Rage ripples across Ying's face as she takes in my features. She points a shivering finger at me. "Arrest xem!"

Jaya shuffles forwards muttering, "Respected, xe's just a doctor sent to treat the man who hacked this 'porter."

"You left me in a coma! You just disappeared!"

My mind rushes to fabricate a plausible excuse for Ying's ire before the wardens pulse me, but my hunger and Shiro's betrayal and abject terror have all exhausted me. I can't even begin to think up another lie. I hold up my arms in surrender. "Ying, I'm so sorry. I'm glad you're OK now."

If the two wardens had been disgusted by my dalliance with Shiro, they look utterly sickened now. The scarred warden reaches to their belt with all the alacrity of someone who has been waiting for the merest semblance of an excuse to pulse me. "Xe committed a crime when you were together."

"Yes! There's something wrong with xeir skin. I touched xem and then I..." Ying claws at her neck, as if phantom feeding tubes and sensors are obscuring her airways, "...I got ill. Xeir touch hurts people."

The scarred warden's finger taps eagerly on their pulser's trigger. Jaya stands agog, their pulser now trained on me. How many times in one day can I stare death in the face without going utterly mad?

I find myself screaming into Ying's face. "That's not fair, Ying! You promised you wouldn't touch me! You said you loved me, then you touched me while I was asleep!"

Jaya blunders in, their pulser now hanging limp. "Respected, if you touched the doctor without xeir consent, that is a crime."

"Xe put me in a coma! Xeir skin hurts people!"

Jaya's kholed eyes jump between Ying and my competing glares. "Respected, this doctor was... in intimate contact... with the ore thief who hacked this 'porter. That wouldn't have been possible if xeir touch hurts people."

Ying's face corrugates with disgust. "You did what?"

My nerves close to scorching, I latch onto Jaya's deduction and run with it. "And that thief then stole my hov and an ammonia cannister, so he clearly wasn't in a fucking coma after touching me, Ying!"

Ying shakes her head vehemently. "You're twisting things!"

Jaya stows their weapon. "It's clear that the doctor couldn't have hurt anyone with xeir touch. Forgive me, Respected, but you must be mistaken."

Ying's stare begins to waver. She's doubting what happened four years ago.

My heart aches. I hurt Ying in so many ways. I'm a monster.

She wiggles her shoulders, sending her tethered helmet swinging into her hand. "You're scared of your own shadow, Heems. You wouldn't do that with a complete stranger. You must know him. You came here to rescue him."

"I don't know him! We thought we were going to die in the storm. It just... happened."

"The hospital often sends doctors to treat miners on rigs and transporters, Respected," says Jaya with a weariness that suggests that they'd prefer pulsing rioters than enduring more of my sordid private life.

"He stole a transporter, and I will make an example of him. Any evidence that you've been helping him, and you'll be an official criminal too, and the wardens will be forced to act. Think about that."

Ying clips her helmet back onto her turquoise suit and disappears into the airlock in a whoosh of compressed air.

The wardens bundle me into the back of their armoured hov. It's clearly designed as a mobile prison unit, but I expect they've never had cause to install better seating for doctors dying of misadventure. Megumi Kida's faded face smiles out of a poster attached to the back of the hov seat reminding wardens that meatware function is impaired by cold and to keep the heaters running at full blast in their counterpressure suits.

The scarred warden leans into the back seat. "We'll leave you at the hospital."

"Could you take me to the Spaceport? I'm... needed on Pluto."

"Hospital or nothing. All wardens have security drills for an Earth visit next week. I don't have time to drive doctors around all day."

"Who's visiting from Earth?"

"None of your business."

The journey across the starlit sandflats back to the hovway tunnels is quick, passing the two fuel stations that were reduced to rubble by the storm. Jaya stops the hov in the market, where the scarred warden leaps out into deserted streets. The stench of singed flesh wafts through the open hov door, explaining the market's sudden emptiness. A riot must have been quashed moments earlier.

We continue to the warden-reserved part of the vast hospital network and Jaya lets me out of the hov. I'm about to leave when they take my sleeve.

"You want to know about the Earth visit next week. I could tell you." They speak nonchalantly, as if casually offering information. But nothing about wardens is casual.

"I don't want to know."

"A governor from Earth is coming to discuss Eris's high mining and manufacturing productivity compared to the other Dwarfs. They're thinking of rolling out meatware on Pluto, Haumea and Makemake too."

I resist the urge to scream "Don't do it!" As rare as my condition is, there's a tiny chance that one in three million Edgers will turn out to be a parasite like me.

