Page 38 of Too Many Beds

“If I beat up everyone who challenges me, sooner or later, it’ll earn me a stint in the Plunge,” he continues, eyes soft and earnest. “While I’m in there, someone will come for my kennel. It’s what happened to the last top dog and you don’t want that to happen to me, do you? Because if I’m in there, who’s out here with you?” He strokes my cheek. “This is the best way to keep us strong—to keep us safe. You understand that, right?”

I swallow, gaze still distant. He is right, I know that. But it still hurts. It still feels like betrayal.

“I-I …” There’s a tremor in my voice, but I turn to look at him, taking strength from the conviction I see in his dark eyes. “I understand. This is the best way I can help you. I love you, Tarrant.”

He rewards me with a kiss so deep and sensual, it seizes my breath. Our foreheads remain joined long after our lips part, Tarrant’s hand curled around the back of my neck.

“I know, baby. I know.”

T wenty-seven days. Twenty-seven beds.

I’ve been fucked and fondled by so many men I no longer feel anything. Not when Tarrant takes me to the showers after and tenderly scrubs my body clean. Not when he makes love to me in our bed, or wraps me in his arms for sleep. It’s all just business now.

Since coming to our understanding , Tarrant’s been actively recruiting, trying to grow his pack to have presence in every block. I’ve been sent as a peace offering—a bargaining chip—to every cohort not officially aligned with Tarrant, welcoming them into his crew by welcoming them into my body. Drugs were on offer too—the main course, actually; I was just the appetiser.

We’ve had no luck with A Block, nor with H. Most of them hadn’t been phet users on the outside so that makes them harder to sway—harder to please. Doesn’t stop Tarrant from trying, though.

“Just have to try a different tactic,” he says.

I suspect that’ll have something to do with me.

“Big news, boss,” Kon announces, staggering into the rec space. His limp is more pronounced today; maybe he’s been enjoying too many alcohol tabs in his water ration. “Heron Kim’s being released from the Plunge—this afternoon.”

Tarrant drops the weights he’d been crunching; they hit the ground with a dull thud.

“Who’s … Heron Kim?” I ask.

“Former top dog,” Tarrant says.

“Stone-cold nasty son of a bitch,” Kon adds quickly. “As dangerous as they come. And you can bet he’ll be wanting his throne back. Better get a muzzle on him, Tarrant—fast. Before he has time to rebuild his crew.”

Tarrant stretches his neck, then bends to retrieve the dumbbells and return them to the rack. He’s calm but unnaturally so, quietly calculating the situation. But the silence itches like badly woven synth-wool and I have to say something to scratch it.

“Well, what’d he do?” I venture. No one ever talks about what they did to get themselves locked up here, but for them to talk about this Heron Kim the way they did, he must have a rather notorious story. Call it morbid curiosity, but if I’m about to be ordered into this man’s bed, which I don’t doubt is Tarrant’s solution to all this, then I’d at least like to know what I’m up against.

Unlike the first time.

Tarrant and Kon exchange a glance. The silence is killing me. But when Kon starts undressing, I stiffen—and then move to do the same.

Kon’s jumpsuit gathers at his feet and he stands there in his briefs, otherwise making no advance on me. I relax but my eyes are drawn immediately to his left leg, rigid and glinting in the harsh artificial light. A plexichrome exoskeleton—a mechanical brace—is fitted to his leg from ankle to hip. The Authority issue them as alternatives to amputation, where the strength and functionality of a limb is severely compromised but not diseased, and the injured party’s productivity measure is not worth the cost of a neurogenic prosthesis.

Kon presses a button on the exoskeleton and shifts his weight wholly to his right leg. Steam hisses from the loosening seals as the brace depressurises. It opens like a hinged door and Kon pulls it aside. I draw a sharp breath. The limb is a mangled mess of scar tissue and atrophied muscle. Great chunks of flesh are missing where damaged meat has been excised away. His knee is red and swollen, protruding like a boil; the rest of the skin is purple and scaled, dry and cold with poor circulation. The pain Kon must be in …

“My uniform got snagged on the Podz conveyor belt,” Kon says, jaw firm. “Pulled me in. Leg was crushed in the gears.”

“Or so the Authority was made to believe,” Tarrant adds, folding his arms across his chest. “No one speaks about how Kim and his pack held Kon down as they threaded him through the belt like raw synth about to be moulded.”

