William did not sleep. He lay on his bed for hours, staring into the darkness that consumed the walls of their apartment. Pipes hissed behind the steel sheets, and loose metal shrieked whenever the pressure shifted through the station. Ordinarily, these sounds blended into the background of life in the Spine. Tonight, they came to him separately, each rattle and hiss sharp enough to keep his eyes open.
Maria slept beside him, her back turned towards him. William could hear her breathing. He could hear the faint catch in her throat, the soft movement of the blanket against her clothes, even the moment she swallowed in her sleep. He had shared a bed with this woman for years. He had slept beside her through shortages, sickness, and the long nights when the Spine failed to bring enough oxygen into their home. Yet he had never heard her so clearly.
He turned towards her. Was she always this loud?
The thought bothered him, but not enough to frighten him. The Azo had done something to his body; that much was obvious. His leg had grown back in minutes, and the dark veins beneath his skin had spread further since he returned from the Limb Market. It was hardly surprising that other things might have changed too. He had no idea what the dealer had put into that vial, and he had no intention of finding out by asking questions in a market where a man could disappear for less than the price of a meal.
William pulled the blanket over himself and tried to sleep. The next extraction was still days away, and he needed his body in good condition. If the Azo had made his flesh grow faster, he needed to find out how much faster. Every day he could shave off the regeneration meant another chance to sell, another payment, another handful of Stabiliron pills to keep his family from losing their minds. He had spent years enduring the pain of extraction. He could endure a few sleepless nights if it meant he would not have to watch his children go hungry.
A metallic groan travelled through the wall.
William opened his eyes.
The sound came again, followed by a short, uneven vibration. He recognised it from the lower levels, where old pipes strained whenever the Spine's pressure shifted. He had heard that particular noise before, but tonight he could almost feel it in his teeth. He lay still, listening until the vibration stopped.
Something's loose.
He nearly got out of bed to check. Instead, he glanced at Maria and forced himself to remain still. The pipes could wait until morning. He had work to do, and there was no point breaking himself over a noise that might amount to nothing.
He repeated that to himself until the thought became reassuring.
In the morning, William discovered that the leg was still there. He tested it before leaving the bed, shifting his weight onto it carefully, then standing without reaching for his crutches. The limb held. Its skin was pale and slightly tender, but the muscles responded when he flexed them. He took a few steps across the room, awkward at first, then with increasing confidence. For eleven years, he had learned to live around the absence of that leg. Now he had to learn to live with it again.
Maria watched from the kitchen.
"Does it hurt?"
"Not much."
"Does it feel normal?"
William considered the question. "Feels like a leg."
She did not smile.
He disliked that she could not simply be happy for him. He understood why she was afraid; he had seen the corrupted man in the alley himself. But William had also seen the man's flames, the way his body had twisted, the way the VigilNet enforcers had killed him. Whatever had happened to that man, William's own regeneration had been clean. He could stand. He could walk. He could carry his weight without crutches. If something was wrong, it had not stopped him from doing any of those things.
Besides, he had no intention of taking more Azo until he knew what it was doing.
He made that promise to himself while Maria prepared breakfast. Then Archie knocked a container of tools from the shelf, and William caught it before it hit the floor.
The movement surprised him. He had not been looking at the container. He had heard the scrape of metal, seen something shift in the corner of his eye, and reached out before he had time to think. The tools rattled in his hands. Archie stared at him.
"How'd you do that?"
"Quick hands."
"You weren't even looking."
"Then I heard it. Now pick those up before you knock something else over."
Archie grinned and began gathering the tools. Crowe, sitting nearby, watched his father with a look William had not seen in some time. It was admiration, simple and unguarded. William felt a small warmth in his chest. He had spent years being the father who needed help carrying things, the one who had to sit down halfway through a job, the one who could not chase his sons when they ran too far ahead. For once, he had done something that made them look at him as though he could keep them safe.
He wanted that feeling again.
Later that morning, while repairing the loose door fastening, William cut his palm on a jagged edge of steel. The wound was shallow, but it bled enough to drip onto the floor. He swore, wrapped it in a rag, and waited for the bleeding to stop. When he removed the rag, he noticed that the cut had already begun to close.
William frowned and pressed the skin together with his thumb. The edges drew closer beneath the pressure. He held them there, watching, and after a little while the bleeding stopped completely.
"Well, I'll be damned."
He had no idea whether the Azo had caused it. Perhaps his body was still recovering from the regeneration. Perhaps it would have happened anyway. But he had watched his own flesh grow back overnight; he was not going to pretend that this was ordinary.
He went to the kitchen, took a small knife from the drawer, and hesitated. He did not want to hurt himself. He had already spent more of his life in pain than he cared to remember. But a shallow cut was nothing compared to what he had endured during extraction, and if he could learn how to make his body heal faster, the knowledge might be worth something.
He made a small incision across the side of his thumb.
Pain came immediately. He hissed through his teeth and pressed a cloth against it. Then he remembered the warmth he had felt in his leg when it first regenerated. He tried to bring that sensation back, concentrating on the wound because he wanted the bleeding to stop.
The skin tightened.
William pulled the cloth away. The cut was closing.