Jaya begins polishing their pulser with a ragged cloth. "I was wondering, since I told you that, you could do something for me."

"You didn't tell me anything. This isn't an exchange."

"OK. Then I'll keep IndoChina away from your man if you do something for me."

"He's not my man. I don't make deals."

As if they didn't hear me, Jaya furtively looks around before leaning close. "Can you do something for my... friend?"

Friend. I understand the euphemism immediately. Jaya has a secret partner. A secret partner who must be so utterly desperate for help that Jaya is confiding in me.

"She's clever and tough, but recently she's been..." They tap at their temple. A meatware malfunction. The eighth I'll have seen this month. Everyone's meatware is suddenly malfunctioning.

"If she's..." I tap at my temple, "...then she needs to report it to the hospital. She can go underground for a while."

"Can't you fix her meatware? She needs to get back to work..."

"I'm sorry. Meatware malfunctions are rare, and doctors can't just hack meatware. The hospital will talk to Kida Biotech about how to help your friend. Maybe they can get her meatware updated, or fix a glitch. You've seen Megumi Kida's lens adverts, right? Kida's bionics team are there to help."

Jaya huffs out a breath, then looks around themself before leaning in again. "Look, I don't have much money. But if I—"

I back away with a gasp. "I can't take your money!"

Shiro's right. I've been so naive. I'd always thought that I was undoubtedly the worst doctor on Eris, but Jaya's brazen offer shows just how corrupt doctors can be. How many of my colleagues have taken bribes to give off-record treatment to keep sickly miners working? Eris could be bursting with workers suffering from meatware malfunctions that have never been reported to the hospital; maybe the eight citizens I know of are just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm about to walk away, but Jaya's face halts me. Wardens are meant to administer their brutal brand of justice, a force to control and contain. Until this sol I've never seen a warden look so adrift as Jaya.

"Fine. I'll visit your friend. Send her pod code to my lenses."

Tears brim in their eyes. "Thank you. I'm Jaya, by the way."

"Heems." Since this is meant to be a transaction, I may as well milk Jaya for as much information as I can. "Are they really thinking of implanting meatware into workers on the other Dwarfs?"

"Yeah. Forty years of meatware on Eris, and the other Dwarfs are jealous of our wealth. With meatware they'll have the manpower to set up bigger foundries and metal processing plants, like we have here. They'll never catch up with Eris, though, even if their citizens stop going underground every six months." They let out a bitter chuckle. "Not that wardens see any of that wealth trickle down to us. Kida Biotech and the mines suck it all up first."

"So Kida and the mining companies are going to meet with this Earth governor?"

"Yeah, in the Kida Biotech building in a few sols. They've been lobbying Earth Councils to start trialling meatware on Pluto in a couple of months."

"A couple of months?" My heart hammers at the thought.



18:12, Secondsol 13th M5, 2226

The walk from work to my pod follows its usual route past Kida Biotech. Curved glass gleams under the dome's luminaires. I skirt too close to the building; Megumi Kida appears in my lenses, lullabying me to keep warm while she and her father plan to implant the entire Edge's three million inhabitants with meatware. I should have told her years ago about my parasitism; maybe she'd think twice about her expansion plans if she knew what could go wrong.

I've only been away from my pod for thirty-six hours, yet it feels like I'm entering a dull box, perfect for the old Heems to inhabit but unable to contain the strange new Heems that I've become. A quick rifle through my pockets and I find the rakhi that Shiro broke. I store it in a drawer and tie a new one onto my wrist. The worst brother in the Solar System, but I'm still a brother.

Within one sol, everything has changed. A sol where I'd intended to escape to Pluto has turned into a night of lying awake, reliving my every moment with a man who I can touch all over, a man who I found and lost again to the Eris night. And I'm starving, as usual.

My hunger gets acute enough to make me double over in bed. I can't keep living like this. I need to find Shiro. He's in bad shape so can't possibly be an effective criminal by now; he'd gladly take ten thousand Rupees to come to Kida Biotech with me to fix my meatware. I could give him more if he wants. He did leave me to die, but he's an opportunistic thief; I know it's nothing personal. Besides, I'd intended to feed on him. The thought that Shiro ended up sating every other hunger inside me instead makes me smile in the darkness of my pod.

He stole my hov and an ammonia cannister, so the furthest he could possibly have gone is back to the city. He could be mere metres from my pod right now, walking on a ruined ankle. There can't be many places in Eris-1 for an injured thief to hide. I'll search every shade den in the city if I have to.

I'll find him.



The Slut's Guide to Romance- AWryneckWrites