Everyone is silent as I process that. Kon silently refixes his exoskeleton and redresses. I’ll never look at his limp the same way.

And I’ll never question Tarrant’s methods again.

H eron Kim is released back into the yard at 1436, during the mid-afternoon stretch break. He’s escorted by Fargus and two other guards I’ve not seen before. His hands are bound, and he waits with no apparent urgency as the guards swipe him into the gated outdoor rec area. A heavy silence smothers the inmates like a fire blanket.

“So he still has crew in H,” Tarrant whispers in my ear. He’s standing behind me, arms looped possessively around my waist as I observe Heron Kim’s interaction with the inmates who approach him. One after the other, they clasp hands and embrace him with brotherly back pats. Finally, he turns his attention to Tarrant and I shiver.

He’s tall and hawkish. Long and lithe. Athletic. Strong. His skin’s the colour of raw honey, rich and deep against the sullen beige of his prison jumpsuit. Silky black hair cascades past his shoulder in loose, lazy waves; a silver bolt pierces the centre of his bottom lip. That has my attention. Body mods are rare. Hair dye, piercings, tattoos—all pointless markers of creative expression that have no place under the Authority’s new world order. For Heron Kim to so brazenly persist with this act of defiance … he truly mustn’t give a shit.

He walks towards us. I clench against Tarrant’s embrace. The other man’s jumpsuit is opened to his waist, revealing a splay of ink etched into the shape of a bird in flight.

A heron , I realise. My skin prickles.

“Kim,” Tarrant greets as the tattooed man stops before us.

“O’Connor.” His voice is like oil. A half-smile parts his lips as he pats Tarrant on the shoulder.

And walks off.

T arrant wastes no time in his attempt to placate Heron Kim; I’m sent to H Block that very evening like a welcome basket filled with muffin-flavoured NourishPodz. My whole body is ablaze, taut with anxious energy. I’d stopped feeling anything after the first half-dozen beds, but this is different. This is Heron Kim—the most dangerous man in here, the biggest threat to Tarrant.

And I need to seduce him. Need to bring him to heel. Make him obey. Like it was even possible for me to do that.

Five sets of eyes turn to me as I appear in the doorway of the H Block common room. In place of the hungry, horny grins that usually greet my appearance, they look … amused. I even catch an eye roll.

“I, um …”

“Kim, peace offering’s here,” an inmate calls, not moving away from his PKT.

“Send him in.” The voice comes from inside an open cell door.

“You heard the man. In you go.” A chin gestures to the room behind him. A dry chorus of chuckles erupt as I pass them to the room.

Heron Kim sits on his cot, cross-legged with his jumpsuit rolled down to his waist, exposing the tattoo in all its glory. It’s … beautiful. He is beautiful. I try not to stare, but I can’t help it. He’s magnetic. Like a predator I dare not turn my back on.

“Should I, uh, shut the door?” I ask, blinking to regain my composure.

“Why?”

Heat rushes to my face. One of those types, then. I take a deep breath and start unzipping my own suit. Dutifully, with no pretence of seduction. He knows why I’m here.

“What are you doing?”

Maybe he doesn’t.

“I, uh …” Shit, stuttering again. I cough. “Didn’t you hear? Peace … offering?”

“Why doesn’t O’Connor come himself?”

“People tend to prefer me.”

Okay, that might have been seductive.

“Yes. I can see why.”

He’s silent for a moment, watching me as intently as I had observed him. His tongue fiddles with the bar through his lip, twirling it clockwise. I stand there awkwardly until he gestures I take a seat, which I do on the floor opposite him. The wall is cold against my back.

“I thought I told you to keep your head down,” he says.

My pulse spikes. It’s him—the man from the Plunge. Heat fills my veins. The voice I’d heard through the wall seemed so kind, so gentle; Heron Kim is anything but. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.

“I’m here for Tarrant,” I say. “He protects me, and I help him. Tarrant doesn’t like to hurt people.”

“Doesn’t he?” Kim leans forward, muscles rippling across his chest. “Let me tell you something—Eden Walsh, was it? There are two types of people in this prison: those who hurt the Authority and those who hurt each other. Ergo, you’re either with the Authority or against it. You sure you know which side you’re on?”

Indignation bubbles inside me. How dare he? Everyone left on Earth is against the Authority. You don’t grow up dirty and powerless in the slums like Tarrant and me without seeking a little rebellion against those who have it better. How could Kim think we’re with them?

