22:34, Firstsol 12th M5, 2226

Falling asleep in the arms of hypothermia never to wake again doesn't sound too bad compared to my usual vision of death: being pulsed by a warden for eating my patients.

Still, I can't help clinging onto life, onto hope. Hope that the storm will clear before our heat supply dies. Hope that I can befriend my ore thief and he'll confess what error in his meatware is protecting him from my parasitism. Hope that we can visit Megumi Kida together, and use his meatware as a guide to fix mine. For the first time ever I don't quash my silly reveries of being cured. I grasp them with both hands and run.

Hope galvanises me. Unfortunately for me, I'm not a cunning strategist capable of executing a hopeful plan. I'm a parasite trying to befriend a criminal. How exactly does a murderous doctor ingratiate xemself with an ore thief whose head is implanted with moribund meatware?

Of course.

I lean against the mattress and peep up at my thief. "Can I try some shade?"

He stares at me like I've just asked him to throw me headfirst into the blizzard. Then he laughs. He offers me his shade pen.

I push my lips tight against the mouthpiece and suck. A puff of shade fumes billows out as I hiccup. It feels good. Not exactly good. More that a distinctive lack of feeling bad hits me. Each drag of shade into my lungs brings with it the absence of feeling anything at all. Why haven't I been sucking shade all my life?

My thief asks in a shade-drawl, "What's your name?"

"Heems. What's your name?"

"Shiro."

I doubt that Shiro is his real name, just like he must doubt that Heems is mine.

He retrieves the pen from between my fingers and takes a long drag. "You... afraid of dying, Heems?"

I shrug my shoulders. "Death is better than Eris."

He chuckles at that. Perhaps it's the shade, but I like his laughter. I haven't heard anyone laugh outside of Earth comedies, or the fake laughter of my metaverse women when I compliment them. Eris isn't a place for jollity.

His chuckle simmers to a satisfied hum. I wasn't joking, though. I'm not attempting levity in the face of death. A parasite living on the brink of starvation yet incapable of killing myself, I'm somehow OK with gently dying at the hands of Eris's cold, like so many Edgers have done before me.

I lean back against the 'porter's insulation, an elbow on the mattress, not quite close enough to touch the thief, Shiro. The shade pulls at my eyelids, but I force myself to stay awake. I gaze into red eyes. "Are you afraid of dying?"

Shiro gazes back, then screws his eyes shut like he doesn't want me to see the whirlwind of despair in them. "I'm fucking terrified."

"I'm sorry."

His shade pen dangling from his lips, he tucks his hands under his armpits as if a sudden chill has coursed through him. "I just... wish I could say goodbye to my sister."

His admission surprises me. I hadn't expected a thief's final thoughts to be so tender. But, it makes perfect sense to me. I'm a criminal and my waking hours are plagued by thoughts of my family, so why wouldn't his be?

I ease the shade pen from Shiro's lips and suck deeply on it. Eyes closed, I murmur, "It's nice to die with company, Shiro."

On the edge of sleep, my skin tingles. A cold fingertip slides along my wrist, slowly hooking under the faded red thread of my rakhi. Shiro's fingertip.

My eyes shoot open and I flinch, wrenching my hand away. The rakhi thread around my wrist snaps and falls with Shiro's retreating fingers. Hairs rise all over my skin.

"I'm sorry." He tries to knot the remains of my months-old rakhi back onto my wrist, but the thread snaps again. He hands the tangled rakhi to me in defeat. "You've got a sister too."

I don't bother to correct him. I didn't know her, but I've tied a new rakhi on myself every year so that I'll never forget.

Shiro nestles into the mattress and tucks a blanket around his long legs, as if he's resolved to stay in the same position until we finally freeze to death. We fall back into a silence that permeates the cab thicker than the shade fumes around us.

The two of us suck at the shade pen in turn, lost in our own grief. My mind slows, and my eyelids begin to droop.

