The sling itched. Cheap synthetic strap against the side of his neck, and a raw stripe forming where it rubbed. Medic's exact words had been "minor nerve integration" — whatever that was — two days no resonance, don't argue. Caelum worked his good arm through a clean undershirt and gave up looking for a comfortable angle for the strap.
Fabric smelled like the laundry chute.
He'd showered twice. The first one went until the hot water gave out, and he wasn't sure it had done anything.
Datapad blinked on the desk. Charter selection in twelve days. Psych check, mandatory, tomorrow. First Marked stipend on the fifteenth, which he should have cared about more than he did.
To be patched up and shoved back out. Old thought. He almost smiled.
The knock was soft. Two taps, pause, one more.
He looked up. Wasn't expecting anyone. Dawson had gone wherever Dawson went. Éloïse lived in a wing his ID didn't even open. Caelum considered ignoring it. Medic had said rest. Rest sounds good.
Another knock. Same hesitation.
"Coming."
When he opened the door, he didn't recognise her at first.
Kifah in the corridor. Still in her field uniform. Mud crusted dark at the knees and along her collar, and her bandages weren't white anymore, they were grey, grey like she'd crawled through every sub-level on the way up and no one had stopped her. Hair flat where the helmet had sat. Dust streak from temple to jaw, not wiped.
She looked at him. Didn't say anything.
"Kifah." His voice came out rough. He cleared it. "Have you been to medical?"
"Yes."
Caelum waited, but she remained silent.
"Right. Come in."
She stepped past him. Tracked dried mud onto the floor and didn't seem to see it. Stopped in the middle of the room like someone had set her down there and forgotten to come back.
Caelum closed the door.
"You want to sit? There's the chair. Or the bed."
Kifah looked at the chair, then the bed. Sat on the floor.
Okay.
He lowered himself down across from her, careful with the sling. Up close she still smelled like the gate — that mineral rusted-water reek soaked into the fabric. He probably still smelled like it too, a little, under the soap.
"When did you last eat?"
She thought about it. Actually thought, like the question was a hard one.
"I don't know."
"Sleep."
"After medical, they wanted me to stay. I didn't."
"They let you walk out?"
"They weren't going to fight me about it."
Probably right. Med staff didn't go to the mat with a First Marked over an overnight unless something was on fire. She was an asset on paper now. She could go where she wanted, within reason.
"I have a question," Kifah said. Looking at her hands. "That's why I came."
"Okay."
"Blanchard. His family — who tells them."
Caelum's chest tightened. Knew it was coming. Hadn't been ready for it.
"The RMA tells them. There's a procedure, I'd guess. Standard notification."
"I want to know what it says."
"Kifah—"
"I want to know what it says."
Same tone. Same wall.
He looked at her properly this time. The dust on her face, the grey bandages, the shoulders sitting up too high like she was still bracing for something. She wasn't going to leave till she had it. This was the thing she was holding on to, to stay upright, and he'd be an idiot to pull it out from under her.
"Pull it up on yours." He lifted the sling a fraction. "Mine's got this in the way."
She blinked. ARC came on behind her eyes — he could tell from the unfocused gaze, the way it tracked something he couldn't see. You couldn't see another person's interface. Only told by the eyes.
"Searching," Kifah said.
She pulled her datapad from the hip pouch, thumbed it on, and propped it on her knee. Screen smudged with something rust-coloured along one edge.
"Unit member clearance should get the basic file."
A pause. Her jaw tightened.
"Restricted."
"Restricted how."
"Routes to Admin, Records and Personnel. Request-only." She looked up. "D-wing."
Caelum looked at the door, then at his sling, then the door again.
"Now?"
"Now."
He got up off the floor — harder than it should have been, the shoulder was turning into a real problem — and grabbed the hoodie off his chair. Pulling it on over the sling was its own project. Kifah didn't move to help, and he wouldn't have let her.
"Leave the mud."
She almost smiled. Didn't land, but the effort was there.
D-wing smelled like new carpet and old toner. The ceiling was lower than the rest of the facility, which always felt wrong, like they'd stuffed the bureaucratic floors into whatever gaps were left.