“Tarrant’s a drug runner,” I hiss. “Everything he does is in defiance of Authority law.”

“And where do you think he gets the synths needed to make his phets so addictive? Steals them? Hardly. The Authority lets them circulate. Lets them get into the hands of runners so the vulnerable fall prey to the temporary solace they offer. Then the Authority punishes us. And you know why? To keep us in the dirt. Their cities are full. Their off-world colonies—full. They need reason to keep the masses out. To control the quality of human on their new world. So they make us criminals. Make us undeserving. And that is how the Authority wins. That is how people like Tarrant O’Connor let them.”

I sit quietly with my thoughts. Anger at his accusations spreads through my body quickly followed by … shame? Shame, because I know he’s right? Shame, because of how easily I’ve been led?

No. I know Tarrant. I love Tarrant. This is Kim trying to weaken us.

“I have no interest in dethroning O’Connor,” he says, voice softening. “There are bigger targets on my radar. I’m not a threat to you. So don’t become one to me.”

I keep my gaze down, fixed on my hands. I can’t look at him right now. I’m too worried I’ll betray the doubt currently boring through my conviction like a drill. “Tarrant won’t give up. He’ll keep sending me here until you fuck me—until you join his pack.”

A genuine smile blooms on Kim’s lips. “I look forward to it.”

I ’ve been to H Block six times now and all we do is talk. And flirt. There’s been plenty of that. None of the other recruits ever bother. It’s all ‘pants down, knees up’ with that lot. As cold and impersonal as a transfer of credits.

But it’s not like that with Kim. His room has become the one place where I don’t have to worry about being touched. Where I can just … sit. Maybe that just means he isn’t interested. I know not every man in here is. Not really. Doesn’t stop them from pawing at me in lust and loneliness.

“Who did that to you?” Kim asks as I enter his cell, a purple bruise encircling my neck.

“It’s nothing,” I mumble, taking my usual seat on the floor across the room. “Workplace hazard.”

Kim frowns. “No one should work under those conditions.”

No, they shouldn’t. I want to agree, but instead I say nothing. I raise my hand to gingerly rub my neck, sliding inside the open collar of my jumpsuit. Kim’s gaze is on me, eyes tracing the movement of my fingers. I feel the heat of it. A shiver whispers across my skin.

“How can you think O’Connor loves you when he subjects you to that ?” Kim mutters and drags his gaze away.

“ There are worse hazards,” I scoff, anger prickling up my spine. “Conveyor belts, for example.”

Fuck . My blood runs cold as the air freezes in my chest. I’ve gone too far. I’ve ruined the delicate peace we’d built here.

But who is he to judge Tarrant? To judge our relationship? He condemns our arrangement but does nothing to free me from it.

But neither does he assault you.

I brace myself for violent denial, but Kim just gives a little snort and lets a smirk play on his lips. There’s no declaration of innocence or accusations of misinterpretation. He just … stares at me. Waiting for me to react.

I take the bait. “Well? Why’d you do it?”

He twirls his piercing. “What have you heard about Nikolai Reid?”

Nothing. I’ve never heard that name before. No—wait. Reid. Reid’s old cell.

“I … sleep in his old room,” I say at last.

Kim’s face darkens. “Seems fitting,” he mumbles to himself. “Nikolai was a previous inmate. A beautiful, beautiful boy. Much like yourself, truth be told. O’Connor must have a type. Blond, blue-eyed, young .”

I don’t like where this is going.

“He was dedicated to O’Connor. Followed him everywhere. Did everything he was told. Even fucked an inmate or two. Sound familiar?”

My throat tightens. I try to swallow, but there’s nothing there; my mouth is just too dry.

“About six weeks before you joined us, O’Connor needed someone to deliver new synth material to the outside. His previous mule got busted and wound up in the Plunge. So O’Connor asked Nikolai. He really needed to get this product into the hands of his runners, but couldn’t risk the raw materials being discovered in the cavity search on the way to visitation. So he made sure to bury them deep.”

Bend over, grab your ankles and cough three times.

“ Too deep; Nikolai couldn’t retrieve them. Instead, they dissolved. Flooded his system with unrefined phets. And he died.”

“S-stop,” I choke, defiant tears in my eyes.