"Heems?" Shiro's fingertip slides along my wrist again, feather-light.

My reflexes strain, but I resist the urge to shrink away. My touch won't hurt him. My skin won't drain him. I don't need to be afraid anymore. I open a dozy eye.

Shiro is sitting close. His fingers retreat and knot together in his lap. "Do you find me attractive?"

"What?" I shake my head in an effort to cast off my shade-brain. My vision swims. Two Shiros become one as my eyes stabilise. "What are you talking about?"

"Not attractive, then. Just... acceptable." His eyes are black and begging. "We're going to die in two hours, Heems. So... I'm asking you. If you want to."

An invitation.

My first ever. Though, not so much an invitation as a plea.

Thoughts plough sluggishly through the mud of my shade-brain. I take in the implications slowly.

The parasite in me shrinks away from the idea. Intimacy kills. I tried it once before, just after I'd left my foster parents. Ying had been everything to me. I'd fought against my feelings for her for months, knowing that we could never be together, for her sake. I wish I'd been able to tell her the truth about my glitched meatware, that I'm cursed to crave love but never be loved, and that those who dare to love me will be subjected to the worst of fates. But Ying was determined to love me, and I was helpless to resist. 

I'd insisted that we could never touch, and she'd promised not to lay a finger on me. She betrayed me after two weeks, kissing me while I slept. She'd fainted at the first touch of her lips on mine. Too slow to awaken and push her away, I'd ended up draining her for so long that a faint became a coma. Pathetic excuse for a partner that I was, I'd called an ambulance then leapt out of her window and transferred to another mining colony.

The memory raises bumps all over my skin. I almost killed Ying. This time would be different, though; Shiro's malfunctioning meatware renders him safe from me.

The recluse in me asks if Shiro even wants me, or if this is just shade-talk from him. I'm not exactly pretty: twenty-five years of self-imposed starvation has left me as little more than eyes and ribs and tattoos of the Holy Family. Under normal circumstances a confident man like Shiro wouldn't want me.

I don't want him either; Shiro doesn't look remotely like any of the metaverse partners I've ever designed. He's all bones and shade-brain and trickling sweat beads despite the chilled air of the cabin. Perhaps he could have been called handsome in the past when his meatware clearly wasn't failing him, when his eyes were less ringed with sleepless nights and his skin wasn't translucent with radiation sickness. An ore thief, he's probably been exposed to levels of radioactive dust and chemicals that have pushed his meatware to breaking point. The hypocrisy of it stings, but none of my fantasies of intimacy would ever involve a criminal.

I'm about to decline when a singular buoyant thought catches my breath. This would be the first and only time that I can touch, taste, feel someone. What would it be like to have my entire body tight against Shiro's? All that skin touching skin, and he'd never come to harm. In fact, it would please him. This is the one chance in my life that I can give someone pleasure. The thought of it sends chills crackling through me.

As sickly and radiation-ravaged as he is, Shiro doesn't need to look like a metaverse beauty to tempt me. My prosaic metaverse simulations aren't elaborate in the slightest; all of them feature virtual lovers who don't die under my touch. Now I have the chance to experience touch for real.

Shiro's forehead wrinkles. He resettles his limbs under regulation IndoChina Mining blankets. "I'm sorry. Forget it."

I look down at my hands. Instruments of death. Could my touch make Shiro feel good? The merest brush of my fingers against his ankle had filled me with so much wonder. Having my entire body pressed against his would be mind-blowing. Perhaps the Goddess did send Shiro to me after all. Warmth to comfort me in my final moments. And it seems that he desperately wants comfort too.

I take his hand in mine. My touch doesn't drain him. He doesn't fall into a faint. Just the joy of tingling skin receptors and shy anticipation. Touching him makes me want to laugh and scream and weep.

Shiro leans close, his eyes lit with renewed hope. "What do you want to do, Heems?"

I peek up at shade-rimmed eyes. "Everything."