Page 12 of Holding the Line
Marsh’s voice dropped, cutting and low.“You’re not real.You’re just a performance wrapped in bruises.And I’ve fucking had enough of pretending that noise is connection.”
Eli stepped around the chair.“Done?”
Marsh’s mouth opened, then shut.
Eli nodded.“Great.”
He turned and walked away, shoulders slumped, steps steady but silent.
Marsh called out, “Hey—Eli, wait.”
Eli gave no response, just kept walking, his inner demons alive and well.
Chapter Three
The next morning camewith a taste like ash in Marsh’s mouth and a throbbing behind his temples that even blackout curtains couldn’t chase away.He lay on his back in bed, blinking blearily at the ceiling, the quiet hum of the Ridge’s environmental systems filtering through the stillness of his quarters.
It wasn’t a hangover in the traditional sense—he hadn’t had a drop of alcohol the night before—but the emotional fallout hit just as hard.The sour guilt.Tired from a sleepless night, tossing and turning.The leaden weight of shame coiled tight in his chest.The memory of Eli walking away with his shoulders slumped and not a single word in return.
He pushed himself upright, groaning as the motion jarred his healing body.The mechanics of getting from his bed to the chair were infuriatingly familiar by now—brace, swing, transfer—but they didn’t get easier.Not when every move reminded him of what he no longer had.
The useless, painful, prosthetic still sat in the corner of the room, mocking him.He wasn’t ready to persevere with the fucking thing.Might never be.
Getting to the shower was a production.The rails, the modified controls, the non-slip mat.Every element designed to assist him made him feel weaker.Smaller.Less.He hated it.
He could still hear Ezra’s voice in his head, calm but unrelenting.“You can’t out-engineer grief, Marsh.”
He’d tried.
He’d built schematics for exoskeleton supports, redesigned his wheelchair twice, and even sketched an idea for an automated brace system—but none of it made the mirror any easier to look into.
By the time he made it into the lab, his jaw was clenched, and his hands were already aching from how tight he’d been gripping his wheels.He rolled past the rows of workbenches, humming with dormant tech, to the bank of screens on the far wall.
Ten minutes later, the door to the lab slid open with a low hiss, and Marsh didn’t have to look up to know who it was.
“Jesus, you look like shit,” Bateman said, crossing the threshold with a coffee mug in one hand and that look in his eye that always spelled trouble.