The duty clerk was middle-aged, short grey bob, a lanyard with three certifications Caelum didn't recognise. Nameplate said FENNER. Didn't look up when they walked in.
"Appointment?"
"No."
"Reason."
"Records request. Deceased unit member."
That got her. Fenner looked up, took them both in — his sling, Kifah's mud — and something in her face shifted. Not quite sympathy. Same postcode.
"Designation."
"Six three four," Kifah said.
Fenner typed. Terminal beeped. She typed more. At one point she picked up a receiver, spoke into it too quietly to hear, hung up, typed again. Caelum watched the top of her head, trying not to look like he was watching.
Kifah stood beside him, hands folded. The bandages clasped and unclasped. She didn't seem to know she was doing it.
Two minutes. Maybe three.
"Take a seat," Fenner said. "Waiting on secondary."
They sat. The plastic chairs were the kind that pretended to be ergonomic and weren't. Caelum's shoulder hated him. Kifah stared at a point on the wall that wasn't anything.
Fenner's terminal chimed. She read whatever had come through, then looked at them over the rim.
"I'm going to read you what's on file. I'm not giving you a copy. You don't have clearance for a copy, and neither do I."
"Understood."
"Blanchard, J. Designation six three four. Next-of-kin registration — blank. Emergency contact — blank. Legal guardian — none on file. No siblings, no extended family listed under the shared-surname protocol."
She stopped.
"The notification system closes the file when there's no recipient. Administratively, the matter's finished the moment there's no one to call."
Kifah didn't move.
"Thank you," Caelum said. Came out flatter than he meant. Tried again. "Thank you."
Fenner nodded once.
The walk back took longer than the walk down. Neither of them said anything until they were back in his room and the door was closed and Kifah was sitting on the floor, not the chair.
"What," she said.
"What?"
"They don't tell anyone."
"There isn't anyone to tell."
"That's what I mean. That's what I—" She stopped. Started again. "The form's marked complete. Recipient, empty. Address, empty. Next-of-kin, blank. Family status, blank. And that counts as resolved."
He sat with it.
Vent kicked on overhead. White noise, mechanical.
He thought about Blanchard in the waiting room before the trial. Blanchard always talked like he was two seconds off a joke. Caelum had assumed there were people. A cousin, an aunt, someone in the lower districts who'd open the envelope and know what it meant. Everyone has someone.
"He never said anything," Caelum said. Mostly to himself.
"He wouldn't have."
"You knew?"
"No. He just wouldn't have. Wasn't like that."
She was right. Probably. Blanchard asked questions but didn't offer much in return.
Kifah was looking at her hands. The bandages flexed. A crack of dried blood opened on one knuckle, fresh red under the grey.
"So nobody gets told."
"The form gets filed. That's procedure."
"That's not what I asked."
"I know. Nobody gets told."
She nodded slowly. Working it out for herself, not for him.
Silence sat there between them. Caelum tried to find something and couldn't. Sorry was cheap. Anything bigger was a lie.
He'd known Blanchard, sort of, for years — same lower district school, passing each other in corridors, nodding in the study hall — but knowing someone's face wasn't the same as knowing them. They'd only actually talked since the waiting room. Three weeks of real conversation against years of almost nothing.
Blanchard had stepped between Kifah and the matriarch. Caelum had watched it happen, and he wasn't going to tell her what he thought of the order of it, not tonight, not ever, if he could help it.
"There should be something," she said.
"Yeah."
"A funeral. Or. I don't know."
"Yeah."
"I've never planned one."
"Me neither."
She looked at him. First time since they'd come back in.
"I'll do it. I want to. I don't know how. Will you help?"
Not a question, the way she said it. Closest thing to one she could manage.
"Yeah. I'll help."
She nodded once and put her forehead down on her wrists. Didn't move after that.
Caelum didn't say anything. The vent hummed. His shoulder throbbed in a steady off-beat rhythm under the sling and he let it. After a while he got up, slow, careful with the arm, walked to the desk and got his water bottle. Put it on the floor by her foot.
She didn't lift her head. Her hand came off her knee and closed around the bottle.
The corridor light flickered in the hallway outside. Caelum watched her a moment longer, then eased himself down off the bed to sit on the floor beside her. Didn't say anything. Didn't need to.