He stared at it, then pressed his thumb against the table to steady his hand. He did not know what he had done. He only knew that the wound had begun to heal when he concentrated on it. He tried again, this time keeping his attention on the cut instead of the pain. The result was slower, but the bleeding stopped all the same.
He fetched his notebook, the one he used to keep track of extraction dates, payments, and the number of pills left in the cupboard. On a blank patch of metal, he wrote: Small wound healed faster when I concentrated on it.
He read the sentence twice. It looked stupid. He almost scratched it out, but he had learned the hard way that forgetting what worked could cost a man money. He left it there.
That evening, Maria found him examining his hand.
"What happened?"
"Cut myself fixing the door."
"Where's the cut?"
"Closed up."
She took his hand and turned it beneath the kitchen light. Her expression changed when she saw how little remained of the wound. She looked at his leg, then at the dark veins that disappeared beneath his collar.
"What did you take, William?"
He hesitated. "Azo."
Maria let go of his hand.
"You took more?"
"Only the vial."
"That was enough."
"I know what I took."
"No, you don't." Her voice remained quiet, but there was something in it that made him look up. "You saw what happened to that man."
"I saw what happened to him after he'd already gone wrong. I don't know how much he took."
"And you don't know how much you can take."
"I haven't taken anything since."
Maria looked at his hand again. "Then why is this happening?"
William had no answer. He hated that most of all. He could tell her about the leg, the cut, the strange pulse beneath his skin, but none of it explained what she wanted to know. He could not promise that nothing else would change. He could only tell her that he was still standing, still working, still bringing food home.
"We have fifteen pills," he said. "You know that. Fifteen. If I can't regenerate before the next extraction, we lose the payment. If we lose the payment, we lose the food. Then what?"
Maria's eyes lowered.
He regretted the words as soon as he said them. She had been the one dividing their food into smaller portions, the one who stayed awake when the boys were sick, the one who bandaged him after every extraction. She knew exactly what they stood to lose. He did not need to remind her.
But he was tired of being afraid. He was tired of watching his family suffer while he waited for someone else to decide whether he deserved enough flesh to sell.
"I am trying to keep us alive," he said.
Maria reached for his hand again, more carefully this time. "I know."
For a moment, William believed that was enough.
Over the following days, he began noticing small things before they happened. A loose panel would creak, and he would move out of its way. A pipe would rattle, and he could tell when the pressure inside it was about to change. He started avoiding certain walkways because the metal beneath his feet felt wrong, and twice he turned away from a passage moments before a maintenance cart came hurtling through it. None of these things made him rich. They simply made life a little easier, and for a man like William, a little easier was worth a great deal.
Then, one morning, he heard a sharp creak above the walkway where Crowe was standing.
William grabbed his son by the collar and pulled him backwards. Crowe stumbled into him, startled and angry, just as a sheet of rusted metal tore free from the ceiling and crashed onto the floor.
The impact shook the walkway. Dust and flakes of rust scattered across their clothes. Crowe stared at the fallen sheet, then at his father.
"How did you know?"
William looked at the metal. He had heard the creak, certainly, but he had also felt something through the soles of his feet, a little shudder that made him move before he had time to think. He could not explain it. He was not sure he wanted to.
"I heard it coming loose," he said.
Crowe's eyes widened. "You saved me."
William placed a hand on his son's head. "Just be careful, all right?"
Crowe nodded, still staring at him with admiration. William watched him run back inside and felt the warmth settle in his chest again. He had saved his son. Whatever the Azo was doing to him, it had helped him do that.
He held onto that thought for the rest of the day.
Maria was less impressed. That evening, after the boys had gone to bed, she asked him to stop taking risks. William told her he had not taken any more Azo. She said that was not what she meant. He was listening to things no one else could hear, moving before anything happened, and watching the family as though he expected something terrible to happen to them.
"I'm watching out for them," he said.
"I know. But you can't keep them safe from everything."
"Maybe I can keep them safe from more than I used to."
Maria stared at him. "That's what frightens me."
He did not understand. He had spent eleven years watching his family go without, watching his children grow thinner, watching Maria pretend she was not hungry so there would be more for the boys. Now he had a chance to change that. He could work again. He could regenerate faster. He could bring home more money. Why should he turn away from it just because she was afraid?
He did not say any of that. Instead, he went to bed and lay awake beside her, listening to the station through the walls.
The Spine passed beneath the apartment, and the metal around them trembled. William found himself counting the intervals between the noises. One scrape, a pause, then another. He could not help it. The sound seemed familiar, almost like something he had heard before. He thought of the pulse beneath his leg, the twitch in the veins under his skin, the way his body had moved before the metal fell on Crowe.
He wondered whether all of it was connected.
Then he shook his head. He did not have time to worry about things he could not use. Tomorrow, he would see whether he could make the regeneration happen again. If it worked, he could go back to the Limb Market sooner. If it did not, he would find another way.
That was how he had always survived: try something, see what happened, and keep going if it worked.
He turned towards Maria. In the darkness, he could hear her breathing again, the faint catch in her throat, the little pauses between each breath. He reached over and covered her shoulder with the blanket.
He loved her. He wanted her to have a better life. He wanted the boys to grow up somewhere they did not have to sleep beside a railway line that stole their air every sixty seconds.
He wanted to make sure nothing happened to them.
And for the first time, William began to believe that he might be able to do it.