“They presented it as an accidental overdose,” Kim continues. “Bad batch, O’Connor insisted, naming Kon as the one responsible for bringing it in. As top dog, I punished him and got myself sent to the Plunge in result. When I was in there, I heard the truth of it. About the little mutiny O’Connor was planning and his arrangement with the guards.”

I can’t listen to this. I stand and make to leave, but Kim grabs my wrist as I rush past. It’s the first time he’s ever touched me and my skin burns hot as he pulls me close, my cheek pressing against the heron on his chest. He massages the nape of my neck. I don’t pull away.

“Don’t move drugs for him,” Kim whispers, his voice earnest. “Sooner or later, he will ask. Say no. Please. Just … say no.”

I stay encircled in Kim’s embrace. It’s warm. Intimate. Safe . My skin tingles where the pads of his fingertips press into my skin, heat spreading down my spine. I want to stay here forever. Just … breathing him in. He smells like sweat and gear grease, but I don’t care. It’s intoxicating.

I push back from his chest to look at his face. His embrace slackens but doesn’t fall away. He’s looking at me so intensely I might vaporise, his dark eyes endlessly deep.

“Why do you …” I moisten my dry throat. “Why do you care what happens to a drug runner’s whore?”

Kim smooths his thumb across my cheek, across my lip. For a second, I think he might kiss me. Fuck, I wish he would.

“Because I can’t bear any more beauty being stolen from this world.”

I grip his face and drag him down, our mouths crushing together. A moan rumbles in his throat as tongues dive deep. I’m breathless as my back hits the wall, light-headed and giddy. Kim’s lips are on my neck, sucking and licking. Oh fuck, my neck . When was the last time someone kissed my neck ?

When was the last time someone kissed me ?

I grind against him. God, I want him. I actually fucking want him. Arousal tightens my balls, stiffens my cock, and I slip my hands inside his open jumpsuit to trace the lines of his tattoo with my fingertips, with my tongue. I’m on my knees now and my face is in his crotch. I bury myself in it, breathing deep, nuzzling against the rock-hard heat of him.

He pulls away. Repels like a magnet. And I’m left kneeling there, panting like a dog, as he stares at me from across the room. Kim pushes his hair back off his face as he starts to pace, as if walking back and forth will take the sting out of his arousal. It’s the first time I’ve seen him rattled, uncomposed.

And I did this to him.

“I won’t fuck another man’s boy,” he says, shaking his head. “Even if that other man is O’Connor.” He sighs deeply and sits down on the edge of his cot, head falling into his hands. “Go, Eden. Go back to your top dog.”

“But Tarrant wants?—”

“I don’t care what Tarrant fucking O’Connor wants! Go, Eden. Go— leave !”

My feet don’t move for a moment. I’m stuck here—I’m stuck on him . But I can’t disobey. Not Tarrant. Not Kim. Not anybody.

So I run.

I don’t look Tarrant in the eye, even when he’s fucking me. On my back, I stare at the ceiling as he thrusts between my thighs. I can’t stop thinking about Nikolai Reid. About Tarrant’s role in his death.

About Heron Kim.

“I need you to take a break from seeing Kim tomorrow,” Tarrant says after he’s regained his breath. He’s finished and rolled off me, now lying propped up on an elbow, fingers combing through my hair. “There’s something else I need you to do.”

My head snaps towards him, a fist in my gut.

Sooner or later he will ask.

“I’ve got a meeting with my defence counsel,” he says, and I can almost hear the smile in his words. “Looks like the little stunt you pulled to get yourself in here has bought me some negotiation power. You took the fall for me, baby. My charges will be dropped. I’ll try and cut us a deal.”

“You’d … get us out of here?” A warm bloom of hope spills from deep in my belly.

“Of course,” Tarrant whispers, breath hot on my cheek. “You’re my boy. My beautiful, useful boy. Business is booming thanks to you. When we get out, we’ll have enough credits to leave the slums. To start over somewhere fresh, just like we always wanted.”

Do I still want that? A life with Tarrant? I kiss him to find out. The spark is there, distant and dim. I indulge it. Languid tongues and roaming hands breathe fire into a slow, sensual exchange I’d not felt with Tarrant in a very long time. Arousal prickles my cock, stoking it to life. I run my fingers through his hair, relishing the long, silky feel of it … but Tarrant’s hair is short, prickly, and I open my eyes, disorientated.

“What do you need me to do?” I ask abruptly, trying to hide the flush colouring my cheeks.

