Season 1 – Chapter 2
Sep-22-0010
Garrett’s shop smelled of sweat and grease and cheap stale beer. The front room was packed tight. Shelving on every wall packed with goods, crates on the floor, tools hanging from ceiling hooks, a narrow path worn between it all leading to the counter at the back. A scale, ledger and a coffee mug that had not been washed in recent memory sat on the counter.
Lena was behind the counter, her blonde hair pulled back loose, her face brightening when Hannah came through the door.
Lena came around the counter and they met in the middle of the room. The hug was brief and real.
“The caravan came through yesterday,” Hannah said. “Did you talk to him?”
Lena’s eyes dropped to the floor, color rising in her cheeks, her mouth pressed flat and her arms crossing all in the same moment. “I handed him change and said thank you when he held the door.” Lena pushed her hair back. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You made that face. I’m working up to it.”
“You’ve been working up to it for two months.”
“Some things take time, Hannah.”
Garrett came through the back door with his ledger, thick through the gut, his plaid shirt straining at the buttons, the gray undershirt beneath it dark with sweat. He looked at Hannah once.
“Your mother get those filters she ordered last week.”
“She got them,” Hannah said.
He grunted. “Tell her I got a line on solar regulators if she wants first look.” He set the ledger on the counter and started counting boxes.
Hannah leaned against the counter beside Lena. “Did you end up going to Mira’s thing last week?”
“For an hour. It was good.” Lena crossed her arms, watching her father count. “You should have come.”
“I know. Thomas had me across the Fringe and back.”
“He works you too hard.”
“He works everyone too hard,” Hannah said. “It’s a personality trait.”
Lena almost smiled.
Hannah turned from Lena and looked at Garrett.
“Short one again?”
Her voice dropped half a register, warm and certain, and it moved through the room like a change in pressure, present before anyone noticed it. Garrett’s shoulders dropped on his exhale. The vigilance he carried in them released without him noticing. His eyes moved to the crate. His hand moved to the ninth box.
Beside Hannah, Lena went still. Her arms uncrossed. Her weight settled back against the counter. She looked at the crate and her brow smoothed and her eyes softened on the stack of boxes, all dispute gone out of them.
“Eleven,” Garrett said. Not to anyone. Just saying what he knew.
He counted to eleven. Wrote it in the ledger. Closed the crate.
Hannah turned back to Lena.
The twelfth box was in her pack before she finished her next sentence.
Hannah keyed the airlock and came through, the heavy door sealing behind her.
Emma and Thomas were at the workbench. The core between them, the minigun components on the tarp, the data module case on the table.
Hannah stopped and took it in.
“Good day?” she said.
“Very,” Emma said.
Hannah crossed to the bench and crouched beside the core, running her hand along the processing cluster. Then she stood, pulled the antibiotic box from her pack, and set it on the bench.
Emma and Thomas both looked at the box. Then at Hannah.
“Garrett’s shipment came in,” Hannah said.
Thomas looked at the box. Then he turned and walked to the overlook.
Hannah knew what that meant. She followed.
The overlook was cut into the rock three quarters of the way up the hillside, a narrow shelf with an overhang above that swallowed it from above and a drop below that made it invisible from the ground. The river moved through the forest a hundred feet down, catching what light filtered through the canopy.
Thomas stood with his hands in his pockets. Hannah beside him. Emma on his other side.
He let the quiet sit for a moment. Then he said, “Walk me through it.”
Hannah looked at the river. “Garrett was skimming the community supply. Mom needed antibiotics. I took one box.”
“You planned it,” Thomas said.
Hannah said nothing.
“You knew the shipment schedule. You positioned yourself through Lena. You timed it.” He paused. “That’s not the same as acting on what’s in front of you.”
“It worked,” Hannah said.
“Yes,” Thomas said. “And you planted the suggestion in both of them. Garrett and Lena. Your friend was standing right there and you put it in her the same as you put it in him. She didn’t consent to that. She doesn’t know it happened.”
Hannah looked at the river. “Lena would have helped.”
“Maybe,” Thomas said. “But you didn’t give her the choice.”
Silence.
“And you didn’t bring it to me,” Thomas said. “Or Emma.” He looked at her. “You knew I wouldn’t approve.”
Hannah didn’t answer that.
“You decided alone.” He paused. “Not the antibiotics. Not Garrett. What I want you to sit with is what it cost. What you put in Lena without her knowing. What that does to you over time when using it gets easier because you feel the need is justified.”
Hannah looked at the river for a moment. “I understand,” she said. “I’ll be more careful.”
Thomas nodded once and looked back at the river.
Emma said nothing. Neither of them looked at the antibiotics. Neither of them was going to refuse them.
That was the gray too, and all three of them knew it.
