deeper anyway.

  “Same thing at this hour,” Cal said. “Sleep. You’ve got school in the morning.”

  Sammy made a noncommittal noise.

  When Cal pulled the curtain half-shut, he could see his brother’s eyes still open, glinting in the dim light.

  He pretended not to see.

  In the main room, their mother sat propped against the couch arm, a thin knit blanket over her legs. The flicker of the cheap wall screen painted her face in alternating bands of blue and white as a Tower broadcast played on mute.

  She wasn’t watching it. Her gaze had gone soft and distant, focused on something beyond the wall.

  “Need anything?” Cal asked quietly.

  She blinked and looked up at him, her smile automatic and a little worn.

  “Just your company,” she said. “Sit for a bit. This old body’s not going anywhere.”

  He sat on the opposite end of the couch, stretching his legs out.

  On the screen, footage showed climbers on some lower floor—jungles, by the look of the greenery and the things moving between it. The broadcast caption scrolled scores and sponsorships in bright text.

  His mother followed his gaze, then snorted softly.

  “Looks exhausting,” she said. “Can’t believe they do that for fun.”

  “They do it for money,” Cal said.

  “Money’s never fun when you’re the one bleeding for it,” she said. “Trust me.”

  He did.

  He watched her shift, trying to find a position that didn’t pull at the scars under her skin. The small grimace she tried to hide when she reached for the cup on the low table. The way her fingers trembled when she put it down.

  “Doctor called again,” she said, as casually as if she were mentioning the weather. “Wants to see me in two weeks. Says he might have something new to try.”

  Cal’s stomach went cold. “New is code for ‘expensive,’” he said.

  She shrugged, or tried to. “Maybe she just likes my company.”

  He didn’t laugh.

  “If it’s going to help—” he started.

  “It might not,” she cut in gently. “And I’m not interested in you breaking yourself for maybes.”

  “I already am,” he said before he could stop himself.

  Her eyes sharpened.

  “Calen Ward,” she said. “Look at me.”

  He did.

  “You are not responsible for fixing the universe,” she said. “Or me. Or anything else that went wrong when that damned wave hit. You do what you can. Keep your brother safe and keep yourself mostly in one piece. The rest is…noise.”

  He swallowed.

  “And if what I can do isn’t enough?” he asked.

  She held his gaze for a long moment.

  Then she reached over and squeezed his hand, her grip weaker than it used to be but still present.

  “Then we deal with that when we reach it,” she said. “Not five miles before.”

  He nodded because there was nothing else to do.

  Eventually, her eyes drooped. Her head tipped back against the couch.

  He waited until her breathing settled before he stood.

  He turned off the wall screen to save a few minutes of power and crossed to the small window.

  Outside, the district had quieted. Stalls were closing, lights going out one by one. A few late workers trudged home, shoulders hunched.

  Beyond the stacked roofs and laundry lines, the Tower city proper glowed, its clean lines and brighter lights separated from them by fences and guards and the invisible wall of wealth.

  Beyond that, on the dark horizon, the Tower itself stabbed into the night sky.

  Even from here, he could see its faint outline, darker than the darkness around it. Tiny pinpricks of light moved along its lower levels—windows, he’d been told, or observation decks, or something stranger.

  He rested his forehead against the cool glass.

  He could hear Sammy’s breathing from behind the curtain. Too even to be real sleep. The kid was listening, always listening, pretending not to.

  In the other corner, his mother shifted in her sleep and made a soft, pained sound.

  Cal closed his eyes.

  The numbers in his head didn’t go away. They never did. They just paced in circles, wearing grooves.

  Rent. Food. Utilities. Medicine. School.

  They couldn’t keep balancing like this forever. One bad month. A single bad treatment.

  A collapse was coming.

  He just didn’t know yet whether it would be the building under his feet, the life they’d stitched together here, or something inside him finally snapping.

  Cal opened his eyes and stared at the Tower until his vision blurred.

  “I’m not running off to play hero,” he whispered, too quiet for anyone but himself to hear.

  Outside, the alien structure loomed, indifferent. Behind him, his family breathed in the dark.

  He stood between the two, feeling the weight of both pressing in.