“A guard owes me a favour,” Tarrant says simply. “I need you to go collect it.”

“And then we can be free?” My voice cracks.

Tarrant smiles. “And then we can be free.”

I ’m summoned to an interview room shortly after Tarrant goes to meet his defence counsel to negotiate our release. I try to keep my nerves in check but it’s a losing battle. This could be the last time I do this. Anticipation of the end flutters so viscerally over my body it almost gets me hard.

Almost .

The guard swipes us into a small room in the administration building, similar to the one I was in during processing. There’s nothing in here but a steel table with a single chair. I’ve fucked in worse places.

“I’ll disable the camera,” he says, punching a code into the holoscreen projected from his device. “You’ll have five minutes.”

“I’m sure it won’t take that long,” I mutter, slipping out of my shoes. He’s one of the older guards here. I’ve seen him around during work orders, but we’ve never interacted before. Ironic, that I’m about to know him more intimately than others I have spoken to.

He steps towards me, not waiting for me to finish undressing. My muscles tense as I steel myself in preparation to be thrown to the floor. He places his hands on my shoulders, his grip ghosting down my arms until he reaches my wrists. Then he grabs me hard and pushes something into my palm—a plastic sleeve filled with translucent squares of tape.

Phets. Raw, synthetic, phets.

My blood runs cold. A mule. Tarrant’s turning me into a fucking mule. And the Authority’s his supplier.

Just like Heron said.

“Well?” the guard barks. “Don’t let anyone see you with that. Put it away before the camera’s back on.”

I stuff the pouch into my pocket, heart still hammering. “Right. Thanks, I guess,” I mutter and push my feet back into my shoes, head down to hide the tears stinging my eyes. I turn towards the door; it’s still locked.

“Where you going?” the guard asks gruffly. “I’ve done my bit. Time to do yours.”

I hear the groan of a zipper and turn back to see the man’s semi-erect cock flopped through the opening of his uniform. He gestures to his crotch, an incredulous look on his face.

Jaw clenched, I drop to my knees.

“ W here’s Heron Kim?”

I don’t know how I end up in H Block, but I’m standing in the doorway of the common room watching the inmates play some sort of tattered card game at the table.

“Showers,” a man with a closely shaven head says—Yannek, I think his name is? He discards a card from his hand onto the table. “Last stall on the left.”

I rush off without another word, towards the sound of running water echoing through the corridor from the bathrooms. It’s eerily quiet; the mid-afternoon rec time is commonly used for rest and the shower block is deserted save for one occupied stall.

There are no doors on the showers, just partitions separating each faucet, so I see Heron before he sees me. His eyes are closed with his head tilted towards the ceiling, water sluicing his long hair down his back like a black curtain. He soaps his body, rubbing wide, languid circles over his tattoo, which I now see is a whole flock of birds stretching across his flank, down past his hip and onto the top of his thigh.

My tongue flicks out to moisten my lips.

“Eden,” he startles, and a sob bursts from my mouth at the note of concern in his voice. I walk right into the shower, fully clothed, and fold myself into his wet chest. Maybe I’d been expecting rejection, but when he wraps his arms around me, I start crying in earnest. Dissolving, like the wad of phets in Reid’s body.

“You’re right,” I say, water dripping off my nose and eyelashes. “We do work for the Authority. I’m the fucking scum of the earth.” I pull the bag of drugs out of my pocket and raise it to show Heron. He snatches it from me, but not in anger. Not at me, anyway. He tears open the plastic sleeve and shakes the squares out onto the floor. They fizzle in the water pooling at our feet.

He stomps them down the drain.

“I don’t want to do this anymore, Heron,” I sob. “I don’t want to?—”

He kisses me. My thoughts fall away after that. My thoughts of Tarrant, the Authority, Kon’s mangled leg. None of it matters. Not while Heron Kim is kissing me like that.

He guides me back against the wall. Not with a slam, but with tender ease. He presses his body against mine, one arm by my head, the other at my hip. Our lips never part. I slide my hands up his back, the muscles slick with soap. I’m still clothed and that desperately needs to change. I want to feel his heat against me. His wet skin.

His hard cock.

Heron starts tugging the jumpsuit off my shoulders. I help shake the stubborn, wet fabric aside, my hands otherwise too distracted to help. I can’t stop touching him. He’s like a tangle of raw wires—hard and knotted and sending electricity crackling through my fingertips.

