“He’s not. He’s gone, brother. Boy had a swamp where his immune system should’ve been. You know that. Without his medicine, he used to start feeling really sick in three, maybe four days. I have to take care of the two kids I still got.”
Prax nodded, his body responding without him. He felt like a flywheel had come loose somewhere in the back of his head. The grain of the bamboo table seemed unnaturally sharp. The smell of ice melt. The taste of milk going sour on his tongue.
“You can’t know that,” he said, trying to keep his voice soft. He didn’t do a great job.
“I pretty much can.”
“Whoever … whoever took Mei and Katoa, they aren’t useful to them dead. They knew. They had to know that they’d need medicine. And so it only makes sense that they’d take them somewhere they could get it.”
“No one took them, brother. They got lost. Something happened.”
“Mei’s teacher said—”
“Mei’s teacher was scared crazy. Her whole world was making sure toddlers don’t spit in each other’s mouths too much, and there’s a shooting war outside her room. Who the hell knows what she saw?”
“She said Mei’s mother and a doctor. She said a doctor—”
“And come on, man. Not useful if they’re dead? This station is ass deep in dead people, and I don’t see anyone getting useful. It’s a war. Fuckers started a war.” There were tears in his wide, dark eyes now, and sorrow in his voice. But there was no fight. “People die in a war. Kids die. You gotta … ah shit. You got to keep moving.”
“You don’t know,” Prax said. “You don’t know that they’re dead, and until you know, you’re abandoning them.”
Basia looked down at the floor. There was a flush rising under the man’s skin. He shook his head, the corners of his mouth twitching down.
“You can’t go,” Prax said. “You have to stay and look for him.”
“Don’t,” Basia said. “And I mean do not shout at me in my own home.”
“These are our kids, and you don’t get to walk away from them! What kind of father are you? I mean, Jesus …”
Basia was leaning forward now, hunched over the table. Behind him, a girl on the edge of womanhood looked in from the hallway, her eyes wide. Prax felt a deep certainty rising in him.
“You’re going to stay,” he said.
The silence lasted three heartbeats. Four. Five.
“It’s arranged,” Basia said.
Prax hit him. He didn’t plan it, didn’t intend it. His arm rolled through the shoulder, balled fist shooting out of its own accord. His knuckles sank into the flesh of Basia’s cheek, snapping his head to the side and rocking him back. The big man boiled across the room at him. The first blow hit just below Prax’s collarbone, pushing him back, the next one was to his ribs, and the one after that. Prax felt his chair slide out from under him, and he was falling slowly in the low g but unable to get his feet beneath him. Prax swung wild, kicked out. He felt his foot connect with something, but he couldn’t tell if it was the table or Basia.
He hit the floor, and Basia’s foot came down on his solar plexus. The world went bright, shimmering, and painful. Somewhere a long way away, a woman was shouting. He couldn’t make out the words. And then, slowly, he could.
He’s not right. He lost a baby too. He’s not right.
Prax rolled over, forced himself up to his knees. There was blood on his chin he was pretty sure came from him. No one else there was bleeding. Basia stood by the table, hands in fists, nostrils flared, breath fast. The daughter stood in front of him, interposed between her enraged father and Prax. All he could really see of her was her ass and her ponytail and her hands, flat out at her father in the universal gesture for stop. She was saving his life.
“You’d be better off gone, brother,” Basia said.
“Okay,” Prax said.
He got to his feet slowly and stumbled to the door, still not quite breathing right. He let himself out.