His hand cups my hip, thumb caressing the rise of the bone. “May I?”

“Yes,” I breathe. I don’t even know what he’s asking, but the answer is most definitely yes—fucking yes.

Heron’s long fingers curl around my cock. His hands are slick with soap and I whimper as he strokes me, so long and slow that my legs turn weak. He breaks our kiss and looks down, forehead resting against mine, as he watches me grow to full length.

“Tell me to stop and I will,” he breathes into my hair. “This only happens if you want it. Not because someone told you that you have to.”

“I want it,” I moan but grip his wrist to make him stop. Fuck, if he keeps pumping me like that, I’m going to come all over his hands right here and now. “I want it,” I repeat, stronger now I’ve recovered my breath. “I want you . I … don’t want to be with Tarrant anymore. I don’t want to serve the Authority.”

Heron releases a moan from deep in his throat, a rumble that’s somehow both content and full of yearning all at once. He tilts my chin up towards him and takes my lips in a probing, passionate kiss. It was so intoxicatingly intimate that time blurs; the next thing I know, my cheek is pressed into the wet tiles as Heron flips me around. I gasp as his hard body moulds against mine, his breath hot in my ear.

“Do you want me to fuck you?” he breathes.

“God, yes,” I gasp. “Fuck me so I forget.”

Heron licks up my jaw, over the shell of my ear and I moan, senses aflame. The steam from the shower makes me giddy and I bend my head back to rest on his collarbone, face turned to the pounding water. Strong arms envelop me. His hands are everywhere at once, groping my chest, stroking my cock, stretching my hole. I arch into him, bent like a bow as I repel off the wall he’s so desperate to grind me against. My hand grabs a fistful of his silky long hair and I tug it so hard, I steel myself for reprimand. It doesn’t come. Instead, Heron guides my hand away, kissing down my soapy neck as he pins it to the wall above my head. The other one comes to join it and now both my wrists are locked between one of his massive hands.

“Do you like it like this?” Heron coos, languidly soaping my crack with his other hand. “Or would you prefer I take you to bed?”

“Just take me now,” I moan. My pelvis tilts back, searching for his cock. I need him to fill me. When his fingers fall away, I whimper at the neglect, but welcome the firm grip he now holds on my hip.

Heron enters me in a single, smooth thrust—so deep I feel the prickle of his pubes against the small of my back. God, he’s huge. When he starts to move, I see white. Stars of pleasure and pain burst behind my eyes. There’s nothing sloppy or lustful in his thrusts; every roll of his hips is deliberate—a conscious, calculated movement to sensually stimulate each and every nerve.

“Oh, Heron …” My forehead slips down the wall where I’d tried to brace myself as my legs turn to gel. I’m weak all over, except for my cock, which is rock-hard and weeping. Thank God my arms are pinned because if I touch it, I’ll explode.

If he touches it, I’ll die.

“Come for me, Eden,” Heron growls. “Let it all out.”

His hand, which had been guiding my hips through each of his long thrusts, curls around my dick. A thumb rolling over the leaking head is all it takes to have me squirting up the shower wall. Heron holds me so I don’t collapse, his thrusts becoming erratic as his own orgasm builds. Both of his arms are curled around my belly, holding me off the ground as I ride his cock to oblivion. Now free, my hands clutch desperately at his as I pull him deeper, moaning as he jerks inside me. I clench down and he empties his balls with a primal groan that sends goosepimples shivering across my skin.

Heron lowers us both to the floor, panting wildly. He reaches up to cut off the shower, the steamy water now feeling cool against the heat from our bodies. I lay sprawled across his thighs, head resting back against his shoulder as I chase my own breath. His pulse pounds so violently I can feel it in my ears through the muscles of his neck.

“Are you cold?” he asks, squeezing his arms tight around me.

“No,” I say sleepily, then turn my head towards the sodden pile of clothes. “I’m not looking forward to putting that back on, though.”

Heron chuckles and presses a kiss to my temple. “Come on. I’ll find you something dry to wear.”

M y hair’s still damp when I trudge back to D Block, wrapped in Heron Kim’s spare jumpsuit. It’s far too big for me and with its rolled sleeves and ankles, it’s obvious I’m not wearing my own clothes. I don’t regret what I did—far from it—but my brain is so busy concocting lies and excuses to tell Tarrant that I walk straight into a guard leaving our common room.

It’s Fargus, listening to the crackling comm coming through her device.

“Hurry up, O’Connor,” she barks over her shoulder, deaf to my apologies. “Transport won’t wait for you.”

She steps around me to continue her call out in the corridor. As soon as I turn the door to my cell, Tarrant grabs my wrist and slams me into the wall. I expect to feel his lips on me; instead a fist crashes into the steel next to my ear and I shudder.

“Where the fuck is it, Eden?” he growls, grabbing my jaw.

“Wha—” His grip is so tight I can barely speak.

“The phets , Eden. You were supposed to bring them straight back to Kon and you didn’t. Where are they?”

“I dropped them,” I snap. “Guess I was surprised to find you working for the Authority. What the fuck, Tarrant?”

“I’m not working for the Authority, you pathetic little shit. They work for me. I fucking own this place, remember?”

“Do you? Looks to me like they own you .”

Tarrant spears a knee into my gut, knocking the wind from my lungs. I stay upright thanks to his hold on my jaw, but I really want to curl up in a ball against the pain and fear. Tarrant’s eyes are menacing as he leans in close. Again, I think he might kiss me; he doesn’t.

“Count yourself lucky I’m getting out today,” he snarls. “Because if I’d bothered to cut a deal for you too, you’d be dead in a ditch the moment we hit the slums.”

The threat dampens any betrayal I might have felt at Tarrant reneging on his promise to get me out. Relief floods through me instead—until he jerks my head towards Kon. “Though, I don’t think you’ll fare much better in here, either.”

Kon cracks his knuckles and I thrash against Tarrant’s grip.

“O’Connor,” Fargus says from the doorway, accompanied by a male guard. “Time’s up. Get going.”

Tarrant releases me with an affable smile at Fargus and bends to pick up his basket of belongings. “Been a pleasure, Fargus,” he says. “Don’t miss me too much.”

“Wouldn’t count on it, O’Connor,” she mutters.

He claps Kon on the shoulder as he passes, then leaves with the male guard without so much as a second glance in my direction. I’m glad for that. If he looked at me one more time with those dark eyes, I’m sure I’d puke. But instead, it’s Kon glaring at me with the same threatening intensity, and I can’t bear the thought of what will happen once Fargus leaves us alone.

I open my mouth to blurt out some pathetic excuse for me to be anywhere else but Fargus beats me to it.

“Meyer,” she says, turning to Kon. “Stretch break is over. Back to your work order.”

“Yes ma’am,” he grumbles reluctantly, not breaking our eye contact until he’s completely out of sight.

I release the breath I’d been holding, and a shudder racks my body. I’m due at the same work order. Any second now, Fargus will be telling me to move my arse and, come this afternoon, I’ll be threaded through the gears just like Kon’s leg. Maybe they’ll just kill me.

Maybe that would be best.

“Pack your things, Walsh,” Fargus commands. She types distractedly into her holoscreen projection.

“S-sorry?” I stammer, confused. Tarrant said the deal was just for him. Surely I’m not going to be?—

“I’m moving you to another block for safety; this is the best I can do for now.” She keeps typing away, then stops to look at me. “Believe it or not, we don’t actually like it when inmates are murdered in here.” Her face softens into a wry smile. “Too much paperwork.”

I carry my world in a plastic basket. Back across the yard, past the scrutinising stares of the inmates, and through the stark white buildings that all look frustratingly the same. Anxiety takes hold of my chest just as it had the day I was admitted, but this time everything’s so much worse. There’s no spark of resolve or simmering anticipation to see Tarrant. There’s just … nothing. Nothing but a target on my head. An actual fucking target that I put there myself. So much for keeping my head down.

I should have known making enemies would be more dangerous than being the new boy; I have no doubt Kon’s already spread word of my betrayal throughout Tarrant’s crew and the next time I show my face to them, it’ll be smashed into the concrete. The Authority’s going to need to do more than change where I sleep.

Fargus swipes her device at the entrance of my new cell block and the inmates in the common room all turn to face our arrival.

“New cellmate,” she says, gesturing me inside. “Kim, I trust you’ll make him feel welcome.”

Heron looks up from his PKT, smiling from ear to ear in a way I’ve never seen before. Warmth fills my chest, burning away the claws of anxiety’s grip. I almost drop my basket and run to him.

“Of course,” he says, still grinning. “Let me show you where you’ll sleep.”

Heron Kim stands and leads me through the open door of his room.